Smarter/More Beautiful than I remember

Lounge
1

My RSS feed came up with this question asked on Marginal Revolution and I would love to see my fellow 'moners ideas on the subject -

You see a woman after you met her before and say: you are more beautiful than I remember. She should be pleased, right?

Or you say: you are smarter than I remember.

Would she be pleased the same way? Or is there a difference and why?

Personally I think there would be a difference… both have the chance of backfiring (them not being pleased) - but something tells me that the smarter than I remember remark would be taken as an insult quite frequently

2

If I told my wife that she was more beautiful than I remember, she would probably go “aah, sweet” but subconsciously think “does that mean he thought I was ugly before”.

If I said “you’re smarter than I remember” she would remove my genitals with a housebrick for calling her stupid.

As a friend of mine once said, after many beers, " This mythical bloke who reckons he understands the female brain, he’s a liar!"

3

I think the reaction would tie into how the statements were made:

“You’re more beautiful than I remember” says that you thought she was beautiful before, but now even more so.

On the other hand, if you were to say “I don’t remember you being beautiful”, you’d probably lose something precious. :open_mouth:

“You’re smarter than I remember” does lean toward her thinking that you didn’t think she was very smart before.

But, if you were to say “I always thought you were smart, but I didn’t remember just how smart you were” would probably get a much better reaction.

4

What he said. :wink:

5

You could altogether avoid the possibility of a misunderstanding by inserting the word “even.”

i.e.
You are EVEN smarter than I remembered.
You are EVEN more beautiful than I remembered.

6

Or rephrase it to:

I never realized just how smart/beautiful you were. This doesn’t imply the subject was thought of as not beautiful or not smart at a previous time.