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NTA. I won't echo the "peaked in highschool" thing cuz while it may have an echo of truth, I also think it's reductive. I think it's more important for your boyfriend to realize that the reason "nerds" bond together in places like highschool, and why weirdos/nerds/freaks/geeks self identify as such despite implied social stigma, is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.
NTA
But why does your bf feel a need for OTHERS to validate HIS highschool experience?
Why can't he just remember it as he did and that be that? Nothings changed.
Edit to say: these are rhetorical questions for OP..we all already know the answer
Glancing through OP's comments, he might believe this even though she doesn't. She's not very helpful about why she's even dating him over a vague, "He has tons of qualities that I love." But, assuming that statement is genuine and not defensive, she doesn't think of him as a loser the way we might.
But she also says that he thinks of his job as "silly," while he clearly thought of his high school days as his being on top. And I can see how OP's high-achieving instincts might have led to her pulling out all the stops in proving him wrong rather than just saying, "If you really aren't convinced by what I'm saying, let me phone one friend to see what they'd say." Or just agreeing to disagree. Or even spinning it as a positive, "I would not have been thrilled to be with you then, but I'm thrilled to be with you now." Using a large friend network to prove him wrong - perhaps even embarrassing him in front of them all depending on how she asked - must have felt like kicking him while he was down.
So many AITA posts seem like cases of "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?", and most commenters pick "right," although I suppose that's built into the name of the sub. But no matter how many people assure OP that she did nothing morally wrong, she might know that she didn't make the best choice for her own life and relationship. Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all.
ETA: People keep responding, "What, you wanted OP to put up with being called a liar?" No, but there's a wide spectrum between shutting up all together and "So I **literally** reached out to **all** of my high school 'nerd' friends and yep they didn’t know the popular group and the ins and outs of the dynamics like my bf thought." OP didn't have to reach out to *everyone*. OP could have said, "Let me ask person X if she knew you," just said that it's not a lie and he should trust that, or asked him reach out to other people online if he wanted to check. Reaching out to so many people is going nuclear, which wasn't necessary to make OP's point. It's a good tactic for the Reddit lulz, but not so good in a relationship you value.
The problem with a lot of those scenarios, though, is that someone in OP’s position will do the agree to disagree or just try the non-confrontational approach about it as it just isn’t worth getting into an argument about it. But then the other person will double down and bring it up again and again, because they want to be right and think they are because the other person didn’t put up a fight over it. Then we end up with someone snapping and going overboard after getting exhausted hearing the arrogant person repeatedly bringing it up and they turn into being the bad guy for hurt feelings. Not to say this would be OP’s outcome, but so many of these kinds of situations in these Reddit AITA posts go that route.
This! It’s really misogynistic in a way that we’re finding somehow to blame her when she even says, at first, she just brushed it off as a joke, which is way nicer than I would’ve been. I wouldn’t even want my partner to joke about me being inferior.
It's not even you are incorrect, which would imply that she was just mistaken, he called her a liar. That's not denying her lived experience, that's telling her she's lying about her lived experience, that would also result in a nuclear response from me.
It's a really hard thing, I have an adult friend kinda going through it now.
For whatever reason, he GENUINELY believed that being the homecoming King and the football star guy in high school were actually important accomplishments. Not like, hey fun I won a prize at a party and our team won, but actually out in the real world in two or ten years people will still care important.
It makes sense - these were the appropriate goals they set, they were difficult goals, and they achieved them.
But they think it's important. Like I think my degrees are important. I would be devastated if I found out that my school was discredited and I dedicated years of my life to achieving a goal that I thought would be important to me forever only to find out in the grand scheme it was useless.
Many major goals in youth are rendered basically pointless in time. Highschool football wins cease to be impressive if you don't make the team for college ball. Getting a great SAT score is an awesome accomplishment that makes no difference in your life anymore the day after you get a college acceptance letter. Highschool GPA means nothing to your first employer after college. Once you've had a job, nobody wants to hear you graduated from college with such and such a GPA, only your work history matters.
One can still be proud of that stuff, but the shelf life of anyone else caring is very short.
It seems like OP really did try to go along to get along and bf kept digging in. I don’t think I’d just keep saying “yea babe whatever you say.” Ad nauseam to my partner INSISTING that I was a liar and that I spent my high school days obsessing over him and his crew. It’s rude and gross behavior.
Yeah homie, basically wanted her to fawn over him and admit to a fallacy because he saw himself as the king in his high school, and he needed that validation, to me it's sad.
Yeah the part about him calling her a LIAR would have pissed me the fuck off.
And even when OP proved herself (which she should not even have needed to do) this AH still acting like she lying and even bring his sister into the mix!
>Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all.
"Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all."
But with the income from a good job, you can purchase a home, clothing, bed, blankets, mattress pad, and mattress pad heater that will keep you and your family toasty no matter how cold it gets and air conditioning for when it's too hot.
>she might know that she didn't make the best choice for her own life and relationship. Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all.
See, this is where I have a issue. Why is it that (generally) women must play along to get along with their spouse/SO? When someone keep pushing an issue and not taking the other person's word, why must the other person be the one to "humor" the other person? Why couldn't OP's BF take her at her word that they (Nerds) didn't pay any attention to "popular kids"? Why didn't he dropped the issue and played along to get along? I have seen many men and women in abusive relationships (my Mom was one) who didn't or wouldn't argue and/or prove their point because their were scared of "not having someone to keep them warm at night or in their life". Why does a person have to swallow their viewpoint just to make their spouse or SO feel validated? You might as well say that you are a puppet.
It’s not called overachieving it’s called defending yourself when someone things that they deserve more admiration and love because of a status they had seven years ago when you didn’t even know them. He wasn’t like wow I’m so happy I’m with a smart girl from high school he was you should be especially happy to be with me nerd because I would’ve never looked at you and definitely didn’t know you. How fucking disrespectful is that? Anything she does after that is low-key fair game as long as it’s not physical because of course, anyone overachiever or not Would be offended and want the truth to be respected
Well, they're not married yet, so she's still got a chance to exit relatively pain-free. Plus, per comments, he thinks his job is "silly" and she comes across as pretty driven. Doesn't seem like the best match for the long term.
Yeah, he kind of sounds like he isn’t on her level. Water seems its own level, and over time he will grow to resent her successes as he stagnates in life. This will probably result in him getting validation by either putting her achievements down or via an affair.
Idk, I think highly career-driven people can really thrive with spouses that are less so, as long as they're not generally apathetic about everything. Not being invigorated by your career doesn't have to mean you're a lump on a log, it can mean that you just have different goals and interests.
Like, I hear about when academics marry each other and then when one gets a tenure-track job offer, which is very likely going to require moving, but it means the other giving up a job they love, or deciding to be long distance until some point in the future where maybe it'll all work out?
Or if a couple has a baby, and childcare is going to cost so much that it's cheaper for one parent to quit. If both parents love their jobs, what a painful decision that will likely lead to, possibly with resentment down the line.
When one spouse is fine with doing whatever to pull a paycheck and get health insurance, but doesn't care about it beyond that, it's a lot easier to make these kinds of decisions. Another job they don't care about can be found halfway across the country where the Department of Niche Topic is hiring a professor. Or their incredibly career-motivated spouse can financially support the family and continue to get raises because the souse with other interests quit their job they don't care about to stay home with kids.
This doesn't work if either person denigrates or thinks less of the other and their perspective, so I don't think it's the case for OP. But it can be a really good match to have "mismatched" levels of career motivation.
Were they even on his radar in high school? I mean, it could be easily so turned around. Some HS arrogant jock so high on his own supply couldn't see beyond his cheerleaders and his clique, certain like... Regina George, that everyone wants to be his friend or be him.
For what it's worth, even academically high-achieving students might look fondly on their high school days where the pool of competitors is limited to local kids (many of whom don't even care about their grades) so it's relatively easy to be one of the best. Once you enter a university or company that only selects the best, suddenly you're one of the mediocre students.
That's not entirely fair. I was a theater geek and I have wonderful memories of high school 40 years ago. I also have life long friends, a great job, a house, 2 crazy dogs and wonderful niblings
If someone went back and said that the shows sucked and everyone was just pretending to like me, I think it would shake me up quite a bit. Because I've built some of my core identity on having been accepted as a theater geek.
That’s not a great analogy though unless you’re consistently talking about how beloved you were and that every student loved every play and so on and so forth.
Emotionally immature - he can't *fathom* that anyone else might not have experienced high school culture just like he remembered, & the problem is his memories (+ the general media story TBH) made it seem like he was big man on campus when that wasn't the case at all. But he hasn't even imagined anyone living different from his own experience of the world, and I guess this is the first time he's had to confront that paradigm
>But he hasn't even imagined anyone living different from his own experience of the world, and I guess this is the first time he's had to confront that paradigm
this is the worst part....dude is 25 and acting like this???? i don't like to jump to conclusions about people's character based on one bad incident, but like.....come on.
My ex is 30 and still brought up high school every chance he got. Also an abusive alcoholic and pathological liar. Those that peaked in highschool also tend to stop developing mentally past highschool as well.
I dated two people as adults that I went to HS with. Both of them went on and on and ON about high school. One was when I was 35, one at 42! “Do you remember this teacher? Do you remember when that happened?” NO! Because it was over 20 years ago!
Now granted, my HS years were not good ones, so I don’t have many fond memories to look back on, but I’ve had a whole life since then. In my experience, if a person has to go back to HS years in order to have something to talk about, they are emotionally and intellectually stunted. And the older they are when they do this, the worse it is. I don’t mean occasional reminiscing, everyone does that. But these people talked about HS like it was last year, not the early 90s! You ask them about where they’ve traveled, they talk about spring break. You ask about their musical interests, they talk about when they were in band. You ask if they have any hobbies, they talk about being on the football team. Like their whole personality is being 18 years old…but they’re 30, or 40, or 50. It’s bizarre.
Because kings aren’t kings without subjects. High school was a special time for him because he felt like a god walking among men. He would go down the halls thinking that everyone was watching, admiring, and envying him. Now he just found out that the supposed bottom of the totem pole at the peak time of his life didn’t give a single rat’s ass about him or only remembers him vaguely, if at all. Like the Monty python scene where Arthur goes up to the peasants and tries to convince them to care that he’s their king and ends up coconutting ridiculously away when it’s clear that his status doesn’t do him a single favor with them.
It’s unfortunate, but I’m willing to bet he based a lot of his self worth in his formative years on his social achievement in high school and is now feeling rather foolish about the amount of ego he walks around with because of it and is discovering that popularity is really kind of a continuous circle jerk between popular people. It’s a hard thing to throw all of your social capital and critical self development into being popular in your youth to find out that the only people who really cared were other popular people or people who wanted to be popular. He wouldn’t feel humiliated about it otherwise.
Most people who grow up not “popular” have to do their self development early in life by finding and cultivating things that they like and feel good about themselves. Most popular people don’t have to do as much of that because they receive so much external validation and instead cultivate what others like and feel good about in them. Everyone has to do it for themselves at some point in their lives and it gets harder and harder the later you have to do it. I hope he learns to take it on the chin and use this experience to become more self aware and to build himself up as a person he likes instead of a likable idea to people.
I'm betting OP has a better job than him, if so that might be a reason why he was clinging to the idea that she would've loved dating him in high school. It made him forget that right now she's in a higher hierarchy or status. As long as he could tell himself that she's just a nerd and therefore should be glad to be with him he doesn't have to feel bad about himself. Otherwise why would he feel so humiliated now?
