Page 14 | It’s important for me to date intellectuals

TheRightDecisions · 2023-01-15T20:42:44+00:00

So I’m in a lesbian fledgling relationship, just a few months. Today, my partner said that it had always been extremely important to her that she date what she called “intellectuals”. The thing is, I’m certain not one and never claimed to be… She also said that her friend had told her she was being shallow to put an emphasis on that and that she should consider an emotional connection and some who is good and kind and sweet to her… basically her friend encouraged her to open her mind to dating me, my partner said. I feel mortified and have ended the relationship today. I told her I did not want to be settled for, and that I didn’t want to be anyone’s compromise. Apparently her former partners were high flying career “intellectuals”. I feel deeply wounded and made to feel as though I’m not good enough or lesser than. Am I being unreasonable? My partner has said this is an extreme over reaction and I have said awful things and am being very harsh and judgemental, and she herself feels deeply hurt now. Please help with some of your view points, or some comforting words. Thank you!

JoyPeaceHealthz · 25/01/2023 07:57

A one note samba is a goodcway of putting it.
Now she is making you feel uncomfortable. Whatever the favour is, ask or pay somebody else. Don't end up beholden to her. Or feeling beholden to her.

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 25/01/2023 12:54

NeverDropYourMooncup · 24/01/2023 23:24

It's just negging. Bog standard male pick up artistry, or the start of coercive control if you prefer that terminology. All designed to make you the slightly dim but oh, so sweet child to her worldly wisdom and controlling ways.

An abuser in a posh suit or frock is still an abuser, irrespective of the particular sexuality they possess and whether or not they were once the charming little savage to older, more 'refined and intellectual' partners.

Not only will you have to deal with confusing shit from her for years if you don't cut off right now, she'll be using you as a way of getting one up on future targets 'well, I do usually find myself attracted to looks, but for you, it's your mind, so I didn't think you were my type at all, but my friend said I should give the homely one a chance' or making herself sound sooooo cool around her wanky mates 'oh yes, that one. Wasn't she such an adorable little savage? Ah (sigh), simply delicious, so refreshingly ordinary - but it was impossible to actually have a conversation with her, though.'

Wow. Isn’t that more pick up artistry, what they call “social proof”.

I don’t mind a bit of showing off, we all do that sometimes when we’re trying to impress someone, but not when it’s with the intention of making that person feel lesser so you can feel better. That’s straight up abuse. Even if the person doing it is coming from a place of trauma hurt and insecurity. It’s still an act of harm.

Understanding and sympathising with why someone does the negative things they do, doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to become an emotional punching bag, it’s going to destroy you and it won’t help or heal the other person.

Has anyone here managed to have a relationship with someone riddled with insecurities? What were the harm versus help ratios like?

OP posts:

clutchingatpearls · 25/01/2023 14:25

It's not being riddled with insecurities that is the problem. It's the lack of awareness, and taking responsibility that it.

clutchingatpearls · 25/01/2023 14:26

Try again.

It's not being riddled with insecurities that is the problem. It's the lack of awareness, and not taking responsibility that is.

ReneBumsWombats · 25/01/2023 14:34

Has anyone here managed to have a relationship with someone riddled with insecurities?

Are you considering it?

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 25/01/2023 14:45

ReneBumsWombats · 25/01/2023 14:34

Has anyone here managed to have a relationship with someone riddled with insecurities?

Are you considering it?

No. I was curious what a relationship like that looks like a few years in…

OP posts:

LiesDoNotBecomeUs · 25/01/2023 14:47

TheRightDecisions · 15/01/2023 21:54

This was my worry.

I thought in which other ways will she put me down to make herself feel better every time she feels “insecure”.

She said I had made her feel like a “bad person” and she knew she wasn’t one.

When we first started dating, she complained about how she looked and and I said I looked at her to enjoy her, not to find flaws. She said she wasn’t sure that we should be dating… I thought she was talking about herself… so I reassured her that I could also feel insecure on the “intellectual” front and I’m sure she would find that ridiculous and I felt the same about her and how she felt about how she looked.

I wonder… was it me that provided her with the gun to shoot me with?

And why would she want to shoot me?! I thought we were still in that lovely blissful honeymoon phase.

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op - you made yourself vulnerable to her by revealing an insecurity (as we all do in a loving relationship with someone) showing that you trusted her.

She picked on exactly the thing you said you could feel insecure about.

No accident I think!

It does suggest a deliberate intent to wound you - and have power over your feelings. This is not love. I would not accept this from a partner of mine.

She does not seem worthy of your trust. If you decide to go back to her - keep that in mind.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 25/01/2023 14:55

You're overthinking this. She's a user, an abuser - somebody who wants to be chosen above all others. She's the kid who only screams that they wanted the toy when they saw another child playing with it, the one who made such a fuss that they had to get a present because it was somebody else's birthday, the one who has to, at all costs, be the most special, the prettiest, the smartest, the most needy, the funniest, the most vulnerable, the one who above all, has to be the Most Special Person in the Room.

