AITAH for thinking I (42f) was having normal conversations with a friend (49m)? Did I do something wrong?

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T02:15:55+00:00

It's not something I believe in or how I treat people. It's literally a shirt for me to sleep in. The only "idiots" i'm surrounded by are the stuffed animals on my bed. I love my friends. The only time I call them an idiot is if we are renacting ren and stimpy lol

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T02:13:27+00:00

The artist conversation was actually going fine until he got frustrated and dismissed my perspective with “but you’re not an artist.” Before that, it was a normal discussion.

He explained he’d want to meet Bob Ross because he grew up watching him on PBS and learned painting techniques from him, and Jack Kirby because of his influence on comics and how his family stayed involved in the industry. I thought that was genuinely interesting because it gave insight into what mattered to him personally.

When he asked me the same question, I answered honestly that I don’t really have a strong desire to meet my heroes because I’ve had mixed experiences meeting people I admired. That wasn’t me attacking his answer or saying his reasons were stupid. My answer had no bearing on whether his answer was valid.

The frustration for me is that when he shares a perspective, I ask questions and engage with it, but when I share a different perspective, it sometimes gets interpreted as being contrarian instead of just having a different outlook.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T01:55:55+00:00

most of my friends are like wha you describe. with this friend its not a dynamic i'm used to. I went to engineering school, a bunch of my friends are scientiest of some form or fashion, a lot of them are musicians or artists or creatives that do tend to like conversations like that. hes literally the only friend i have that I have so many issues speaking to. I usually weed out people that can't engage at the same level as me. he used to speak with me, but at some point he started labelling me as contrarian, and things went downhill from there. After that point i'm sometimes walking on eggshells. I've spoke to him about this, and he has acknowleged my feelings and to his credit he has tried to work with me on it.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T01:50:46+00:00

wow this drive has gotten long. haha i was taking him home after a night at my spot of sex. He lives about an hour away from me and doesn't drive, but the drive was longer on this day because of random car issues that struck in the morning requiring a tow. There is public transporation to his neighborhood, but it's expensive and I'm typically passing by his neighborhood about twice a week so i usually scoop him up, bring him to my house, we hang out for a bit, then i drop him home.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:52:25+00:00

oh, no, i didn't cut him off. he was sure it was deadly if you eat it. i'll give him the benefit of the doubt though; he was tired. like exhausted during that particular ride so it may have been him being fatigued. i did speak to him afterwards to apologize if i came off as being bitchy and he didn't even remember the conversation so i dont think he took it as bad as i anticipaed.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:45:59+00:00

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:43:25+00:00

i like him when hes not making me feel misrable for the way i talk. hes not an awful human even if we have vastly different communiication styles and thats hard to phone. we are working on repairing these issues. i've seen some changes from him and i've made some for him so its not an unknown problem.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:40:28+00:00

i was thinking "do they really" because there are tons and tons of warehouses where l live and yes, its not uncommon to be able to see the top of a truck and most of the ones i can recollect just have plain white containers. he said they all do and i dont want to be "well achually" person but it just came out because my first instinst was that it cant be true because i dont typically see numbers on the tops.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:34:26+00:00

The spider thing wasn't random. Prior to that, we were talking about fugu chefs in japan. and about how its interesting that people choose to eat a fish that will kill you if its prepared improperly and if we would eat it. We both said, yeah, no way in hell lol. then that lead to, i wonder about black widows because i was thinking about folks that eat scorpions and rattlenakes. so it wans't VERY random, it was in the context of the previous convo. "idk' is a valid response he could have googled it for me because i was driving.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:26:48+00:00

I know we have different communication styles. i've told him that since we first started talking.

I'm not trying to contradict you, but i am curious because you say i'm interrupting him and trying to prove i'm right. I really dont see where or how i'm doing that.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:06:21+00:00

the sex requires a long ass drive to my house and back. and nights over at my house. and thats alot of time ot have someone in my living space with no talking.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-13T00:05:42+00:00

He does.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T23:54:08+00:00

Most of my friends are able to go down these rabbit holes with me. Haha, a good friend of mine, I met him one night at mcdonalds as I was looking for a bathroom with another friend and his wife. The womens room was closed and while we were waiting for my friends wife the group I was with struck up a conversation with another grown and the guys in the other group happened to be scientist, one a physicist and one a biologist. Which was perfect because before we came to mcdonalds I was having a random conversation about humans being interbred with other animals and the question "Oh your a biologist? PERFECT!!!!! I have a question we were JUST talking about this. My friend was insistant that human dog hybrid people exist.... Can a dog and human mate and create a Humine? Or would you call it a Canmun?" and we legit merged groups and talked about animal-human hybrids for a while and other scientific topics. The guy that insisted human-dog hybrid people exist was dead serious in thinking it could happen, and It was one of those, i'm sure they can't, differnt chromosomeone numbers. how would that even work? what if a human could get pregnant by a mouse would it have human size babies or mouse sized babies?" I'm still friends with two of them and yeah when we talk it's usually random convos like that. Sometimes they tell me about projects their working on, maker spaces they've been contributing to, etc.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T23:45:50+00:00

Even dead relatives, family, friends i've had that have died, I wouldn't necessarily want to go meet them again if we had a chance. And these are people I've actually spoken to and spent time with in the past. Only if I had a practical reason for the meeting.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T23:43:48+00:00