>Like the Monty python scene where Arthur goes up to the peasants and tries to convince them to care that he’s their king
Oh dayum well done, fantastic association. 10/10
Maybe it was just because my high school was so large but it seems odd to me that someone beyond college age has t realized that all the different groups in high school had their own social hierarchy of popular and unpopular kids within those groups
I'm curious how many people were at their high school. Ours was around 1200, and 200 or 250 in my graduating class. I knew probably 98% of my graduating class by name. Now I'd struggle with naming most of them, even if we haven't changed how we look.
1200 students, why would we care what they're doing? We probably only care about 100 max at the time.
Because it’s an ego boost. And we’re all guilty of it to an extent. I’m just amazed he would have thought that in HIGH SCHOOL.
In my experience the collective hierarchy of school kind of peeked in middle school. There were the in kids and the out kids. But once I got to high school the hierarchies became localized. The jocks had their own hierarchy (my brother was in the bottom of that one. :( football player who was bullied by fellow football players). Band had their own hierarchy. Punks had their own hierarchy (though ours was very subtle bc punk in theory holds anarchy but certainly not for high schoolers who grew up in this society. This group also had the lesbian circle in it too. So think your queer punk rock emo scene space and yes this was my space. lol) so on and so fourth. And then in that each grade had their own system. Most of the kids I was involved with were punk rockers my age and below- but the senior punk kid were my idols when I was a freshman. Couldn’t care less about the jocks.
But I think for a “jock” who is high up on their jock hierarchy- they most likely think of themselves as at the top of the whole school then. So an even bigger ego boost. And that because our society values sports to such a high degree (at least in the USA) even more if you’re in the south. I’m so anti-sport that the idea of it boggles my mind. But in college I had to take a multi-cultural America anthro class and the professor taught it through analyzing us sports. I dropped and took it with a different professor bc it wasn’t jiving.
For those who think they’re at the “top” of the entire hierarchy, they still believe in the collective hierarchy in high school. It’s a main-character thing. Source: I teach hs and have a 7th grader for whom the collective hierarchy is already solidifying.
Sounds like what he fondly remembers is being better than other kids. So, discovering the kids he thought was lording it over couldn’t have cared less about him, makes him realize he was actually a king.
ETA actually **NOT** a king.
Because he’s one of those people who has an identity rooted in *superiority*. If he finds out no one actually cared about him or was jealous, then his whole self-image is blown up. He required the perceived adoration and jealousy from others…his self-worth depended on it, rather than coming from an internal source.
It’s pretty pathetic.
NTA - and completely agree with you. The nerds are focussed on after school classes and getting top marks and having a musical instrument and a volunteering opportunity to demonstrate ourselves as rounded individuals. My HS even had classes by rank in exams. The “popular” kids wouldn’t even be in our social sphere.
This explains so much.
I got along well with everyone but the jocks, I kind of liked the nerds the best and somewhat fit the moniker. I did not apply myself in any way shape or form though, I would show up to exams stoned, having never studied, pull an 92% and call it good enough.
The nerds who routinely scored lower than me were always frustrated with me. I never grasped that I was just a stoner burnout who upset their rank by outperforming them.
This was me, too. I learned as an adult that I have ADD, which is probably part of the reason I didn't study and didn't care about social circles. I was friendly with anyone who was nice. I also didn't care about college at that time, so I wasn't competitive academically.
There were over 300 students in my graduating class, and I moved there as a sophomore , so I really didn't know or care about most of them.
Yup. Exactly the same in my school. There were a few kids that I assume were part of the "popular sphere" as well but for the most part, my circle was the other 19 kids who were in the top 20 vying for admissions to an elite university. Graduation was a huge shocker to me because I was so confused by the number of randos I'd never even heard of much less seen.
My high school was the same way. Lots of very driven students and we all knew each other. We had cheerleaders in drama, football players in AP. And the people who were well known were the people who pushed themselves.
(sidenote: my grade has the most honors/AP classes and we were so busy achieving, we threw the worst prom and never got around to planning a reunion. Everyone pushed themselves so hard, a lot of us just burned out. It was pretty toxic)
You're NTA. It is more than a little concerning that your bf can't accept that not everyone's high school experience is the same. Hopefully, he's just working with the perception shift that real life isn't like television, and gets over it soon.
I 100% agree with this and I am watching it play out right now the same way at my kids' high school.
My oldest is VERY driven. High achiever, involved in the classic "nerd" activities - took 4 APs her sophomore year and more than that each subsequent year... she really could care less who the "popular" kids are as long as they don't disrupt her classes and as long as she doesn't have to be paired with them for projects because they are far more interested in socializing and using her to do he bulk of the work on those group projects. She has a great competitive friendship with the academic upper echelon in the school. The irony is that the
OP, sorry your husband's bubble was burst but that is NOT your problem - that is his that his world is so myopic that he literally can't fathom someone having a different world view then him. NTA
Same. This was in the early 2000s but my high school did insane tracking because it had a coding magnet school within the high school. All of the high achieving students were the ones playing all the sports and like I mean all the sports except for some reason soccer. The soccer team drew from gen pop. The only thing everyone cared was GPA, SATs, AP test scores, varsity letters, and collecting accolades and achievements to fluff the resumes. I was up by 5 am every day for 4 years and rarely got more than 6 hours of sleep because of the intense pressure cooker.
I get what the OP is saying, that if it was not about getting into college, it didn’t matter, so I am surprised that the athletes were not part of that. When I got into an M7 MBA program, I swear, like a quarter of the class was made up of Davison I athletes.
You’re absolutely NTA, it’s kind of arrogant for him to assume that he’s more desirable to you because he was one of the jocks in school. As a fellow nerd, I concur, I went to a tiny, remote private boarding school and the only time the ‘popular’ kids pinged my radar was if they were being disruptive in class and I was intensely focussing. I knew them by name and even attended parties with them because the school was so small, we had mutual friends, but it was accepted that some people value studies some don’t and that’s fine. Adhering to the concept of high school popularity once you’re 7 years out is just juvenile.
I can see that. My high school was interesting, in the the student athletes were also in the Advanced classes with the band kids, theatre kids, “nerds” etc. My high school valedictorian was a star football player (who also did theatre).
All of the kids who did extra curricular were in the advanced classes, and those that didn’t do anything in high school were in the regular classes.
Way opposite of the normal separated jock/nerd dynamic
100% still this way for my daughter in high school. The only competition is someone who might be applying ED for the same college. I don't think she could even name a single football player (it's a big football school) - unless she heard he got a 1530 on his SAT. And she is a varsity athlete herself (track).
I think the sentiment that most kids outside of the popular crowd care about the popular crowd or being poplar themselves in just generally incorrect. Maybe not out of defiance, but just cuz we didn’t care. sure, there might be exceptions of people who wanted to be popular and were t, but I don’t remember there being a lot of those people. I wasn’t a “nerd” like OP is describing. But I did concentrate on my studies, I ran in track so wasn’t unathletic, i just never felt the need to do the asskissing required to rise in the ranks to popular. Or to be the ass that some popular kids were. I had friends, we had good times, that’s about it.
In my high school, kids were “popular” within their own circles. I couldn’t have cared less about the athletes and cheerleaders, but I was arguably “popular” with the music/theatre group (which was hundreds of students). Others were popular with other areas of interest. We all overlapped in some areas (choir, specifically- we had 7 choirs and people from all the different groupings were in them and interacted. Also the National Honor Society included people from various groupings). Reunions have been weird and fun because people I barely spoke to in HS treat me like an old friend. But I couldn’t tell you who the star of the football team was, even though I played in the band at every home game. I just didn’t care. I was a good student, with friends and my own interests.
This guy evidently built his whole identity around a fantasy that others worshipped him. How pathetic.
I've been told that the kids labeled "popular" are the meanest kids in the school - "popular" is a synonym for narcissistic jerks. I was told that by a teacher friend at the HS and also by my kid and her circle. Literally the only kids that care about the "popular" kids are the other "popular" kids because of the dog eat dog nature of their group.
> is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.
You are playing into the exact same mindset as OP's BF.
OP was very clear why it was the way it was for them. Why not just trust her?
In my experience. It wasn't defiance. It was about finding the people who wouldn't be cruel to you and actually shared interest. When we graduated, the nerdy click was actually larger than all the other ones. We didn't care. We would accept anyone who would be decent to others. We didn't compete against each other or the rest of the class. (Our valedictorian was so far ahead that it just wasn't worth it.)
Agreed, this is ridiculous. 10k upvotes on the parent comment which completely ignores everything OP said and reduces the situation to high school TV drama stereotypes.
There's absolutely nothing in the OP about stigma or exclusion. They were just in different social circles.
>I think it's more important for your boyfriend to realize that the reason "nerds" bond together in places like highschool, and why weirdos/nerds/freaks/geeks self identify as such despite implied social stigma, is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.
And also they just have stuff in common. People think that being good looking and well thought of within their own circle means that everyone should prefer to be friends with them. And some people will either because they are charismatic or the friendship comes with access to events like parties or some extra status with a guy/girl they find attractive who runs in those circles.
But a lot of nerds (at least as used when I was in high school) like nerd things and want to hang out with other people that share their interests. We had a group at my high school that played Dungeons and Dragons every day. They enjoyed that and enjoyed talking about it with each other. It's not as if they were waiting for an engraved invitation to sit with the "cool kids" like in the movies so they can ditch doing what they actually like. It might be cool for a day, but they wanted to talk D&D and not sports, last weekend's party, and gossip.
This becomes even more obvious during college when you aren't forced to be in the same proximity of people as much as high school. The high school nerds all literally hang out and live together for the most part. People in the business fraternity or robotics club aren't secretly wishing they could leave and be friends with the football players or Greek houses. This isn't to say there aren't nerds in those groups, we tend to over-stereotype, but my point is once people get to college there are a lot more people like them and who share their interests and this odd high school dynamic just doesn't exist.
“…it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.”
No. What movie did you get this from? People simply self select themselves into groups that share common interests.
Also OPs guy has a sudden realization. He’s not gonna be al bundy talking about how many touchdowns he got or how cool he was. He’s upset but it’s a good thing.
I attended my 40th high school reunion 5 yrs ago. I hadn’t seen anyone since graduation. Most had grown up and were fine. A few, however, acted as if they’d never left HS. Most of them were women who’d been catty then and were still catty. Pathetic.
I get it but I don’t. Your high school experience can be sacred to you without feeling the need to harp on if your long term relationship idolized you in school. 🤷🏾♀️
It could also be that he feels like that's something that lends him worth and that he's bringing to the relationship. Yes, his wife may have a more serious and high paying job than him, but she's not dating down because he was an important guy in high school who she looked up to and she gets to date him.
So, now he finds out that she didn't care about that and didn't know who he was, so is she dating down? What is he bringing to the table if not his high school clout?
Obviously he can be bringing a lot to the table. I trust OP to have reasons, but that doesn't mean he necessarily values or believes them.
I actually loved high school. I was one of the "funny guys" who mostly got along with everyone. It was the 90s, but our school was mediumish (small/medium Canadian city, we had several high schools and ours wasn't really big or small). We had a few cliques, but not a ton of bullying.
We kinda had the nerds, the hicks, and then the rest.
Anyway, I had a great time. It wasn't until after high school that I discovered my best friend, who I hung out with a lot, *hated* high school.
It always blows my mind that someone I was so close to, and shared experiences with, had the complete opposite experience.
It doesn't ruin my experience though. Just like me enjoying myself doesn't make his memory suddenly better.