'Look at me, I'm so special that I don't just have the most friends, my lovers abandon the chance of relationships the moment I snap my fingers and say that I'm interested in them (which I wasn't until I thought somebody else might find them attractive). Everybody just loves me, I'm such a wonderful person and I help them grow so much once I educate them in the Arts/Political Theory/History/the Ways of the World'.

I wonder whether her interest only came about in the first place because there was somebody else in the picture?

It could be intellectualised by literary allusions - Pygmalion, for example. But it's still a tarted up version of only wanting a ball because another dog has been interested in playing with it and then pissing higher up a tree to tell the world that they're bigger and better than the others.

ReneBumsWombats · 25/01/2023 15:09

TheRightDecisions · 25/01/2023 14:45

No. I was curious what a relationship like that looks like a few years in…

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Nothing appealing, I am sure.

Try to get this not very clever woman out of your head. As long as she lives there, you're losing out.

AnotherOneAndTwo · 14/02/2023 14:39

LexMitior · 24/01/2023 21:48

Well why I am not surprised she texted you.

Her cod intellectualism is a nice little seductive technique which you like and find engaging. She's going to play that one note samba as long as you let her.

Being frank, you are not putting your brain in play here because she's a woman. But as a woman who bats for both teams I am telling you that this is a good technique for trying to get into your pants.

Sorry, you should be much more skeptical of her.

So for the third time, she has contacted me after asking me not to contact her.

@LexMitior, won’t be surprised that it was by sending me a book (along with a sweater I had gifted her). There is a card in the middle of the book, saying she gotten me the book whilst we were still together but hadn’t had a chance to give it to me.

There was no hi or bye or how are you, just the returned sweater and this brief breezy note.

The book is called Bestiary by Donika Kelly. The poems are an exploration of her traumas to do with growing up as a lesbian gender fluid African American from an abusive family and toxic relationships.

The page she had embedded the card in reads as follows… it’s a complete poem:

Out west

Refuse the old means of measurement
Rely instead on thrumming
wilderness of self. Listen

You have been lost for some time,
taking comfort in being home
to any wondering thing. Sheep and brown cows

graze your heart pocket. Antelope and bison
lap the great lake of your eye. And in your ear
The black bear winters.

You name your dawn shadow Rabbit.

You name your dusk shadow
Spur.

And the river that cuts you at it runs west,
you name it Persistence.

Look. If you could bear sobriety,
you’d be sober.

If you could bear
being a person, you would no longer be
an iron bluff.

Do not wander. We are all apportioned
a certain measure of stillness.

I feel like this has been an epic push pull of me.

All of this is a bit like a riddle - what she is trying to say. The meaning is oblique and not starkly clear. I can read a couple of meanings into this, some of it contradictory.

Are there any literature fans (or just interested readers) who want to have a stab at what this means?

Why not just put her thoughts in the card, what’s wrong with plane speaking!

She tells me not to contact her, then does she now want me thank her for returning my gift and asking what this poem by a deeply suffering person means in the context of what has happened between us??

At least it’s not Dostoevsky!

AnotherOneAndTwo · 14/02/2023 14:41

This reply has been withdrawn

This message has been withdrawn at the poster's request

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 14/02/2023 14:44

I can understand that most posters won’t have seen this thread the first time it was posted, but I would still be keen to hear the opinion of everyone, including those only seeing this now.

I need a bit of help with my current confusion.

I’m still going through that life stressor and really didn’t need this. I had been trying to go about my business until this landed in my post.

OP posts:

CrescentMoons · 14/02/2023 14:44

Couldyounot · 15/01/2023 20:58

She sounds insufferably pretentious. I would have done exactly what you did.

This. I was dating someone like me who had a phD etc and he was banging on an intellectual connection but I also liked him
/ however after 2 months it transpired that intellectual meant agreeing with him and when I had enough of this and he point how how wonderful it was he had finally found a woman with more degrees as him and he was on an intellectual level I pointed out no - he wasn’t on the same level at all / he was far far beneath it. And I made the point that probably 99% of the women that he had dated were intellectually superior as he didn’t have the emotional intelligence they had ….

Throckmorton · 14/02/2023 15:02

She is trying to hoover you back in to make herself feel good. Anyone who requires this level of mental agility just to understand is. just. not. worth. it.

In the kindest possibly way, she is a blindingly obvious bullshitter and you, because you are nice and not a bullshitter, are falling for it. Take the book to a charity shop, bin the card and please god don't fall for her nonsense. You are too bloody nice to be wasted on this idiot!

clutchingatpearls · 14/02/2023 15:02

I'm confused. Is this a conversation between the OP and the intellectual snob now?

clutchingatpearls · 14/02/2023 15:03

Oh, a username muddle.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 14/02/2023 15:13

AnotherOneAndTwo · 14/02/2023 14:39

So for the third time, she has contacted me after asking me not to contact her.

@LexMitior, won’t be surprised that it was by sending me a book (along with a sweater I had gifted her). There is a card in the middle of the book, saying she gotten me the book whilst we were still together but hadn’t had a chance to give it to me.

There was no hi or bye or how are you, just the returned sweater and this brief breezy note.

