To ask for your tales of oneupmanship/eleven-erifing

[Blueeyedgirl21]

Ok so there’s someone I know and have who has to One up you all the time! Nothing can be just a trip to the shop, he has to have bumped into someone he knows who’s told him something amazing or whatever, you can’t say you’ve bought tickets for a gig without him knowing either a band member or having also got tickets but also having backstage access or whatever

So today put icing on cake. Doorstep chat whilst I dropped something off. Mentioned holidays and how it would be lovely to go.
Him: ‘I’m going to go and see Mike in Marbella’
Me: oh lovely, love Marbella!
Him: yeah got tons of mates out there, used to go regularly, can stay with them any time basically.’
Me: wow, that’s great. I like ‘insert random restaurant name here’ it’s fab isn’t it !
Him: never heard of that one, I know the owner of ‘random restaurant’ though, know them really well really close pals, so get free food all the time, I know most restaurant owners there
Me: wow, that’s a bonus isn’t it! How good!
Him: well I’ve been going for years so I’m well known
Me: my grandparents lived down the road in Estepona for 40 years so we used to go to Marbella sometimes with them
Him: ‘nah, Estepona is ok, but Marbella is really the best place to go. You want to get yourself to ‘insert random restaurant’ , better than what you’d find in Estepona.

I was just like oh ffs I was just trying to have polite conversation!! Why does everything have to be BETTER?!

I even once mentioned I got a new pair of trainers and he actually said ‘a friend of mine at work got those, but the limited edition ones, the really special ones, those are the ones you wanna look out for’

What is this behaviour ? ! It’s maddening !

Any examples of elevenerifing (you’ve been to Tenerife, they’ve been to Elevenerife...) you’ve come across??? Do I start trying to one up the one upper?!

What happens if you point out that's what they are doing?

@Gimmegimme I haven’t tried. Maybe I should. I need to grow a spine and call them out on it maybe. Think they would be highly offended though . They truly believe everything they’re saying. I think a lot of it is the truth but expanded upon

Sometimes I just nod along 'that's great wow" sometimes I say 'wow you know X too, how funny, I was just chatting to X last week'.... its kinda funny to watch people squirm a bit at this point 😄

I know exactly what you mean, and I agree it's maddening (and exhausting)
However..... the Marbella conversation sounds like you were giving as good as you got!
I like xxx restaurant
Go to xxx it's better
I've been going there for years
Well my grandparents lived there
😳

I think rather than calling them out on it, I'd be tempted to say something like "Oh I think the limited edition ones are a bit tacky and try-hard." Or "Oh a friend of mine went to that restaurant. She said she saw a cockroach on the floor there, and her husband got awful food poisoning". Or go to the other extreme and say "Oh my friend had the limited edition trainers but upgraded to a solid gold pair".

@toomany omg you are really right you know ! I was honestly just trying to make conversation though, i SWEAR, if he’d said Rome or Thailand or somewhere I’ve not been I would not have entered into that level of Conversation, it’s just that i genuinely did have grandparents there and spend time there !! I will remember that for next time though. And just nod and smile.

Somewhat outing to those who know me so NC, but: I once went on a date with someone (friend of a friend) who had travelled a bit in a region of the world I was very familiar with.

At one point, talking about places we'd visited, I mentioned that I had done a particular well-known tourist trek through some mountains.

He replied "oh, I didn't just WALK the Inca trail. I did it IN A FUNNY HAT."

Which has been my go-to one-upmanship line ever since.

@Fifteenerife hahah I might just add ‘in a funny hat’ every conversation I have with him now !! Also love the user name, lol

@Blueeyedgirl21 I have a relative like this. She is awful. You can’t actually have a conversation with her. Some notable ones:

Her: what are you working at these days
Me: I’m back in uni doing a PhD and lecturing. It’s going well so far
Her: my neighbours daughter has 2 phds and won a prize for lecturing
Me: very nice 🤷‍♀️

At my wedding!!!!!
Me: thank you so much for coming, I hope you’re having a nice time
Her: my friends daughter had an amazing wedding last week, wonderful venue excellent food and a brilliant atmosphere
Me: .......

My mother told me when her and my dad had bought their house they were very hard up. Saved and saved and saved to get enough money to buy a lovely red carpet for the sitting room and were proudly showing relative. Relative looked at it and said ‘my sisters carpet is far nicer and it’s in all her rooms’ my poor mother said she cried her eyes out after she left.

It’s such a weird thing in people and it means you can’t actually talk to them normally.

Next time mention a restaurant you know def ISNT there!? Bet he waffles on the same shit!!

@AnchorAmore that’s awful and quite upsetting really. I absolutely hate when you feel like what you’ve said has literally not been absorbed by the person. I’ve considered that the person I know may even have some sort of auditory processing issue because sometimes it’s like sound actually bounces off him and he doesn’t take it in. I think actually it could be some sort of thing where people process what others say and their only way of relating or responding is to one-up, it comes from maybe a self defense mechanism or something ? The person you’re talking about sounds like they are jealous and creating these tenuous links - it’s never their own carpet or wedding, but a friend or random child of a friend, so they are connected but not directly. Weird.