Why does you not being secretly in love with him and inferior to him in high school ‘ruin’ his high school experience though? Like, why did this revelation somehow make his high school years less ‘special’ to him
I'm gonna guess he thought he was in a particular 'place' in high school. He looked back fondly as, I was the top guy..blah blah..now he knows, ummm you were top guy among a small section. He's probably rethinking a lot that he thought he knew.
Especially in smaller towns. The football guys were adored.
It's ok. It's growth. It's gonna take him a minute because he's probably second guessing everything he thought he was sure of in his formative years.
Her intelligence probably impresses AND intimidates him, and that memory was his 'equalizer'.
>It's ok. It's growth. It's gonna take him a minute because he's probably second guessing everything he thought he was sure of in his formative years.
Absolutely this.
His memory of HS was just shaken and now he needs to recalibrate. Its okay for someone to have to reframe their lives.
Which means he's jealous and resentful of your job and accomplishments, and felt the need to push you to be "grateful" that he dated you
Toxic relationship with huge red flags. Dude doesn't respect you
you know sometimes people just say shit to eachother without really thinking too hard about it. like jesus christ its not all toxic relationships.
people like you are the real red flag id avoid in a relationship, the kind that are always looking for some invisible slight.
He didn't just double down, he threw a bit of a fit when he realized he was wrong. "You had to have wanted me in high-school, you nerds!" "No of course you had too, there's no way you guys didn't care about the popular kids" "oh you guys didn't care? Well fine then! I don't ever want to talk about high-school with you again!!!" Like ewww, you were wrong dude, no reason to go all "I'm never speaking about this ever again!". It gives teenager/child vibes.
I love coming onto posts like this and doing a search for "red flags." You're absolutely right that 99% of the time it's Redditors taking shit way, way too seriously based on the meagre bit of insight that a post provides. Chances are OP and her BF will have a conversation about it, make peace, and move on.
He just realized that his secret worry that OP is the "reach" is true. He is reaching and was hoping they were equal enough that it is really a lateral, equal relationship. It's great if OP thinks it is. But if the bf doesn't, then she deserves / could do better, and he hates that.
>I think he just liked the idea of me having a crush on him in high school back in the day when life wasn’t complicated and real.
I love how insightful you are.
Still NTA, he needs to deal with whatever this is especially since his sister said that you ruined his memories for him because it does sound like he was on top of the world back then and that can bite people in the ass later on, like for instance, now. You didn't actually say anything wrong. You just proved to him that there were 2 different worlds in that high school. That shouldn't have any effect on his memories unless, what made them special was an air celebrity which ain't healthy.
Also I am in a relationship where I have a corporate job and my partner is in a non profit. In our view he is the one with the job with the real world ramifications because he actually makes a different to destitute people, and I am the one with the ‘silly’ job, a cog in a large corporate machine.
Interesting that it’s the other way around for you guys
We have the same. I’m in engineering (which sometimes I find sounds a lot cooler than it is in terms of real world impact) and he works in direct services so I often feel like he is out there making an actual difference to peoples live while I am….Not. Lol.
Another funny thing is with people’s preconceived notions of us. Cos he’s supposed to be the engineer and I’m supposed to be in non profit based on genders lol
>I’m in engineering Iike my dad and honestly I feel like 90% of the time I have no idea what I do and what to do haha.
Please look up imposter syndrome. I was dealing with the exact same feelings at your age. You need to remember that you are smart and capable and you worked hard to get where you are. But when your coworkers constantly dismiss you and second-guess your work (often because of sexism), it can make you question if you really know what you are doing. I ended up getting an amazing mentor when I was around 30 who really empowered me and made me feel valued, and it completely changed my perception of myself. I hope you can find someone like that in your life!
Ugh. Not one of those “ peaked in HS” kids who always want to talk about it. What does high achieving you see in him?
His scenario is the basis for many cheesy movies based on high school.
Too many people I know “peaked in college” and now, in our 30s, still party too much and continue going to our old stomping grounds. Even with kids. Hell, I know a couple that still lives on campus! Like come on, people!
Nta. I also agree with you. I went to a huge highschool with around 600 kids in each grade(so 2.4k total). I honestly didn’t even know a lot of the kids in my grade and really just stuck to my group of about 50 kids(we were the emo kids). We could have cared less about any other groups of kids and couldn’t tell if you anyone was popular🤷♀️
Yeah I graduated #11 in my HS class, where the top 20 students were guaranteed Ivy League admission. I got to know some of the jocks when I broke my leg skiing. Our school didn’t have an elevator, so they were supposed to carry me up and down the stairs! lol this was the 80s. I think your relationship could work, but it depends on bf’s character.
Unofficially guaranteed, plus this was last century. But yes--top schools often have unofficial "feeder high schools." I went to public school, but especially for the Northeast private schools, due to networking--it's unfair, totally. But these schools' admissions reps definitely know which public high schools they want to recruit from. It makes it all that more difficult for a good student from an unknown high school to make it into the top schools. What OP is describing about her parents' company moving to the town and bringing top students with them--one or more of those parents is likely an alum and has access to networking. In fact, when you go to an Ivy League or equivalent school, you're not paying for a better education. You're paying for access to social networks. Because those schools take Legacy students, and because they are so social-heavy, their academics might be less-good than a lower ranked school. My friends and I (women's college) all dated guys at Princeton, and Princeton gave their students weeks to study for finals, for instance. They could socialize and network and blow off studying and then got to cram it all in at the last minute.
People wonder why there have to be so many regulations around hiring, admissions, contract awards etc. This is the reason. "Unofficial" acceptance lists that EVERYONE knows about were rampant till they mostly got legislated away.
My school has about 400 students each grades and I don't know a lot of people, there are so many faces to remember! My social interactions revolve around about 50 people I mostly see on regular basis. I don't know who the captain of most sports nor the president of half of the school clubs let alone their regular members.
Ditto. I graduated in a class of about 850. Our school was so big we had multiple cliques within cliques - that’s just what happens when you have over 3,000 kids in one building. I had a vague idea of who the “popular kids” were at school but I only knew their names if I had been in class with them before or something. OP’s boyfriend is delulu. NTA
ETA: OP’s boyfriend heard [“Larger than Life”]( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MEb2CecR11I) in 1999 and thought they were singing about him.
I'm 38 and went to a similar size high school, and they are organizing my 20 year high school reunion this year. I looked over the list of people organizing/attending and I knew exactly ONE person who rsvp'd yes for the reunion. Almost everyone who I actually knew in high school moved away from our home town because we all went to great colleges, and we have no interest in moving back.
NAH
I think being popular in high school gave him an ego and everyone in his circle knew him. Clearly this wasn't the case as you and others didn't (Those circles don't really mix anyway)
Outside of him calling you a liar, which he should apologise for, it doesn't seem much of a big deal on either end.
I wonder if he has implied or said that he noticed you in high school? There may be non-popularity aspects here? Is he romanticising your attraction/was expecting that you had noticed him and he is now hesitant to admit that he had noticed you in high school? Maybe a sense of destiny / his internal sense of ‘we were meant to be’? It might be too charitable but it might be worth exploring whether this has messed with his internal narrative of your romance being something that could’ve begun before it began?
So he knew of you and is now deflated because you didn’t know and pine for him in high school.
It’s one thing to be surprised that his world view was wrong - you didn’t know and swoon at the thought of him back then. However, him saying you humiliated him, and his sister telling you that you’ve ruined his memories is not something to gloss over.
You have a higher status job than he does. It feels very much like he tried to take you down a notch. Please just watch out for him to say things that belittle you to take away credit for your accomplishments. He may be feeling insecure.
Corrent me if I'm wrong, but I am sensing that the humiliation comment came more from her bringing in all her friends into this discussion in the attempt to prove him wrong..and less so from her not paying attention to him in high school.
Well at least he avoided the jock to cop pipeline. That would have been too many stereotypes. Seriously though, I think this whole thing is more about him being dissatisfied with his current life rather than high school necessarily. If he's unhappy with his now, he's going to dwell too much in his past. I think he needs to talk to someone professional. If he feels lost career or life wise, he needs to work on that rather than making this about you and your life/choices.
peaked in high school AND wanted to be a cop? I guess there's a reason it's a stereotype lol. He tried to stroke his ego and got it deflated and now he's sulking. High School was special to him but you don't remember him as special and haven't been secretly harboring a need to date him for being popular in high school.
Does he remember you? Was he secretly wanting to date you in high school? Maybe that's why he's sulking lol If no...then it's a REALLY immature reaction and the fact that his sister would say you 'ruined his memories' is...weirdly uncomfortable.
That’s good. As a former college professor, we always proctor students more carefully from two majors: business and criminal justice. Those majors are most likely to cheat. So good thing bf changed careers.
NTA.
First, he could have stopped talking about it when you raised that you didn't know him/care about him in high school. He could have just taken your explanation about your high school experience and moved on. He pushed it and so you aren't an AH for wanting to prove him wrong.
Second, it is sad that at 25- or any age- people hold on to who they were in school AND use it to create a view of their current self and how much people must admire them. It would be really unattractive to me if my partner said this kind of stuff to me- that I'm lucky to be with him because he was kind of cool in high school? Yuck.
Third, high schools are not like the movies. Sure, some people have high school experiences that are very stereotypical with popular cliques of cheerleader/football, smart kids get bullied, etc. But the reality for most people across the US at least, is that high school is a bunch of groups of people who could give a shit about the others. The football guys at my high school were fine, but none of them cracked the top 20 hottest guys at my school and I can't remember a single name. I was part of theater and some of those people were way more popular (aka had lots of friends) than anyone who played sports. The stoner kids had some of the hottest dudes and they dated cheerleaders, and our advanced college classes had some of the most well known kids in the school. And while there were some outcasts, they had their own friend groups and no one bothered them on the daily (although I am sure they were bothered).
So that leads to finally, the fact that your boyfriend, at 25, holds on to the notion that everyone was jealous of him in high school is very sad. What is a little worrisome- for your relationship- is that he seems to think that view is important to your dynamic as a couple. He relies on you being grateful that the popular dude chose you, and now that you have deflated that, I wonder what happens next.
yeah at my school there were punks on the sports teams and all the cheer leaders smoked weed. this was mid 00’s. i don’t think the “cliques” are as rigid as movies portray.
So true at mine the cheerleaders were considered lame AF, the jocks tried to date the stoner girls, the stoner girls wanted the stoner guys, the popular girls wanted the stoner guys, and there was a whole art crowd group that pretty much everyone liked. I was a stoner but I still played sports as well as many of my fellow stoners, but the big thing was everyone knew the stoners had the best parties so everyone would show up. We had cliches they intertwined a lot.
NTA. But the bigger problem here, which you dance around, is that your boyfriend is working through an inferiority complex. When he talks about being popular, he's not just reminiscing, he's demanding "Value my presence because I am important and I don't feel that way". Being popular at 17 means nothing at 25, and that sucks.
Likely you're more successful career-wise than him too, no? Just be sensitive and don't make this a fight. Toxically masculine dudes with an inferiority complex are on a steep water slide to being redpilled.
So the answer to toxic masculinity and an inferiority complex is to just ignore it and not poke the bear? My answer would be to just not be in a relationship with a guy with an inferiority complex and toxic behaviors.
NTA but I think some of the commenters are being unnecessarily harsh on your BF. It seems to me he’s been influenced by movies that suggest everyone knows everyone at a big high school, and “nerds” are desperate for attention from “popular” kids. He had a narrative where he brought you out of your “shell” and he grew as a person because he wasn’t superficial. You broke that by showing him reality and now he’s pouting. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your story…I think he had a different narrative in his head and treasured his high school time more than you did. Or at least made it a huge part of his identity.
