Dear Ashley:

This is my understanding:

The most revealing part of your posts is this: “I was the working class kid who went to private school, and the guy who got a scholarship to study at the Ivy Leagues. The best way to describe the way I interact is by being competitive, primarily about ideas”-

You were one working class student in a school attended by wealthy class students. You felt inferior to them, maybe you were made fun of, bullied for being of a lower social class. To survive and succeed, to not submit, you competed. Because you couldn’t compete with expressions of money you didn’t have, or with other expressions of social prestige, you made your competition “primarily about ideas”.

It was then maybe that you also developed that “very assertive and self-confident walk and mannerism”.

And if your story is factually true, you succeeded! You made it through that private school, got a scholarship, continued your higher education and made money to afford some luxury.

Problem is you are still competing, as if you are still in private school, a working class student feeling inferior and competing. Only now you added items to your competition: “luxury Swiss watches/ gem-stoned cuff-links.. luxury cars”.

“I’ve recently been told that I’, ‘condescending’ and so many people in a club I belong to don’t want to associate with me”- yes, you are condescending.

“I think they are insecure in the face of success”- maybe, but no one (not even you) likes to be made to feel inferior. No one should be made to feel inferior. What the kids in that private school did to you (maybe teachers as well) was wrong. And what you are now doing to other people is also wrong.

Let’s look at this scenario: you are showing up to a social occasion with a luxury Swiss watch and gem stoned cuff-links. A person seeing you wearing these items is not likely to think: oh, I want to talk with him, I want to be friends with him! He may think: oh, I wish I had that Swiss watch!

So, if you want people to be friends with you, in that scenario, announce: anyone who is friendly with me for the next 10 minutes, will get my Swiss watch, free of charge! – then you will have a volunteer or two. But otherwise, because people don’t go home with your items-of-luxury, they have no motivation to be friends with you, no motivation to endure the unpleasant condescending treatment by you.

anita