Should you beat her at her own game?

[metalbird]

I met a girl the other day who really caught my interest. She was a student at a local university getting her Master's in Musicology. I was excited to talk to her about music because it's a huge passion of mine.

The conversation was going very well -- until it became apparent that I knew more about the subject than she did. I've never seen a girl do a 180 into auto-rejection so fast.

I immediately tried to salvage the interaction with a joking remark about how I had a love-hate relationship with Musicology, but she was already at Defcon 5.

This girl was very passionate about something and had devoted years of study to it, and when I, an amateur, demonstrated a greater proficiency with it than her, she went from very warm to cold as ice like a light switch.

This got me thinking... should you let women "win" the things that are highly valuable to them? At least early on? What's the best strategy here?

 

[andersen09]

Why does a girl work on herself or position herself in a high social ladder? It's to attract a high value mate.

In this case, she's majoring in Musicology, and hoping she'll find a guy who will value her contribution through music into her life.
In her head(Unconsciously), this is her value as a mate coming in, her knowledge of music.

She wants to be the girl that's able to add value into a guy's life with her music. And you want to be the guy who see the value in her passion of music, not the guy that says, oh I know more than you. HA HA. no matter how well your intention was.

Another way to put it.

Don't be the guy who wants to compete with her on who's better.
Be the guy who has a life she wants to contribute. And contribution can come in expressions of through music, art, being sexy, whatever.

From here,

It sounds like the conversation went something like this from you saying it was obvious you knew more than her.

Her: Yeah so it's X
You: No that's not true it's Y because blah blah blah.
Her: Oh.. well that's true.

Give some concrete examples of the conversation and I can pinpoint more if you'd like.
But hopefully this was helpful

 

[lostnumber]

I have some thoughts on this metalbird, but like Andersen I want some more information on how it became clear you knew more than her. Were you correcting her at points? Did you end up disagreeing on a topic where you thought she was clearly wrong? Give some more specifics on how the conversation went down. The devil is in the details

 

[metalbird]

I didn't correct her or anything, it was more like this:

Her: What's the Dvorak piece with the english horn solo... (racks brain trying to remember)

Me: Symphony no 9 movement 2, "from the new world"

Her: Yeah. I also really like his American quartet.

Me: Me too! String Quartet no. 12 (begins humming the beginning from memory)

other Friend: yeah, i could never rember the numbers and stuff.

Me: yeah, I used to have opus numbers and stuff memorized, it was bad!

I was just being genuine and enthusiastic and basically filling in the blanks as you normally do in conversation when you see someone struggling to remeber a word or something.

 

[andersen09]

I didn't correct her or anything, it was more like this:

Her: What's the Dvorak piece with the english horn solo... (racks brain trying to remember)

Me: Symphony no 9 movement 2, "from the new world"

Her: Yeah. I also really like his American quartet.

Me: Me too! String Quartet no. 12 (begins humming the beginning from memory)

other Friend: yeah, i could never rember the numbers and stuff.

Me: yeah, I used to have opus numbers and stuff memorized, it was bad!

I was just being genuine and enthusiastic and basically filling in the blanks as you normally do in conversation when you see someone struggling to remeber a word or something.

What did you talk about last before you started seeings of her auto-rejecting?

It's not just one part of the conversation but a gradual development of resentment towards you.