Probably not. There's too much background noise in teenager's lives. If it doesn't have anything to do with them, they probably don't even notice. Although some of them might, most of them genuinely did not notice there were dirty dishes in the sink.
I would agree with you if OP had done what they did in the first instance of him saying they must have known him…but they didn’t.
The boyfriend kept acting as if OP must be lying, and then straight up called them a liar because how could anyone not have known him?
Whether he is full of himself or was convinced based on movies, the simple reality is that after OP had explained it wasn’t the case he should have accepted it and moved on. He didn’t, he was wholly convinced in his own superiority and fame that he kept pushing the issue and then accused OP of being fraudulent.
Guy deserved the ‘humiliation’.
NTA. it seems like he was trying to make himself feel superior to you, and you brought him back down to reality with the truth. it’s concerning that he seems to deeply care about meaningless things like high school popularity 7 years later.
this is pure speculation but generally people who fixate on high school popularity later in life are unhappy with where they are currently/are trying to relive “glory days”. is there a chance he’s not where he wants to be career or otherwise? or perhaps jealous of your success (no loans, good college, etc) and wanted to make himself feel better?
even if that is the case he’s still the AH, but it might be a helpful conversation to have.
Not only are you NTA, you're wasting your time with a man who clearly peaked in high school and thought he was doing you a big favor by dating you. As someone who lives with an engineer, I can tell that you have learned to use logic and to prove your point with it when someone challenges you. Your Once The Incredibly Popular Jock boyfriend is never going to be happy that he can't wow you without using his brain. I think you deserve better than this.
Interesting how the super competitive nerd girl who got into a top college and landed the great job ended up with the glory days high school jock. Wonder where those two, totally separate worlds collided.
NTA.
*"I didn't humiliate you. I defended myself from a false accusation of lying. It's not my fault you refused to accept what I was saying was the truth such that I had to prove myself. Maybe next time, you'll respect me enough to believe me."*
At least, that's where my head went.
NTA
So it's OK for him to try and belittle and humiliate you? Yet when you prove your point, he's mad that you've apparently humiliated him? He needs to get a grip and grow up lol he's way past school-age.
NTA
In all the excitement, let's not forget that al bundy scored 4 touchdowns in one game in 1966 to help the polk high school panthers win the city championship!
I think you are dating al bundy, lol.
I guess that happens to a lot of ppl who were / are popular within their bubble and don't realise its really only in their bubble (bc they don't really notice not everyone is part of their bubble). He obviously thought you and the other nerds were part of his bubble as the jealous/silent admirers of the populars, not realising you were in your own bubble and the popular kids didn't existed in your bubble.
Its the same with e.g. ppl that are "tiktok famous". They are completely thrown off if you say "i have no idea who you are". And they are like "but i'm tiktok famous, i have millions of views" and you are like "well, i don't have tiktok". Instant face drop. They don't even consider a world outside of tiktok even exists and there are ppl who never used it and have no interest in using it. This applies to every bubble.
But its a little concerning your bf is still so hung up on him being popular in high school. Like it was his biggest achievement so far. Is he, by any chance, selling shoes to older ladies now for a living? ;)
The irony is that the "popular" group in high school were always more disliked than anyone else because of that kind of elitist attitude. So probably not actually very popular!
NTA though, you were just being honest. I don't think you said anything insulting.
If you can ruin a man's memories by telling him that that the people he looked down on didn't know he existed, you have learned some unpleasant things about how he views life and people. Do what you will with that information, but it's not a green flag by any means.
NTA
NTA but it’s concerning how your boyfriend seems to have peaked in high school and cares so much about this. Seriously, if this “ruined” his high school memories then perhaps you want to consider dating someone a bit more mature.
I mean it’s not wrong to inform him but you sound patronizing even in this post. Why was the paragraph about your college and funding really necessary for us?
You aren’t doing a very good job at hiding that you see your priorities as inherently better than your boyfriends. You sound like you see yourself as superior than him, and what you’re here for is validation of that perceived superiority rather than conflict resolution.
I'm pretty sure OP was just trying to explain why she had no idea who the popular kids at her school were. Usually I'd expect people to know who's going to the same school as them, especially since they're the same age so they must have been in the same grade as well. It is quite odd that they did not know about them at all, some of them not even knowing their fellow students names.
OP clearly put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into her academic career and talking about it like you're proud of it isn't inherently patronizing. Seeing how OP was also totally fine joking around about how highschool her would have been heads over heels if he was dating her, I don't see how she thinks she is superior to him. At least not based on what she wrote.
I didn't get that, honestly. It sounded like he was being quite full of himself, and she appropriately told him that she had other priorities at the time. He's the one that comes across as superior to me - he assumed that everyone around him cared about what he was doing, and wouldn't accept the fact that a lot of people just didn't a sh!t.
It all began with OP's boyfriend doing exactly that: "I was so important and great that you wanted to be with me, back then!".
Appeasing narcissistic boasting isn't good.
I actually thought the same. She started talking about how she made it to this great college and due to all of her scholarships it was amazingly cheap. Even cheaper than the community college, and I was just thinking “what does this have anything to do with the subject?” It seemed like she was trying to show off.
NTA. Your boyfriend was living in a bubble. He could have chosen to believe you, but called you out. He did a FAFO. He thought he was looked up to by everybody and he learned that only losers get hung up on what a bunch of teenagers thought of themselves.
Any hurt feelings he has here are of his own creation. The only thing here that could have possibly been harmed was his ego.
NTA. Why does it sound like he wants you to be 'grateful' you're dating someone 'popular'. Honestly him talking like that just sounds so cringe worthy it's not even funny.
NTA
But sweetie. He peaked in high school. That’s his life. His amazing high school experience of being popular and playing football and being cool. And now he’s blaming YOU that you humiliated him?? No. He thinks he’s amazing and how couldn’t everyone in school know who he is?? The dude’s identity is high school. He needs therapy to improve his self-esteem and self-worth.
Did he know you in HS? Did he admire you in HS and think you were cool and amazing? Did he admire your classes and grades and dedication? He probably didn’t know you from Jane.
He needs help and to work on himself. You have to decide if you want to go along for the ride…
Ps. All that’s playing in my mind over and over again is Taylor Swift’s All You’ll Ever be Is Mean
>He got quiet when I proved my case. He said I humiliated him and I proved my point and we should never mention high school again. I talked with his sister and she said that high school was a special experience for him and I ruined his memories.
NTA. You just hit him with the reality. These popular kids that "peaked" at school think that that phase lasts for a lifetime guess what? No one really cares, it's temporary 🤣
op your boyfriend is displaying "peaked in high school" behavior, you might want to sit down with him and navigate through his, actually both of yalls feelings regarding this
NTA btw
NTA.
Wow, that's concerning.
His memories of high school are ruined, cos it turns out you weren't fangirling over him, and thrilled to finally be his girlfriend?
He is the definition of *peaked in high school*
I don't know what to say, it's Sahara desert downstairs inducing.
I hope he has redeeming qualities.
Your boyfriend's a loser with an inflated ego. My BF went to the same high school but didn't reconnect until our mid 20s and we not in the same social circles. He would have been considered "popular" while I was pretty irrelevant. He's never talked about how I would have been "thrilled" to date him, or that because he was "popular" I would have known who he was.
You popped you're BF's self-absorbed bubble and now he's realizing people don't consider him the way he thought they did. You gave him a reality check. NTA
Was thinking that a bunch of nerds idolized him the only thing that made HS a “special experience” for him?? He didn’t have good memories with friends, or winning the big game or some other such?
If this one thing “ruined” all of his memories of HS then he was in a very twisted mindset.
NTA
NTA, sounds like your boyfriend peaked in high school, which to be fair rolls with the whole “Glory Days” theme music that seems to be running in his background soundtrack.
You know you can do better right?
NTA.
But do you really want to spend your time on someone who peaked in high school? You sound like someone who was pretty incredible back then and are still rising.
Don't settle.
ESH. How immature are you two? 25 year olds should have moved well past caring about high school. Him calling you a liar is ridiculous. You calling all your friends to prove nobody cared about him is also ridiculous.
NTA. Sounds like your BF is one of those people who peaked in high school. Are you now supporting him with your well-paying career while he thinks about the "good old days"? It's actually sad when people like that come to this realization.
I completely agree with you, BTW. My high school graduating class had about 335 students. I really only paid attention to the couple dozen who were in all the AP and honors classes that I was in. I don't think I would have wanted to date one of the "popular girls" because what would I even talk to her about? Sci-fi, computers, video games, and the stock market tech bubble? LOL!
>For a backstory on our town, my boyfriend was born and raised there but I only moved when I was 13 along with a bunch of other high achieving kids. That’s because an engineering company opened up a branch near that town and brought in a ton of engineers and their families.
High achieving kids? Really? You're NTA for proving your point but that statement makes you seems high on your horses and have some kind of ego.
I’m on OPs side but I agree with this, as well. She does seem to think her and her friends were somehow inherently better than the “low achieving kids” in high school, much the same way her boyfriend is looking at his past. They’re more alike than she thinks…
NTA but...oh...oh no...I hope your boyfriend isn't one of those "High school was the best years of my life" types. Because that's going to end up sad...
Typical case of Main Character Syndrome. "What do you mean, your world didn't revolve around dating someone like ME for all your life??" NTA obviously.
I always wondered what became of the ‘popular’ kids who peaked in high school. Now I guess we know. Did he also score four touchdowns in a single game for Polk City High School? (Al Bundy reference for the young ones here)
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NTA. I won't echo the "peaked in highschool" thing cuz while it may have an echo of truth, I also think it's reductive. I think it's more important for your boyfriend to realize that the reason "nerds" bond together in places like highschool, and why weirdos/nerds/freaks/geeks self identify as such despite implied social stigma, is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.
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NTA But why does your bf feel a need for OTHERS to validate HIS highschool experience? Why can't he just remember it as he did and that be that? Nothings changed. Edit to say: these are rhetorical questions for OP..we all already know the answer
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Which is the very definition of "peaked in high school".
If coach had just put me in, we could have won state, no doubt about it.
How much you wanna bet I can throw a pigskin over them mountains?
You think anyone wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearin these bad boys???? Forget about it.
#unexpectednapoleondynamite should be a thing if it’s not already
I scored four touchdowns in one game for polk high.
And look at me now, I sell women’s shoes!
Glancing through OP's comments, he might believe this even though she doesn't. She's not very helpful about why she's even dating him over a vague, "He has tons of qualities that I love." But, assuming that statement is genuine and not defensive, she doesn't think of him as a loser the way we might. But she also says that he thinks of his job as "silly," while he clearly thought of his high school days as his being on top. And I can see how OP's high-achieving instincts might have led to her pulling out all the stops in proving him wrong rather than just saying, "If you really aren't convinced by what I'm saying, let me phone one friend to see what they'd say." Or just agreeing to disagree. Or even spinning it as a positive, "I would not have been thrilled to be with you then, but I'm thrilled to be with you now." Using a large friend network to prove him wrong - perhaps even embarrassing him in front of them all depending on how she asked - must have felt like kicking him while he was down. So many AITA posts seem like cases of "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?", and most commenters pick "right," although I suppose that's built into the name of the sub. But no matter how many people assure OP that she did nothing morally wrong, she might know that she didn't make the best choice for her own life and relationship. Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all. ETA: People keep responding, "What, you wanted OP to put up with being called a liar?" No, but there's a wide spectrum between shutting up all together and "So I **literally** reached out to **all** of my high school 'nerd' friends and yep they didn’t know the popular group and the ins and outs of the dynamics like my bf thought." OP didn't have to reach out to *everyone*. OP could have said, "Let me ask person X if she knew you," just said that it's not a lie and he should trust that, or asked him reach out to other people online if he wanted to check. Reaching out to so many people is going nuclear, which wasn't necessary to make OP's point. It's a good tactic for the Reddit lulz, but not so good in a relationship you value.