Oh yes do what easterbunny suggests

Yes! I sit opposite someone at work like this. I might mention I am thinking of going to north korea (extreme example) for my next holiday and they will have already been there /know someone that lives there. It’s annoying but people love talking about themselves so I suck it up, roll my eyes and feed them fake info

What I do is agree with them. So when they say “oh such restaurant is better, you should go there” say that you know, you will next time, you’ve heard amazing things about it from so many people etc. Really lay it on thick, add a helping of “I’m so glad you mentioned it, you’re so knowledgeable/ experienced” and I promise you’ll have totally stolen their wind. Try it .

A close family member does this all the time. It is SO annoying. Agree with @Easterbunnyishoppingmad - eg make up some amazing place you want to go and have them reply that they’ve already been. Silent satisfaction gets me through otherwise teeth gritting conversations :)

I have a friend a bit like this. You can’t say anything that isn’t identical to what she would have done.

Me: So we’re thinking of looking at buying a house in insert London suburb
Her: oh god I could never live outside of central London, I can’t even imagine how you’ll cope
Me: well we can get a lot more for our money so I’d rather move out and have a 3 bedroom house with a garden than our current 1 bedroom flat
Her: well when I buy a house it’ll definitely be in central London. I’ll buy something run down but borrow the max I can and then use whatever is leftover after buying the house to do it up. Then I’ll have a similar mortgage to you and a fabulous house in central London
Me: errr that’s not quite how mortgages work, the bank don’t just transfer you the money to do what you want with

She genuinely got up and went home because she was so offended that I corrected her

i prefer "that's nice"

People like that are often a bit insecure and feel the need to prove something (even though nobody cares but them). I used to have a colleague who was similar, if someone was travelling to New York she’d talk about when she went and stayed in a five star hotel - if someone got a free coffee in pret she’d say she got an entire free lunch last week etc. It was tiring but I realised it must be far more tiring to be her - having to be ‘on’ all the time and working hard to have an answer for everything.

I used to just nod politely and smile, say something like ‘that’s nice’ and not invite anymore questions. If she interrupted a colleague to tell her story/one up I would just steer the conversation back to the original person once she’d finished (‘so what were you saying about that weekend away?’).

My most bizarre ever experience of this was my grandma, now this is a reasonably well told story so it will put me if anyone I know is on here.

I’ve had a friend who I’ve known since school days so my grandma has met her on various occasions and sometimes enquires after her. Anyway. When we were in our early 20’s friend came out as a lesbian. Grandma enquired after her and I said ‘oh she’s fine, actually she came out a few months ago and is now seeing a really nice girl’
Granny: ‘well that’s nothing. I once knew a girl who was born without a hole down there.

My husband has a colleague like this.
When my DH’s best friend met the colleague and heard the constant attempts to outdo everyone, he said “That colleague, if you said you had now got an elephant, he would boast that he had a box to put the elephant in.”

When I now hear anyone elevenerifing, i picture an elephant in a box, and end up just smiling at them!

I went out with a guy like this, it’s very annoying - he knew everybody, friends with ‘xyz’ & been here, there & everywhere ( he hadn’t)
The worst one was about a certain big city ... I took him there as a treat, as he’d never been, we had a lovely long weekend, saw the sights, nice food etc.
Couple of months later, he’s chattering on about this city to me -“oh yeah, yeah, know this place & that, been all over the city, know it really well etc” and I said oh, I thought you’d never been before I took you?
He had to admit that was the only time he’d been!! Just so full of b.s💩 I found it draining in the end, everything was like a competition!!
Binned him😉

I also know someone like this. But in addition to the elevenerifing, she always has to inset into every conversation how wealthy she is. So when she asked me if I had ever ridden horses and I said I had and used to be very keen growing up she then had to talk non-stop about the 7 racehorses she part owns with her husband and how they chartered a private jet to travel to ireland to see them run and how her daughter was such a good rider she would have been in the Olympic team if she had not decided to focus on her banking career instead.

And when she asked me where we planned to go on holiday next and I said we were thinking of Cyprus she had to tell me how she adored Cyprus and was looking at buying property there because they only had homes in Ireland, England and France and thought it would be good to branch out.

Then she was bragging about how she was renting out her flat in london and how it was so wonderful because it means she could retire early and I mentioned something about what REA agent they used because we were not happy with the one we were using for our rental and she started with alarm and asked where our property was and I mentioned where (in a more expensive area) and she suddenly shut up and her lips tightened and she suddenly had to leave early.

I have no idea why she is like this. So braggy. She's quite nice but the relentless bragging is so dull.

It extends out also, in that her eldest son is in the same year as my eldest and it is all fb posts about how he is the best student in his year and when they go to parents evening the teachers stand up to applaud as they walk in. (Not quite, but very very close to it).

*sorry, her YOUNGEST is in the same year as my eldest.

I need to proof read before I post. [bangs head]

I had a friend (now ex friend) that was like this but with bad experiences. We used to say that if you’d broken your arm, she’d have broken both legs. She had such a chip on her shoulder that she’d had a tough life (parents just threw money at her but no real love apparently) and she just hated it if anyone else was getting attention/sympathy from others, at uni if you were having grade problems hers were worse, if it was boy trouble then that boy had also hit on her first by the way, and hurt her too. Exhausting.