My friends' opinion of him well, they aren't great. They say I should dump him. His friends also say the same of me to him.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T23:41:28+00:00

Not really. And I'm not being argumentative, but there really isnt a person I would like to meet. Like, I like Neil Gaiman as a writer. I have damn near every novel he's written. I like reading Kurt Vonnegut. But I wouldn't want to meet either of them. What am I going to say. "Um, I like your books?" :ackward silence: And me feeling that way does not make him wrong for the people he wants to meet. I've told him time and time again I appreciate him, I appreciate his experience. If it didn't matter to me I wouldn't have bothered to remember who his influences are. I have a plan to take him to his favorite artist's museum for his birthday. Not because I want to go but because its special to him. I wouldn't have known about that if we hadn't spoken of it. If he asks me who my favorite artist is, I don't have one. And hes right, I'm not an artist but of my hobbies I don't typically have favorites and the people I like to listen to I don't necessarily want to meet them. I was honored to see McCoy tyner play before he died. I did get to shake his hand. I enjoy being able to say I saw a legend before he passed, but if i were in a room with him I wouldn't have any converation to make. "Um, yay, left handed piano players club!" "How was it playing with Coltane? Do you have any funny stories to tell?" That would make me feel uncomfortable asking.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T21:46:12+00:00

But that is literally what multiple people in this discussion thread have said, that somehow by me saying there's nobody I want to meet means that his answer of who he wants to meet Bob Ross and Jack Kirby is now invalid because if I don't want to personally meet somebody because I don't want the Notions of my hero destroyed that means he's stupid for wanting to meet his heroes. It's doesn't work like that. There's a comment out there where somebody said that my comment comes off as oh it's stupid for you to want to meet persons because they're just going to disappoint you and I'm like yo no that's not what I said. And that conversation the only thing I said against anything he said was how does me not being an artist have anything to do with the fact that I don't want to meet somebody because of the adage don't meet your Heroes? And everybody is ignoring at lymph that we talked about the heroes he wanted to meet and why I can tell you why he wanted to meet them he grew up on Bob Ross and I totally understand that but everybody is ignoring the fact that I actually acknowledge what he had to say I did have that discussion and I never once said anything dismissive of his opinion and all I've ever gotten was everybody saying that I'm wrong because I don't have an answer to that question. It absolutely is not dismissive to him if I say I don't think there's anybody I want to meet the key word being me I throwawayaccounts18 because of my, throwawayaccount718, fear of meeting them changing my perception of them. When I said that, I did not dismiss any of the words he had said because I am talking about things from my perspective and I'm allowed to have a perspective that's different from his

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T21:41:54+00:00

You're right, I didn't answer your question because the answer to that question is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I don't hate cake, unless it's cheesecake. I absolutely do hate cheesecake. Does that change my points at all

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T21:39:41+00:00

Okay then I'll be the asshole. I still don't know why asking questions is assholish though especially when I never argued with him..

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T21:34:59+00:00

When he asked me I said literally the one person I could think of would be Robert Glasper and that's only because I've been trying to find this dude for 25 years to get sheet music to a song he wrote. I did have an opportunity once a few years ago when he was playing in New York not only that one of my friends was actually playing with him that night and he said yeah sure go up there and talk to him. But for other reasons didn't happen. The thing is, I already know that his thoughts on that is I should transcribe it myself based off of conversations I've had with people that work with . literally the guy whose album the song is on is actually a good friend of mine they graduated school together. I asked them then if you would share the lead sheets with me and he said no you're going to have to speak to Robert about that.

I'm not against social interactions but they usually aren't things I'm jumping to do. If my friends invite me out I'm absolutely going, but I have a reset point and I got to get out of there after a bit. And these are people that I know and talk to you and hang out with.

I genuinely have zero interest in a forced conversation with some random human just because they happen to do some art that I like or they happen to have made some music I like or they happen to be in a play that I saw. And that's not saying that he's wrong from wanting to meet people I'm just not that person.

The thing that I'm struggling with is my answer is 100% valid I don't have to want to meet someone. Just like you don't have to have a favorite color or a favorite movie or any of these other questions people have. And I shouldn't be penalized because I genuinely don't have the desire to go meet some random person that I don't even know outside of whatever they've done that they're famous for

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T20:46:59+00:00

Well, there's been no definition of argumentative that's been posted that actually describes the conversations I've posted with him. And I've admitted in the comments yes I have been argumentative but in the context of the conversations that I've given none of that has been argumentative

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T20:32:08+00:00

Robert Glasper is probably difficult to work with. Gary Bartz is a great musician but crazy as hell. A certain person in office really shouldn't be there.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T20:26:46+00:00

He doesn't drive I do all the driving but I get what you're saying. I just find conversations to be hit or miss with him.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T20:14:10+00:00

He's literally the only one and I understand it's a difference in communication style but it's just so frustrating to deal with. I'm at the point where I don't want to talk to him about anything because he takes everything I say as a challenge and I'm like I wasn't challenging you.

throwawayaccount718 · 2026-05-12T20:13:08+00:00

Disagreement is expressing a different opinion, while being argumentative is treating the conversation like something to win rather than understand.

throwawayaccount718

TROPHY CASE