My (M24) girlfriend (F23) has had a recent, annoying obsession with trying to outcompete me in all sorts of intellectual games.
She brings me crosswords, puzzles, logic riddles, math problems, and gets frustrated when I outdo her 95% of the time.
She even begs me to play chess and other “intelligent” games, but throws a tantrum every time she loses.
I really don’t know what’s gotten into her. She literally used to tell me that she liked me because I was very smart, and that guys dumber than her repulsed her. But now she is suddenly upset about it?
I told her after a chess game yesterday to stop testing me and just accept that I am smarter than her at these types of games, and she started crying and called me a condescending a-hole.
I tried explaining to her that she has other strengths where she outdoes me by far and there’s no use competing over unimportant things like this, but it seems the damage was done.
Netizens’ comments
- so sad when a 23 has tantrums when losing a game. If you cannot handle it,stop playing. Why did uou continue playing with her? Maybe you could initiate to do the things she excels at. Make her feel better about herself.
- One of my ex-spouses tried to compete with me intellectually after we’d been together for over a year. My intelligence was what they claimed attracted them to me at first.
Choosing to challenge me at games where I had more knowledge and experience was not a smart move on their part. That made the ex-spouse the AH. But I never said the kinds of things you said.
Tell your GF that you do not want to compete with her. You want to help each other improve your abilities. - She sounds immensely insecure in her intelligence, and seems to understand very little about the definitions around intelligence in general if she thinks little games are going to be objectively quantifying markers that she can use to determine who she is smarter than and dumber than. The fact it even matters to her this much just screams toxic insecurity to me. Toxic insecurity is actually the most generous description I can give to her behavior here, because this sounds like far more deep seated problems with her than basic insecurity.
It’s always the loudest people who are the dumbest. She seems to be aware on some level that she’s not as smart as she wants to be in this lifetime, and instead of actually working on that she’s dead set on trying to “prove” she’s at least smarter than those around her to feel better about herself.
I’m obviously biased, I wouldn’t stay in a relationship with somebody like this, but I’m not going to tell you to break up over this either. I mean, per her logic you’re a condescending ah despite the fact she’s been repeatedly and obsessively going out of her way to try and prove to herself she’s smarter than you? While also telling you she’s “repulsed” by men that she perceives as “dumber” than herself? In your position I’d be sitting there wondering if there ever came a time where this person started consistently “winning” these games against me, would that be their indicator to then break up with me? They beat me, therefore I’m dumber than them, therefore I’m repulsive? According to that incredibly weak excuse for logic anyway.
If she wants to be a genius amongst geniuses, then it doesn’t even start with these little logic games and math problems. It starts and stems from having a deep vested passion in education and applying learned knowledge in every facet of your life. It grows with open-mindedness and cognitive flexibility, two things this person clearly doesn’t have. The most intelligent people I know are all deeply passionate in their particular arenas of education. I’ve known architects who can describe the most convoluted jargon about a regular looking building to me with shining eyes. I’ve known a legitimate musical genius who could almost instantly figure out how to play any instrument put in front of him. I’ve known a genius in mathematics who was given grants on the fly because he happened to DOODLE an idea for an algorithm that ended up revolutionizing something in his niche of research (don’t even ask me to get into what he figured out, I could barely understand what he was describing to me at the time anyway). He didn’t get that grant because he’s naturally gifted, he was working hard in his education in this specific field of mathematics and robotics. I’d be willing to bet good money that every single one of these people are far more intelligent than your girlfriend in these specific arenas, and they may not win every single one of these little games she brings up to them, but that wouldn’t make her smarter than them nor would it make her dumber than them.
I don’t even know what advice to give you on how to approach this situation, because you’ve done literally nothing wrong and there’s no right combination of words that’s going to snap her out of these baseless beliefs and obsessions until she herself realizes that what she’s doing is wrong and not an indicator of an intelligent person. Intelligent people aren’t desperate to prove just how intelligent they are, especially in comparison to others.