I have dedicated the last 12 years of my life to gymnastics. Specifically trampolining. I have am was a high level national athlete. I have competed at tons of national level competitions and have even competed at quite a few international competitions representing Team Canada. At my peak I was trainning at the trampoline gym 6 times a week, and all my training added up to nearly 30 hours a week on top of high school. Near the end of my career I was even getting funding to continue my sport. Eventually I had to quit because of a head injury, but this was still a huge part of my life and I was immensely proud of it. 

My girlfriend and I met a few months after I stopped competing, and she's heard quite a bit about my sport and always thought it was quite cool. She played volleyball in high school and had played on something rep volleyball teams. Nothing too crazy but I still thought it was pretty cool.

The other day we were discussing sports, and she was telling me how she had wished she played more volleyball and pursued it further. I told her that it was a great feeling to be really good at something and really enjoy it. I told her that it was a lot of work but it felt great to be a top level athlete at a sport. Queue the following conversation:

Her: Yeah, well it's a little different isn't it?

Me: What do you mean?

Her: I mean you were good, but trampolining isn't a real sport.

Me: How do you figure that? I was literally training as much as I went to school and Canada has arguably the most competitive trampolining scene in the world.

Her: Well there's pretty much no one that does that sport. It's not hard to get to a high level, if you played a real sport like soccer you never would've been that good.

I dumped her on the spot. That sport had such a huge impact on who I am today. I dedicated thousands of hours and even ended up getting paid some money to continue training. I was probably within the top 500 athletes worldwide. It felt like she was attacking who I am.

Her friends all said that I'm an asshole for breaking up over something so small. This truly hurt, and it's a sentiment I received from people my whole life. AITA?