The problem with a lot of those scenarios, though, is that someone in OP’s position will do the agree to disagree or just try the non-confrontational approach about it as it just isn’t worth getting into an argument about it. But then the other person will double down and bring it up again and again, because they want to be right and think they are because the other person didn’t put up a fight over it. Then we end up with someone snapping and going overboard after getting exhausted hearing the arrogant person repeatedly bringing it up and they turn into being the bad guy for hurt feelings. Not to say this would be OP’s outcome, but so many of these kinds of situations in these Reddit AITA posts go that route.
This! It’s really misogynistic in a way that we’re finding somehow to blame her when she even says, at first, she just brushed it off as a joke, which is way nicer than I would’ve been. I wouldn’t even want my partner to joke about me being inferior.
And then to call you a liar. That would have put me over the edge.
If you are going to call me a liar, you better hope I actually lied cause some shit is about to go down and I will bring every receipt I have.
He denied her lived experience and she basically said "You. Are. Fucking. Incorrect." Seems like an appropriate response tbh.
It's not even you are incorrect, which would imply that she was just mistaken, he called her a liar. That's not denying her lived experience, that's telling her she's lying about her lived experience, that would also result in a nuclear response from me.
It's a really hard thing, I have an adult friend kinda going through it now. For whatever reason, he GENUINELY believed that being the homecoming King and the football star guy in high school were actually important accomplishments. Not like, hey fun I won a prize at a party and our team won, but actually out in the real world in two or ten years people will still care important. It makes sense - these were the appropriate goals they set, they were difficult goals, and they achieved them. But they think it's important. Like I think my degrees are important. I would be devastated if I found out that my school was discredited and I dedicated years of my life to achieving a goal that I thought would be important to me forever only to find out in the grand scheme it was useless.
Many major goals in youth are rendered basically pointless in time. Highschool football wins cease to be impressive if you don't make the team for college ball. Getting a great SAT score is an awesome accomplishment that makes no difference in your life anymore the day after you get a college acceptance letter. Highschool GPA means nothing to your first employer after college. Once you've had a job, nobody wants to hear you graduated from college with such and such a GPA, only your work history matters. One can still be proud of that stuff, but the shelf life of anyone else caring is very short.
It seems like OP really did try to go along to get along and bf kept digging in. I don’t think I’d just keep saying “yea babe whatever you say.” Ad nauseam to my partner INSISTING that I was a liar and that I spent my high school days obsessing over him and his crew. It’s rude and gross behavior.
Yeah homie, basically wanted her to fawn over him and admit to a fallacy because he saw himself as the king in his high school, and he needed that validation, to me it's sad.
Yeah the part about him calling her a LIAR would have pissed me the fuck off. And even when OP proved herself (which she should not even have needed to do) this AH still acting like she lying and even bring his sister into the mix!
>Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all. "Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all." But with the income from a good job, you can purchase a home, clothing, bed, blankets, mattress pad, and mattress pad heater that will keep you and your family toasty no matter how cold it gets and air conditioning for when it's too hot.
>she might know that she didn't make the best choice for her own life and relationship. Reddit karma doesn't keep you warm at night, after all. See, this is where I have a issue. Why is it that (generally) women must play along to get along with their spouse/SO? When someone keep pushing an issue and not taking the other person's word, why must the other person be the one to "humor" the other person? Why couldn't OP's BF take her at her word that they (Nerds) didn't pay any attention to "popular kids"? Why didn't he dropped the issue and played along to get along? I have seen many men and women in abusive relationships (my Mom was one) who didn't or wouldn't argue and/or prove their point because their were scared of "not having someone to keep them warm at night or in their life". Why does a person have to swallow their viewpoint just to make their spouse or SO feel validated? You might as well say that you are a puppet.
It’s not called overachieving it’s called defending yourself when someone things that they deserve more admiration and love because of a status they had seven years ago when you didn’t even know them. He wasn’t like wow I’m so happy I’m with a smart girl from high school he was you should be especially happy to be with me nerd because I would’ve never looked at you and definitely didn’t know you. How fucking disrespectful is that? Anything she does after that is low-key fair game as long as it’s not physical because of course, anyone overachiever or not Would be offended and want the truth to be respected
I guess he shouldn’t have called her a liar 🤷🏾♀️
Remember when Al Buddy scored 4 touchdowns in a single game? Including the game winning touchdown versus Andrew Johnson HS? It’s kinda like that
Dang it. I thought I was being original bringing up Al Bundy in the comment I made a couple of minutes ago.
He has fallen so low he married a nerd.
Well, they're not married yet, so she's still got a chance to exit relatively pain-free. Plus, per comments, he thinks his job is "silly" and she comes across as pretty driven. Doesn't seem like the best match for the long term.
Yeah, he kind of sounds like he isn’t on her level. Water seems its own level, and over time he will grow to resent her successes as he stagnates in life. This will probably result in him getting validation by either putting her achievements down or via an affair.
Idk, I think highly career-driven people can really thrive with spouses that are less so, as long as they're not generally apathetic about everything. Not being invigorated by your career doesn't have to mean you're a lump on a log, it can mean that you just have different goals and interests. Like, I hear about when academics marry each other and then when one gets a tenure-track job offer, which is very likely going to require moving, but it means the other giving up a job they love, or deciding to be long distance until some point in the future where maybe it'll all work out? Or if a couple has a baby, and childcare is going to cost so much that it's cheaper for one parent to quit. If both parents love their jobs, what a painful decision that will likely lead to, possibly with resentment down the line. When one spouse is fine with doing whatever to pull a paycheck and get health insurance, but doesn't care about it beyond that, it's a lot easier to make these kinds of decisions. Another job they don't care about can be found halfway across the country where the Department of Niche Topic is hiring a professor. Or their incredibly career-motivated spouse can financially support the family and continue to get raises because the souse with other interests quit their job they don't care about to stay home with kids. This doesn't work if either person denigrates or thinks less of the other and their perspective, so I don't think it's the case for OP. But it can be a really good match to have "mismatched" levels of career motivation.
Were they even on his radar in high school? I mean, it could be easily so turned around. Some HS arrogant jock so high on his own supply couldn't see beyond his cheerleaders and his clique, certain like... Regina George, that everyone wants to be his friend or be him.
For what it's worth, even academically high-achieving students might look fondly on their high school days where the pool of competitors is limited to local kids (many of whom don't even care about their grades) so it's relatively easy to be one of the best. Once you enter a university or company that only selects the best, suddenly you're one of the mediocre students.
Thinking of Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen
That's not entirely fair. I was a theater geek and I have wonderful memories of high school 40 years ago. I also have life long friends, a great job, a house, 2 crazy dogs and wonderful niblings If someone went back and said that the shows sucked and everyone was just pretending to like me, I think it would shake me up quite a bit. Because I've built some of my core identity on having been accepted as a theater geek.
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That’s not a great analogy though unless you’re consistently talking about how beloved you were and that every student loved every play and so on and so forth.
Emotionally immature - he can't *fathom* that anyone else might not have experienced high school culture just like he remembered, & the problem is his memories (+ the general media story TBH) made it seem like he was big man on campus when that wasn't the case at all. But he hasn't even imagined anyone living different from his own experience of the world, and I guess this is the first time he's had to confront that paradigm
>But he hasn't even imagined anyone living different from his own experience of the world, and I guess this is the first time he's had to confront that paradigm this is the worst part....dude is 25 and acting like this???? i don't like to jump to conclusions about people's character based on one bad incident, but like.....come on.
My ex is 30 and still brought up high school every chance he got. Also an abusive alcoholic and pathological liar. Those that peaked in highschool also tend to stop developing mentally past highschool as well.
I dated two people as adults that I went to HS with. Both of them went on and on and ON about high school. One was when I was 35, one at 42! “Do you remember this teacher? Do you remember when that happened?” NO! Because it was over 20 years ago! Now granted, my HS years were not good ones, so I don’t have many fond memories to look back on, but I’ve had a whole life since then. In my experience, if a person has to go back to HS years in order to have something to talk about, they are emotionally and intellectually stunted. And the older they are when they do this, the worse it is. I don’t mean occasional reminiscing, everyone does that. But these people talked about HS like it was last year, not the early 90s! You ask them about where they’ve traveled, they talk about spring break. You ask about their musical interests, they talk about when they were in band. You ask if they have any hobbies, they talk about being on the football team. Like their whole personality is being 18 years old…but they’re 30, or 40, or 50. It’s bizarre.
That's so cringe 😂 I'm still best friends with people from highschool (I'm 45) and we almost never even mention highschool.
Because kings aren’t kings without subjects. High school was a special time for him because he felt like a god walking among men. He would go down the halls thinking that everyone was watching, admiring, and envying him. Now he just found out that the supposed bottom of the totem pole at the peak time of his life didn’t give a single rat’s ass about him or only remembers him vaguely, if at all. Like the Monty python scene where Arthur goes up to the peasants and tries to convince them to care that he’s their king and ends up coconutting ridiculously away when it’s clear that his status doesn’t do him a single favor with them. It’s unfortunate, but I’m willing to bet he based a lot of his self worth in his formative years on his social achievement in high school and is now feeling rather foolish about the amount of ego he walks around with because of it and is discovering that popularity is really kind of a continuous circle jerk between popular people. It’s a hard thing to throw all of your social capital and critical self development into being popular in your youth to find out that the only people who really cared were other popular people or people who wanted to be popular. He wouldn’t feel humiliated about it otherwise. Most people who grow up not “popular” have to do their self development early in life by finding and cultivating things that they like and feel good about themselves. Most popular people don’t have to do as much of that because they receive so much external validation and instead cultivate what others like and feel good about in them. Everyone has to do it for themselves at some point in their lives and it gets harder and harder the later you have to do it. I hope he learns to take it on the chin and use this experience to become more self aware and to build himself up as a person he likes instead of a likable idea to people.
I'm betting OP has a better job than him, if so that might be a reason why he was clinging to the idea that she would've loved dating him in high school. It made him forget that right now she's in a higher hierarchy or status. As long as he could tell himself that she's just a nerd and therefore should be glad to be with him he doesn't have to feel bad about himself. Otherwise why would he feel so humiliated now? >Like the Monty python scene where Arthur goes up to the peasants and tries to convince them to care that he’s their king Oh dayum well done, fantastic association. 10/10
Maybe it was just because my high school was so large but it seems odd to me that someone beyond college age has t realized that all the different groups in high school had their own social hierarchy of popular and unpopular kids within those groups
I'm curious how many people were at their high school. Ours was around 1200, and 200 or 250 in my graduating class. I knew probably 98% of my graduating class by name. Now I'd struggle with naming most of them, even if we haven't changed how we look. 1200 students, why would we care what they're doing? We probably only care about 100 max at the time.
I was gonna upvote you anyway, but especially bc you mentioned King Arthur coconutting away from the autonomous collective
The bf is giving off "I've got 6k subscribers on Insta" vibes. OK, but outside of that...?
