My boyfriend and I have been together for around 6 years now. He has always been good with debating, he knows how to argue well and to his benefit. He is incredibly smart and well spoken, to the point of arrogance in some cases. I am not very good at debating, I get passionate and excited and stumble on my words. I am not dumb, it's just harder for me to put my thoughts into sentences.
When we have opposing viewpoints on things (usually harmless things, like today it was the ethics in American pop industry vs. the Korean pop industry), our arguments can turn from friendly discussions to emotional blowouts pretty quickly. I feel like he is very focused on catching me in a logical fallacy and winning the argument rather than having a discussion. I feel like our conversations are competitions to see who is right and who is wrong, rather than just discussing. Once he begins getting upset he begins to use bigger words and debate jargon that I am not familiar with and then gets angry with me when I have problems understanding his "logical fallacy" flags and gets frustrated with me when I ask him to explain them, like I am just playing dumb. He begins to treat me like a child, like I am too slow to understand what he is saying. It usually just ends with me being too flustered or beaten down to continue the argument and I throw in the white flag, calling him right. This never seems to satisfy him either and frustrates him that I am giving up rather than continuing the fight.
For example, the last thing he said to me today way, "You have degree from a liberal arts institution, so excuse me for assuming you paid any attention for your four and a half years. Don't pretend that me "getting heated" prevents you from making arguments when you'd rather stick to whataboutism and bad faith logic rather than learn how to actually make a good argument." I feel like he sometimes tries to turn are discussions into moments to teach me how to argue rather than just having a friendly conversation, and when his tactics to educate me don't work(because they come from a place of annoyance and anger rather than a genuine want to make me a better arguer) , he gets angry. When I point out that he treats me like a child sometimes, or that he talks to me like I am dumb he says things like, "well, don't argue like a child/ like you're dumb" or "I am smarter than you, we both know it".
I don't really know what to do. He is really smart, but it hurts to hear him point it out like he is so above me. I have a better job, a degree while he couldn't finish school, I am not doing bad in life or anything. I feel like our arguments turn so heated because I am not up to par with him, and that angers him for some reason. I am really tired of being treated like a child or like I am unintelligent and I don't know how to shrink his ego to see that.
tldr; My very smart boyfriend likes to turn are harmless arguments into heated debates and gets mad when I am not up to par with his intellect, but would rather get mad than educate me.
Submitted November 26, 2019 at 01:40PM by argumentproblemslol https://ift.tt/33nae23
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