^yeah
Oh Seif, I realized a great example of the master-slave relationship while in the shower. You know when we found out Beth's friend loved FMA, and we were jokingly wondering who was really testing the other (between you and him)? Well, that is exactly what Hegel calls the "struggle unto death," forcing the other to recognize you first. The master would rather accept death (figurative and sometimes literal) than show the other self-consciousness recognition first. The slave values life more. Ironically, Hegel finds the slave to be the eventual winner in this relationship. In time, it invariably realizes that the master's entire basis for authority is found in what the slave provides (attention, submission, and literal products). He meant this as both an argument for emancipation as well as a commentary on the individual. Dating can serve as another example. Stereotypically speaking, at first the woman is the master. She presents herself as something worth noticing, forcing the male to recognize her first. I.e., in bars, men approach women lol. But somewhere along the line, the man becomes the master. He stops giving the woman so much attention and withdraws into himself, and the woman in turn gives more attention to the man. Here you have the stoic husband and nagging wife: Al Bundy and Peg. However, at any point the man (at first) or woman (later on) can realize that the other depends on them for their position. It is our attention that validates their existence and self-perception as something special. But they are only special to their "slave," and that slave can simply take it all away.
Why this struggle exists: Recognizing another self-consciousness requires you to come outside of yourself, to put your self-identity at risk. Think of when you randomly stare at someone without meaning to. If you are alerted to this because they happen to notice you giving them the creeper gaze, you instantly feel uncomfortable. This is because you have been observed outside of yourself, outside of your control. Your self-identity was at risk and you couldn't do a thing about it. Of course, as soon as you realize the situation you retreat back inside yourself (by looking away, etc). Or in a situation like yours, you are potentially dealing with an equivalent peer. Neither side wants to present itself as an object with which to be compared, one which can be judged. This kind of thing is all over academia. Historians and other academics are some of the pettiest, most immature people, and it all comes out of this basic insecurity about our self-worth.
So the idea behind all this is that giving another recognition first makes you vulnerable. None of us wants to put ourselves out before the jury to be judged. The other person should endure that first, so we feel more secure in how we compare to them. This is the moving force behind stage fright, passive aggressiveness, beta personalities, and so on. Your pseudo-interaction with that other guy just reminded me of all this in a silly way lol.