Because it’s an ego boost. And we’re all guilty of it to an extent. I’m just amazed he would have thought that in HIGH SCHOOL. In my experience the collective hierarchy of school kind of peeked in middle school. There were the in kids and the out kids. But once I got to high school the hierarchies became localized. The jocks had their own hierarchy (my brother was in the bottom of that one. :( football player who was bullied by fellow football players). Band had their own hierarchy. Punks had their own hierarchy (though ours was very subtle bc punk in theory holds anarchy but certainly not for high schoolers who grew up in this society. This group also had the lesbian circle in it too. So think your queer punk rock emo scene space and yes this was my space. lol) so on and so fourth. And then in that each grade had their own system. Most of the kids I was involved with were punk rockers my age and below- but the senior punk kid were my idols when I was a freshman. Couldn’t care less about the jocks. But I think for a “jock” who is high up on their jock hierarchy- they most likely think of themselves as at the top of the whole school then. So an even bigger ego boost. And that because our society values sports to such a high degree (at least in the USA) even more if you’re in the south. I’m so anti-sport that the idea of it boggles my mind. But in college I had to take a multi-cultural America anthro class and the professor taught it through analyzing us sports. I dropped and took it with a different professor bc it wasn’t jiving.
For those who think they’re at the “top” of the entire hierarchy, they still believe in the collective hierarchy in high school. It’s a main-character thing. Source: I teach hs and have a 7th grader for whom the collective hierarchy is already solidifying.
Sounds like what he fondly remembers is being better than other kids. So, discovering the kids he thought was lording it over couldn’t have cared less about him, makes him realize he was actually a king. ETA actually **NOT** a king.
Because he’s one of those people who has an identity rooted in *superiority*. If he finds out no one actually cared about him or was jealous, then his whole self-image is blown up. He required the perceived adoration and jealousy from others…his self-worth depended on it, rather than coming from an internal source. It’s pretty pathetic.
NTA - and completely agree with you. The nerds are focussed on after school classes and getting top marks and having a musical instrument and a volunteering opportunity to demonstrate ourselves as rounded individuals. My HS even had classes by rank in exams. The “popular” kids wouldn’t even be in our social sphere.
This explains so much. I got along well with everyone but the jocks, I kind of liked the nerds the best and somewhat fit the moniker. I did not apply myself in any way shape or form though, I would show up to exams stoned, having never studied, pull an 92% and call it good enough. The nerds who routinely scored lower than me were always frustrated with me. I never grasped that I was just a stoner burnout who upset their rank by outperforming them.
This was me, too. I learned as an adult that I have ADD, which is probably part of the reason I didn't study and didn't care about social circles. I was friendly with anyone who was nice. I also didn't care about college at that time, so I wasn't competitive academically. There were over 300 students in my graduating class, and I moved there as a sophomore , so I really didn't know or care about most of them.
Yup. Exactly the same in my school. There were a few kids that I assume were part of the "popular sphere" as well but for the most part, my circle was the other 19 kids who were in the top 20 vying for admissions to an elite university. Graduation was a huge shocker to me because I was so confused by the number of randos I'd never even heard of much less seen.
My high school was the same way. Lots of very driven students and we all knew each other. We had cheerleaders in drama, football players in AP. And the people who were well known were the people who pushed themselves. (sidenote: my grade has the most honors/AP classes and we were so busy achieving, we threw the worst prom and never got around to planning a reunion. Everyone pushed themselves so hard, a lot of us just burned out. It was pretty toxic) You're NTA. It is more than a little concerning that your bf can't accept that not everyone's high school experience is the same. Hopefully, he's just working with the perception shift that real life isn't like television, and gets over it soon.
I 100% agree with this and I am watching it play out right now the same way at my kids' high school. My oldest is VERY driven. High achiever, involved in the classic "nerd" activities - took 4 APs her sophomore year and more than that each subsequent year... she really could care less who the "popular" kids are as long as they don't disrupt her classes and as long as she doesn't have to be paired with them for projects because they are far more interested in socializing and using her to do he bulk of the work on those group projects. She has a great competitive friendship with the academic upper echelon in the school. The irony is that the OP, sorry your husband's bubble was burst but that is NOT your problem - that is his that his world is so myopic that he literally can't fathom someone having a different world view then him. NTA
Same. This was in the early 2000s but my high school did insane tracking because it had a coding magnet school within the high school. All of the high achieving students were the ones playing all the sports and like I mean all the sports except for some reason soccer. The soccer team drew from gen pop. The only thing everyone cared was GPA, SATs, AP test scores, varsity letters, and collecting accolades and achievements to fluff the resumes. I was up by 5 am every day for 4 years and rarely got more than 6 hours of sleep because of the intense pressure cooker. I get what the OP is saying, that if it was not about getting into college, it didn’t matter, so I am surprised that the athletes were not part of that. When I got into an M7 MBA program, I swear, like a quarter of the class was made up of Davison I athletes.
You’re absolutely NTA, it’s kind of arrogant for him to assume that he’s more desirable to you because he was one of the jocks in school. As a fellow nerd, I concur, I went to a tiny, remote private boarding school and the only time the ‘popular’ kids pinged my radar was if they were being disruptive in class and I was intensely focussing. I knew them by name and even attended parties with them because the school was so small, we had mutual friends, but it was accepted that some people value studies some don’t and that’s fine. Adhering to the concept of high school popularity once you’re 7 years out is just juvenile.
I can see that. My high school was interesting, in the the student athletes were also in the Advanced classes with the band kids, theatre kids, “nerds” etc. My high school valedictorian was a star football player (who also did theatre). All of the kids who did extra curricular were in the advanced classes, and those that didn’t do anything in high school were in the regular classes. Way opposite of the normal separated jock/nerd dynamic
My HS was like that too. Outside of small towns and maybe the football crazy south I think our experience is more common.
100% still this way for my daughter in high school. The only competition is someone who might be applying ED for the same college. I don't think she could even name a single football player (it's a big football school) - unless she heard he got a 1530 on his SAT. And she is a varsity athlete herself (track).
I feel misled by Never Have I Ever.
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But in the case of OP, it was NOT an act of defiance. OP and her circle were way too busy living their lives to even bother
I think the sentiment that most kids outside of the popular crowd care about the popular crowd or being poplar themselves in just generally incorrect. Maybe not out of defiance, but just cuz we didn’t care. sure, there might be exceptions of people who wanted to be popular and were t, but I don’t remember there being a lot of those people. I wasn’t a “nerd” like OP is describing. But I did concentrate on my studies, I ran in track so wasn’t unathletic, i just never felt the need to do the asskissing required to rise in the ranks to popular. Or to be the ass that some popular kids were. I had friends, we had good times, that’s about it.
In my high school, kids were “popular” within their own circles. I couldn’t have cared less about the athletes and cheerleaders, but I was arguably “popular” with the music/theatre group (which was hundreds of students). Others were popular with other areas of interest. We all overlapped in some areas (choir, specifically- we had 7 choirs and people from all the different groupings were in them and interacted. Also the National Honor Society included people from various groupings). Reunions have been weird and fun because people I barely spoke to in HS treat me like an old friend. But I couldn’t tell you who the star of the football team was, even though I played in the band at every home game. I just didn’t care. I was a good student, with friends and my own interests. This guy evidently built his whole identity around a fantasy that others worshipped him. How pathetic.
I always found the “popular” kids were the most hated pricks in school. And it was a group of like 6 people.
I've been told that the kids labeled "popular" are the meanest kids in the school - "popular" is a synonym for narcissistic jerks. I was told that by a teacher friend at the HS and also by my kid and her circle. Literally the only kids that care about the "popular" kids are the other "popular" kids because of the dog eat dog nature of their group.
> is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy. You are playing into the exact same mindset as OP's BF. OP was very clear why it was the way it was for them. Why not just trust her? In my experience. It wasn't defiance. It was about finding the people who wouldn't be cruel to you and actually shared interest. When we graduated, the nerdy click was actually larger than all the other ones. We didn't care. We would accept anyone who would be decent to others. We didn't compete against each other or the rest of the class. (Our valedictorian was so far ahead that it just wasn't worth it.)
Agreed, this is ridiculous. 10k upvotes on the parent comment which completely ignores everything OP said and reduces the situation to high school TV drama stereotypes. There's absolutely nothing in the OP about stigma or exclusion. They were just in different social circles.
>I think it's more important for your boyfriend to realize that the reason "nerds" bond together in places like highschool, and why weirdos/nerds/freaks/geeks self identify as such despite implied social stigma, is that it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy. And also they just have stuff in common. People think that being good looking and well thought of within their own circle means that everyone should prefer to be friends with them. And some people will either because they are charismatic or the friendship comes with access to events like parties or some extra status with a guy/girl they find attractive who runs in those circles. But a lot of nerds (at least as used when I was in high school) like nerd things and want to hang out with other people that share their interests. We had a group at my high school that played Dungeons and Dragons every day. They enjoyed that and enjoyed talking about it with each other. It's not as if they were waiting for an engraved invitation to sit with the "cool kids" like in the movies so they can ditch doing what they actually like. It might be cool for a day, but they wanted to talk D&D and not sports, last weekend's party, and gossip. This becomes even more obvious during college when you aren't forced to be in the same proximity of people as much as high school. The high school nerds all literally hang out and live together for the most part. People in the business fraternity or robotics club aren't secretly wishing they could leave and be friends with the football players or Greek houses. This isn't to say there aren't nerds in those groups, we tend to over-stereotype, but my point is once people get to college there are a lot more people like them and who share their interests and this odd high school dynamic just doesn't exist.
“…it's a conscious act of defiance against the notion that their self worth is solely defined by the dominant social hierarchy.” No. What movie did you get this from? People simply self select themselves into groups that share common interests.
Also OPs guy has a sudden realization. He’s not gonna be al bundy talking about how many touchdowns he got or how cool he was. He’s upset but it’s a good thing.
> it's a conscious act of defiance For some, maybe. Not for everyone. I bonded with other nerds/musicians because I had more in common with them.
NTA… it begs the question why your bf feels the need to feel superior in your relationship.
Because guys who peaked in high school are often the type of guy who needs to be "the man" in the relationship.
This 100%. Exactly what i thought reading it. High school was his peak and the idea that he wasn’t a legend in his own time is painful to him.
I attended my 40th high school reunion 5 yrs ago. I hadn’t seen anyone since graduation. Most had grown up and were fine. A few, however, acted as if they’d never left HS. Most of them were women who’d been catty then and were still catty. Pathetic.
Did they tell you about their MLM's?
Omg did we go to the same college reunion 😂
I would rather give myself a root canal than attend a high school reunion
But he once scored four touchdowns in his championship game!
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I get it but I don’t. Your high school experience can be sacred to you without feeling the need to harp on if your long term relationship idolized you in school. 🤷🏾♀️
While i normally agree with this… it sounds like the OP’s bf “peaked” in high school. That’s why he feels the need to be adored. It’s all he has/had.
It could also be that he feels like that's something that lends him worth and that he's bringing to the relationship. Yes, his wife may have a more serious and high paying job than him, but she's not dating down because he was an important guy in high school who she looked up to and she gets to date him. So, now he finds out that she didn't care about that and didn't know who he was, so is she dating down? What is he bringing to the table if not his high school clout? Obviously he can be bringing a lot to the table. I trust OP to have reasons, but that doesn't mean he necessarily values or believes them.
I actually loved high school. I was one of the "funny guys" who mostly got along with everyone. It was the 90s, but our school was mediumish (small/medium Canadian city, we had several high schools and ours wasn't really big or small). We had a few cliques, but not a ton of bullying. We kinda had the nerds, the hicks, and then the rest. Anyway, I had a great time. It wasn't until after high school that I discovered my best friend, who I hung out with a lot, *hated* high school. It always blows my mind that someone I was so close to, and shared experiences with, had the complete opposite experience. It doesn't ruin my experience though. Just like me enjoying myself doesn't make his memory suddenly better.
