Ask Lemmy

One example comes to mind where I almost did.

I used to drive an older Pontiac. It wasn't the fanciest car, so it wasn't the most performant.

One day, I was leaving a restaurant with a girl I was dating, and had to merge into traffic up a hill. I knew the car would need all the power it could get to do the merge safely, so I turned off the air-conditioning. Confused, the girl asked why I did that. I explained that air conditioning affects the performance of the car. She disagreed. She was raised a bit privileged and had only ever driven nice cars, so never noticed the performance hit of having the A/C on.

We bickered back and forth for a minute or two before I said "okay look I'll show you" and reached to turn off the A/C. Before I could, however, she hit me with "you know, you don't always have to be right". I didn't end up getting to prove it to her.

In her defense, I can be very stubborn when its something I am confident I'm correct in, and we actually argued a lot about stuff. Another example of an argument we had was over the fact that prairie dogs can carry the plague. She didn't believe me and I remember we had to look up the answer. And that was on our second date.

I think about that line she hit me with a lot. But I also realize that in a lot of our "arguments" I was still having fun. To me, there's a playful aspect to a good argument. As long as nobody is yelling or getting feelings hurt, it's a fun way to pass the time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize she wasn't having fun like I was.