I’ve been dating someone for 3 months and things are going well so far, but I’ve noticed that when we’re having a conversation that he often diverts it to himself and it feels like he’s trying to compete / ‘out do’ me.
here are some examples
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I had a busy day recently, I mentioned it on a call and started to explain what had happened, he cut over me saying ‘I’ve had the busiest day ever, because of x,y,z’
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we were having a deep conversation and I said that it has been a really tough year for me (I’ve had some shit things happen this past year), he cuts over me saying ‘no one has had a harder year than I have because of x,y,z’
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I bought a new car recently, I drove it to his place and whilst I wasn’t expecting him to be overly excited about it, he didn’t say a word - I asked if he liked the car, his response was ‘yes it’s nice, I used to have that model, it was top spec’
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we were at my house and something was said about my kitchen, I said I need a new one as it’s really old now, before I could finish he interrupts telling me that in his last house he had a brand new kitchen that had loads of extras and cost £25,000
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on our second or third date he commented on my handbag - ‘I know how expensive that was, I bought several for my ex’
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one afternoon I mentioned an activity I was going to take my DC to, I notice on social media 2 hours later that he’s doing said activity with his DC (neither of us have done this activity with our DC since we’ve been together) - he may have genuinely thought my idea was a good one, but in a weird way it felt like him competing
I’m not a competitive person or a braggy person, so I feel that these interactions are weird, it’s almost like instead of being happy for me (with the car) or hearing me out (when I said about the tough year) he has to get his point in about how he’s done better / worse. These are just a few examples, I could probably think of loads more.
when he does these interruptions, I let it slide, I don’t pull the conversation back to myself - but I’ve started noticing them more and more and doing an internal eye roll.
Other than this, we have a good time together and I enjoy his company, I just wish we could have conversations that flow where we each say about our experiences instead of him cutting over me and proving how he’s ’out done’ me.
my aibu - this is a red flag. Or am I noticing something that’s not really an issue, he’s just making conversation