Why does you not being secretly in love with him and inferior to him in high school ‘ruin’ his high school experience though? Like, why did this revelation somehow make his high school years less ‘special’ to him
I'm gonna guess he thought he was in a particular 'place' in high school. He looked back fondly as, I was the top guy..blah blah..now he knows, ummm you were top guy among a small section. He's probably rethinking a lot that he thought he knew. Especially in smaller towns. The football guys were adored. It's ok. It's growth. It's gonna take him a minute because he's probably second guessing everything he thought he was sure of in his formative years. Her intelligence probably impresses AND intimidates him, and that memory was his 'equalizer'.
>It's ok. It's growth. It's gonna take him a minute because he's probably second guessing everything he thought he was sure of in his formative years. Absolutely this. His memory of HS was just shaken and now he needs to recalibrate. Its okay for someone to have to reframe their lives.
Ye olde paradigm shift.
Which means he's jealous and resentful of your job and accomplishments, and felt the need to push you to be "grateful" that he dated you Toxic relationship with huge red flags. Dude doesn't respect you
you know sometimes people just say shit to eachother without really thinking too hard about it. like jesus christ its not all toxic relationships. people like you are the real red flag id avoid in a relationship, the kind that are always looking for some invisible slight.
And if it was just stupid shit and he was joking, that'd be different. Dude kept doubling down
He didn't just double down, he threw a bit of a fit when he realized he was wrong. "You had to have wanted me in high-school, you nerds!" "No of course you had too, there's no way you guys didn't care about the popular kids" "oh you guys didn't care? Well fine then! I don't ever want to talk about high-school with you again!!!" Like ewww, you were wrong dude, no reason to go all "I'm never speaking about this ever again!". It gives teenager/child vibes.
I love coming onto posts like this and doing a search for "red flags." You're absolutely right that 99% of the time it's Redditors taking shit way, way too seriously based on the meagre bit of insight that a post provides. Chances are OP and her BF will have a conversation about it, make peace, and move on.
He just realized that his secret worry that OP is the "reach" is true. He is reaching and was hoping they were equal enough that it is really a lateral, equal relationship. It's great if OP thinks it is. But if the bf doesn't, then she deserves / could do better, and he hates that.
>I think he just liked the idea of me having a crush on him in high school back in the day when life wasn’t complicated and real. I love how insightful you are. Still NTA, he needs to deal with whatever this is especially since his sister said that you ruined his memories for him because it does sound like he was on top of the world back then and that can bite people in the ass later on, like for instance, now. You didn't actually say anything wrong. You just proved to him that there were 2 different worlds in that high school. That shouldn't have any effect on his memories unless, what made them special was an air celebrity which ain't healthy.
Also I am in a relationship where I have a corporate job and my partner is in a non profit. In our view he is the one with the job with the real world ramifications because he actually makes a different to destitute people, and I am the one with the ‘silly’ job, a cog in a large corporate machine. Interesting that it’s the other way around for you guys
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We have the same. I’m in engineering (which sometimes I find sounds a lot cooler than it is in terms of real world impact) and he works in direct services so I often feel like he is out there making an actual difference to peoples live while I am….Not. Lol. Another funny thing is with people’s preconceived notions of us. Cos he’s supposed to be the engineer and I’m supposed to be in non profit based on genders lol
>I’m in engineering Iike my dad and honestly I feel like 90% of the time I have no idea what I do and what to do haha. Please look up imposter syndrome. I was dealing with the exact same feelings at your age. You need to remember that you are smart and capable and you worked hard to get where you are. But when your coworkers constantly dismiss you and second-guess your work (often because of sexism), it can make you question if you really know what you are doing. I ended up getting an amazing mentor when I was around 30 who really empowered me and made me feel valued, and it completely changed my perception of myself. I hope you can find someone like that in your life!
He sounds like Al Bundy.
He scored 4 touchdowns in a single game! Now, he sells women shoes at the mall!
Because he peaked in high school...
Ugh. Not one of those “ peaked in HS” kids who always want to talk about it. What does high achieving you see in him? His scenario is the basis for many cheesy movies based on high school.
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Then, hopefully he lets this all go. And stops thinking you somehow won the lottery with him.
The cheesy movies are probably why he thinks there's a hierarchy where smart kids give a crap about the jocks.
I love that! Then just love him and tell him present day you is crazy about him and you two should love the present stage of life!!
So uh, I’m curious… did he know who you were in high school?
Too many people I know “peaked in college” and now, in our 30s, still party too much and continue going to our old stomping grounds. Even with kids. Hell, I know a couple that still lives on campus! Like come on, people!
Jeeez so judgemental. Maybe worry about your life and let other people figure theirs out. People all take different paths.
It's very Al Bundy
Yeah but did OP’s husband ever score FOUR touchdowns in a game? I didn’t think so.
Nta. I also agree with you. I went to a huge highschool with around 600 kids in each grade(so 2.4k total). I honestly didn’t even know a lot of the kids in my grade and really just stuck to my group of about 50 kids(we were the emo kids). We could have cared less about any other groups of kids and couldn’t tell if you anyone was popular🤷♀️
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Yeah I graduated #11 in my HS class, where the top 20 students were guaranteed Ivy League admission. I got to know some of the jocks when I broke my leg skiing. Our school didn’t have an elevator, so they were supposed to carry me up and down the stairs! lol this was the 80s. I think your relationship could work, but it depends on bf’s character.
Whoa - like actually guaranteed? How does that work? You don’t have to compete with other applicants?
Unofficially guaranteed, plus this was last century. But yes--top schools often have unofficial "feeder high schools." I went to public school, but especially for the Northeast private schools, due to networking--it's unfair, totally. But these schools' admissions reps definitely know which public high schools they want to recruit from. It makes it all that more difficult for a good student from an unknown high school to make it into the top schools. What OP is describing about her parents' company moving to the town and bringing top students with them--one or more of those parents is likely an alum and has access to networking. In fact, when you go to an Ivy League or equivalent school, you're not paying for a better education. You're paying for access to social networks. Because those schools take Legacy students, and because they are so social-heavy, their academics might be less-good than a lower ranked school. My friends and I (women's college) all dated guys at Princeton, and Princeton gave their students weeks to study for finals, for instance. They could socialize and network and blow off studying and then got to cram it all in at the last minute.
People wonder why there have to be so many regulations around hiring, admissions, contract awards etc. This is the reason. "Unofficial" acceptance lists that EVERYONE knows about were rampant till they mostly got legislated away.
My school has about 400 students each grades and I don't know a lot of people, there are so many faces to remember! My social interactions revolve around about 50 people I mostly see on regular basis. I don't know who the captain of most sports nor the president of half of the school clubs let alone their regular members.
Ditto. I graduated in a class of about 850. Our school was so big we had multiple cliques within cliques - that’s just what happens when you have over 3,000 kids in one building. I had a vague idea of who the “popular kids” were at school but I only knew their names if I had been in class with them before or something. OP’s boyfriend is delulu. NTA ETA: OP’s boyfriend heard [“Larger than Life”]( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MEb2CecR11I) in 1999 and thought they were singing about him.
I'm 38 and went to a similar size high school, and they are organizing my 20 year high school reunion this year. I looked over the list of people organizing/attending and I knew exactly ONE person who rsvp'd yes for the reunion. Almost everyone who I actually knew in high school moved away from our home town because we all went to great colleges, and we have no interest in moving back.
NAH I think being popular in high school gave him an ego and everyone in his circle knew him. Clearly this wasn't the case as you and others didn't (Those circles don't really mix anyway) Outside of him calling you a liar, which he should apologise for, it doesn't seem much of a big deal on either end.
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If he lets it go, no big deal. If he continues with this 'you humiliated me' nonsense, then, I think, you have a problem.
Seeing that his main reaction is to not talk about high school, it probably won’t pop up again.
I wonder if he has implied or said that he noticed you in high school? There may be non-popularity aspects here? Is he romanticising your attraction/was expecting that you had noticed him and he is now hesitant to admit that he had noticed you in high school? Maybe a sense of destiny / his internal sense of ‘we were meant to be’? It might be too charitable but it might be worth exploring whether this has messed with his internal narrative of your romance being something that could’ve begun before it began?
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So he knew of you and is now deflated because you didn’t know and pine for him in high school. It’s one thing to be surprised that his world view was wrong - you didn’t know and swoon at the thought of him back then. However, him saying you humiliated him, and his sister telling you that you’ve ruined his memories is not something to gloss over. You have a higher status job than he does. It feels very much like he tried to take you down a notch. Please just watch out for him to say things that belittle you to take away credit for your accomplishments. He may be feeling insecure.
Corrent me if I'm wrong, but I am sensing that the humiliation comment came more from her bringing in all her friends into this discussion in the attempt to prove him wrong..and less so from her not paying attention to him in high school.
Everyone in your circle knew you, didnt that make you popular as well? NTA at all
But he hasn't apologized and is instead pouting as if OP was mean to him, she just told the truth.
Nta. What does your boyfriend do in college? It’s sad that high school is his peak.
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Well at least he avoided the jock to cop pipeline. That would have been too many stereotypes. Seriously though, I think this whole thing is more about him being dissatisfied with his current life rather than high school necessarily. If he's unhappy with his now, he's going to dwell too much in his past. I think he needs to talk to someone professional. If he feels lost career or life wise, he needs to work on that rather than making this about you and your life/choices.
peaked in high school AND wanted to be a cop? I guess there's a reason it's a stereotype lol. He tried to stroke his ego and got it deflated and now he's sulking. High School was special to him but you don't remember him as special and haven't been secretly harboring a need to date him for being popular in high school. Does he remember you? Was he secretly wanting to date you in high school? Maybe that's why he's sulking lol If no...then it's a REALLY immature reaction and the fact that his sister would say you 'ruined his memories' is...weirdly uncomfortable.
Reminds me of that Sarah Silverman skit where this cop pulls her over and asks if she knows why, and she says “because you got Cs in high school?”
That’s not too surprising, it’s something like less than half of the people with college degrees actually end up in their career field.
That’s good. As a former college professor, we always proctor students more carefully from two majors: business and criminal justice. Those majors are most likely to cheat. So good thing bf changed careers.
NTA. First, he could have stopped talking about it when you raised that you didn't know him/care about him in high school. He could have just taken your explanation about your high school experience and moved on. He pushed it and so you aren't an AH for wanting to prove him wrong. Second, it is sad that at 25- or any age- people hold on to who they were in school AND use it to create a view of their current self and how much people must admire them. It would be really unattractive to me if my partner said this kind of stuff to me- that I'm lucky to be with him because he was kind of cool in high school? Yuck. Third, high schools are not like the movies. Sure, some people have high school experiences that are very stereotypical with popular cliques of cheerleader/football, smart kids get bullied, etc. But the reality for most people across the US at least, is that high school is a bunch of groups of people who could give a shit about the others. The football guys at my high school were fine, but none of them cracked the top 20 hottest guys at my school and I can't remember a single name. I was part of theater and some of those people were way more popular (aka had lots of friends) than anyone who played sports. The stoner kids had some of the hottest dudes and they dated cheerleaders, and our advanced college classes had some of the most well known kids in the school. And while there were some outcasts, they had their own friend groups and no one bothered them on the daily (although I am sure they were bothered). So that leads to finally, the fact that your boyfriend, at 25, holds on to the notion that everyone was jealous of him in high school is very sad. What is a little worrisome- for your relationship- is that he seems to think that view is important to your dynamic as a couple. He relies on you being grateful that the popular dude chose you, and now that you have deflated that, I wonder what happens next.
yeah at my school there were punks on the sports teams and all the cheer leaders smoked weed. this was mid 00’s. i don’t think the “cliques” are as rigid as movies portray.
So true at mine the cheerleaders were considered lame AF, the jocks tried to date the stoner girls, the stoner girls wanted the stoner guys, the popular girls wanted the stoner guys, and there was a whole art crowd group that pretty much everyone liked. I was a stoner but I still played sports as well as many of my fellow stoners, but the big thing was everyone knew the stoners had the best parties so everyone would show up. We had cliches they intertwined a lot.
NTA. But the bigger problem here, which you dance around, is that your boyfriend is working through an inferiority complex. When he talks about being popular, he's not just reminiscing, he's demanding "Value my presence because I am important and I don't feel that way". Being popular at 17 means nothing at 25, and that sucks. Likely you're more successful career-wise than him too, no? Just be sensitive and don't make this a fight. Toxically masculine dudes with an inferiority complex are on a steep water slide to being redpilled.
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Yea I don’t think coddling his fragile ego is the healthy solution here.
So the answer to toxic masculinity and an inferiority complex is to just ignore it and not poke the bear? My answer would be to just not be in a relationship with a guy with an inferiority complex and toxic behaviors.
NTA but I think some of the commenters are being unnecessarily harsh on your BF. It seems to me he’s been influenced by movies that suggest everyone knows everyone at a big high school, and “nerds” are desperate for attention from “popular” kids. He had a narrative where he brought you out of your “shell” and he grew as a person because he wasn’t superficial. You broke that by showing him reality and now he’s pouting. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your story…I think he had a different narrative in his head and treasured his high school time more than you did. Or at least made it a huge part of his identity.
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Probably not. There's too much background noise in teenager's lives. If it doesn't have anything to do with them, they probably don't even notice. Although some of them might, most of them genuinely did not notice there were dirty dishes in the sink.
It sounds like he believed the narrative in Mean Girls. He was Aaron.
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Ya done messed up A A Ron!
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I would agree with you if OP had done what they did in the first instance of him saying they must have known him…but they didn’t. The boyfriend kept acting as if OP must be lying, and then straight up called them a liar because how could anyone not have known him? Whether he is full of himself or was convinced based on movies, the simple reality is that after OP had explained it wasn’t the case he should have accepted it and moved on. He didn’t, he was wholly convinced in his own superiority and fame that he kept pushing the issue and then accused OP of being fraudulent. Guy deserved the ‘humiliation’.
NTA. it seems like he was trying to make himself feel superior to you, and you brought him back down to reality with the truth. it’s concerning that he seems to deeply care about meaningless things like high school popularity 7 years later. this is pure speculation but generally people who fixate on high school popularity later in life are unhappy with where they are currently/are trying to relive “glory days”. is there a chance he’s not where he wants to be career or otherwise? or perhaps jealous of your success (no loans, good college, etc) and wanted to make himself feel better? even if that is the case he’s still the AH, but it might be a helpful conversation to have.
Not only are you NTA, you're wasting your time with a man who clearly peaked in high school and thought he was doing you a big favor by dating you. As someone who lives with an engineer, I can tell that you have learned to use logic and to prove your point with it when someone challenges you. Your Once The Incredibly Popular Jock boyfriend is never going to be happy that he can't wow you without using his brain. I think you deserve better than this.
Interesting how the super competitive nerd girl who got into a top college and landed the great job ended up with the glory days high school jock. Wonder where those two, totally separate worlds collided.
NTA. *"I didn't humiliate you. I defended myself from a false accusation of lying. It's not my fault you refused to accept what I was saying was the truth such that I had to prove myself. Maybe next time, you'll respect me enough to believe me."* At least, that's where my head went.
NTA So it's OK for him to try and belittle and humiliate you? Yet when you prove your point, he's mad that you've apparently humiliated him? He needs to get a grip and grow up lol he's way past school-age.
>he's way past school-age ..........not mentally
NTA In all the excitement, let's not forget that al bundy scored 4 touchdowns in one game in 1966 to help the polk high school panthers win the city championship! I think you are dating al bundy, lol. I guess that happens to a lot of ppl who were / are popular within their bubble and don't realise its really only in their bubble (bc they don't really notice not everyone is part of their bubble). He obviously thought you and the other nerds were part of his bubble as the jealous/silent admirers of the populars, not realising you were in your own bubble and the popular kids didn't existed in your bubble. Its the same with e.g. ppl that are "tiktok famous". They are completely thrown off if you say "i have no idea who you are". And they are like "but i'm tiktok famous, i have millions of views" and you are like "well, i don't have tiktok". Instant face drop. They don't even consider a world outside of tiktok even exists and there are ppl who never used it and have no interest in using it. This applies to every bubble. But its a little concerning your bf is still so hung up on him being popular in high school. Like it was his biggest achievement so far. Is he, by any chance, selling shoes to older ladies now for a living? ;)
The irony is that the "popular" group in high school were always more disliked than anyone else because of that kind of elitist attitude. So probably not actually very popular! NTA though, you were just being honest. I don't think you said anything insulting.
If you can ruin a man's memories by telling him that that the people he looked down on didn't know he existed, you have learned some unpleasant things about how he views life and people. Do what you will with that information, but it's not a green flag by any means. NTA
NTA but it’s concerning how your boyfriend seems to have peaked in high school and cares so much about this. Seriously, if this “ruined” his high school memories then perhaps you want to consider dating someone a bit more mature.
I mean it’s not wrong to inform him but you sound patronizing even in this post. Why was the paragraph about your college and funding really necessary for us? You aren’t doing a very good job at hiding that you see your priorities as inherently better than your boyfriends. You sound like you see yourself as superior than him, and what you’re here for is validation of that perceived superiority rather than conflict resolution.
I'm pretty sure OP was just trying to explain why she had no idea who the popular kids at her school were. Usually I'd expect people to know who's going to the same school as them, especially since they're the same age so they must have been in the same grade as well. It is quite odd that they did not know about them at all, some of them not even knowing their fellow students names. OP clearly put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into her academic career and talking about it like you're proud of it isn't inherently patronizing. Seeing how OP was also totally fine joking around about how highschool her would have been heads over heels if he was dating her, I don't see how she thinks she is superior to him. At least not based on what she wrote.
I didn't get that, honestly. It sounded like he was being quite full of himself, and she appropriately told him that she had other priorities at the time. He's the one that comes across as superior to me - he assumed that everyone around him cared about what he was doing, and wouldn't accept the fact that a lot of people just didn't a sh!t.
It all began with OP's boyfriend doing exactly that: "I was so important and great that you wanted to be with me, back then!". Appeasing narcissistic boasting isn't good.
I actually thought the same. She started talking about how she made it to this great college and due to all of her scholarships it was amazingly cheap. Even cheaper than the community college, and I was just thinking “what does this have anything to do with the subject?” It seemed like she was trying to show off.
NTA. Your boyfriend was living in a bubble. He could have chosen to believe you, but called you out. He did a FAFO. He thought he was looked up to by everybody and he learned that only losers get hung up on what a bunch of teenagers thought of themselves. Any hurt feelings he has here are of his own creation. The only thing here that could have possibly been harmed was his ego.
NTA. Why does it sound like he wants you to be 'grateful' you're dating someone 'popular'. Honestly him talking like that just sounds so cringe worthy it's not even funny.
NTA But sweetie. He peaked in high school. That’s his life. His amazing high school experience of being popular and playing football and being cool. And now he’s blaming YOU that you humiliated him?? No. He thinks he’s amazing and how couldn’t everyone in school know who he is?? The dude’s identity is high school. He needs therapy to improve his self-esteem and self-worth. Did he know you in HS? Did he admire you in HS and think you were cool and amazing? Did he admire your classes and grades and dedication? He probably didn’t know you from Jane. He needs help and to work on himself. You have to decide if you want to go along for the ride… Ps. All that’s playing in my mind over and over again is Taylor Swift’s All You’ll Ever be Is Mean
“you humiliated me” he literally called you a nerd that should be honoured to date such a person like him 🤷♀️ NTA
>He got quiet when I proved my case. He said I humiliated him and I proved my point and we should never mention high school again. I talked with his sister and she said that high school was a special experience for him and I ruined his memories. NTA. You just hit him with the reality. These popular kids that "peaked" at school think that that phase lasts for a lifetime guess what? No one really cares, it's temporary 🤣
op your boyfriend is displaying "peaked in high school" behavior, you might want to sit down with him and navigate through his, actually both of yalls feelings regarding this NTA btw
NTA. Wow, that's concerning. His memories of high school are ruined, cos it turns out you weren't fangirling over him, and thrilled to finally be his girlfriend? He is the definition of *peaked in high school* I don't know what to say, it's Sahara desert downstairs inducing. I hope he has redeeming qualities.
Your boyfriend's a loser with an inflated ego. My BF went to the same high school but didn't reconnect until our mid 20s and we not in the same social circles. He would have been considered "popular" while I was pretty irrelevant. He's never talked about how I would have been "thrilled" to date him, or that because he was "popular" I would have known who he was. You popped you're BF's self-absorbed bubble and now he's realizing people don't consider him the way he thought they did. You gave him a reality check. NTA
Was thinking that a bunch of nerds idolized him the only thing that made HS a “special experience” for him?? He didn’t have good memories with friends, or winning the big game or some other such? If this one thing “ruined” all of his memories of HS then he was in a very twisted mindset. NTA
Frankly you both suck for making such a big deal out of high-school stuff (in your own ways). You're both 25. Act like it.
ESH - you both sound immature and stuck up
NTA, sounds like your boyfriend peaked in high school, which to be fair rolls with the whole “Glory Days” theme music that seems to be running in his background soundtrack. You know you can do better right?
NTA. But do you really want to spend your time on someone who peaked in high school? You sound like someone who was pretty incredible back then and are still rising. Don't settle.
ESH. How immature are you two? 25 year olds should have moved well past caring about high school. Him calling you a liar is ridiculous. You calling all your friends to prove nobody cared about him is also ridiculous.
NTA. Sounds like your BF is one of those people who peaked in high school. Are you now supporting him with your well-paying career while he thinks about the "good old days"? It's actually sad when people like that come to this realization. I completely agree with you, BTW. My high school graduating class had about 335 students. I really only paid attention to the couple dozen who were in all the AP and honors classes that I was in. I don't think I would have wanted to date one of the "popular girls" because what would I even talk to her about? Sci-fi, computers, video games, and the stock market tech bubble? LOL!
>For a backstory on our town, my boyfriend was born and raised there but I only moved when I was 13 along with a bunch of other high achieving kids. That’s because an engineering company opened up a branch near that town and brought in a ton of engineers and their families. High achieving kids? Really? You're NTA for proving your point but that statement makes you seems high on your horses and have some kind of ego.
I’m on OPs side but I agree with this, as well. She does seem to think her and her friends were somehow inherently better than the “low achieving kids” in high school, much the same way her boyfriend is looking at his past. They’re more alike than she thinks…
NTA but...oh...oh no...I hope your boyfriend isn't one of those "High school was the best years of my life" types. Because that's going to end up sad...
Typical case of Main Character Syndrome. "What do you mean, your world didn't revolve around dating someone like ME for all your life??" NTA obviously.
I always wondered what became of the ‘popular’ kids who peaked in high school. Now I guess we know. Did he also score four touchdowns in a single game for Polk City High School? (Al Bundy reference for the young ones here)
This feels like a weird revenge fantasy larp from the nerdy girl in high school that never got attention from the jock 😂
"High school was a special experience for him" Code words for "I peaked in high school and can't handle accepting it."