The book is called Bestiary by Donika Kelly. The poems are an exploration of her traumas to do with growing up as a lesbian gender fluid African American from an abusive family and toxic relationships.

The page she had embedded the card in reads as follows… it’s a complete poem:

Out west

Refuse the old means of measurement
Rely instead on thrumming
wilderness of self. Listen

You have been lost for some time,
taking comfort in being home
to any wondering thing. Sheep and brown cows

graze your heart pocket. Antelope and bison
lap the great lake of your eye. And in your ear
The black bear winters.

You name your dawn shadow Rabbit.

You name your dusk shadow
Spur.

And the river that cuts you at it runs west,
you name it Persistence.

Look. If you could bear sobriety,
you’d be sober.

If you could bear
being a person, you would no longer be
an iron bluff.

Do not wander. We are all apportioned
a certain measure of stillness.

I feel like this has been an epic push pull of me.

All of this is a bit like a riddle - what she is trying to say. The meaning is oblique and not starkly clear. I can read a couple of meanings into this, some of it contradictory.

Are there any literature fans (or just interested readers) who want to have a stab at what this means?

Why not just put her thoughts in the card, what’s wrong with plane speaking!

She tells me not to contact her, then does she now want me thank her for returning my gift and asking what this poem by a deeply suffering person means in the context of what has happened between us??

At least it’s not Dostoevsky!

Show quote history

What's her message?

You do not set the boundaries, I set the boundaries.
You are not permitted to not think about me. I will make you think about me.
You are not allowed to give your mental energy to the stressful thing. You have to give your mental energy to me.
You are not permitted to move on in your life. I will ensure that you remain focused upon me.
I am, of course, considerably smarter than you. I know what this means, but you of little brain, haven't a fucking scooby what I'm on about, so you will have to ask me what it all means and I will then laugh at how you are so sweet and simple, compared to me, the all knowing intellectual who lowered herself to your level.
You will never be allowed to reject me. You're not even a person, you're so thick, you cannot exist without me like an addict without booze. You're thick as iron.
You don't leave me. You're not allowed to wander. You just stay still, right there where I put you.
You don't understand this? Of course not. You are but a bear of Very Little Brain.
You're nothing without me. You're lonely, homeless, empty without me to put you down.
You're too stupid to realise that me shagging whoever I want is actually better than expecting a properly committed relationship. Your wishes for monogamy are infantile and selfish. So when you come to your senses and realise how stupid you're being in rejecting me, when you come grovelling back, it will be purely on my terms.
Oh yes, by the way, I've not got laid since you dumped me. And it's Valentine's Day, so I'm feeling sorry for myself.

ManchesterGirl2 · 14/02/2023 15:19

Honestly OP, she sounds weird and up-herself. Inability to communicate clearly did not equal intellect!

Move on to someone who treats you well and communicates in an open, down to earth way.

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 14/02/2023 16:15

NeverDropYourMooncup · 14/02/2023 15:13

What's her message?

You do not set the boundaries, I set the boundaries.
You are not permitted to not think about me. I will make you think about me.
You are not allowed to give your mental energy to the stressful thing. You have to give your mental energy to me.
You are not permitted to move on in your life. I will ensure that you remain focused upon me.
I am, of course, considerably smarter than you. I know what this means, but you of little brain, haven't a fucking scooby what I'm on about, so you will have to ask me what it all means and I will then laugh at how you are so sweet and simple, compared to me, the all knowing intellectual who lowered herself to your level.
You will never be allowed to reject me. You're not even a person, you're so thick, you cannot exist without me like an addict without booze. You're thick as iron.
You don't leave me. You're not allowed to wander. You just stay still, right there where I put you.
You don't understand this? Of course not. You are but a bear of Very Little Brain.
You're nothing without me. You're lonely, homeless, empty without me to put you down.
You're too stupid to realise that me shagging whoever I want is actually better than expecting a properly committed relationship. Your wishes for monogamy are infantile and selfish. So when you come to your senses and realise how stupid you're being in rejecting me, when you come grovelling back, it will be purely on my terms.
Oh yes, by the way, I've not got laid since you dumped me. And it's Valentine's Day, so I'm feeling sorry for myself.

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What a list, @NeverDropYourMooncup!!

I agree with a lot of what you said.

I read the poem as meaning you should lay down and allow your traumas to crawl all over you (your former girlfriend in this case), and you should accept this as your lot, because this is all you have the ability to deal with right now. Couched in romantic terms of “stillness”, which I would call codependency.

The writer said these poems are is a sort of journal of her pain of the past, I would suppose the unvarnished untreated pain.

It’s very very dark.
It’s manipulative.
It’s disturbing.
Yes, I read it as a subtle put down, actually not so subtle at all.
I also think she is unconscionably projecting.

If you wanted to get someone back, would you send them a dark tragic poem?

I suspected a hint of sadism when she was putting me down with the intellectual stuff, even seemingly when she was apologising about it, she wanted to hammer that vulnerability I told her about home.

She’s doing it again now. My instincts were correct to end it so abruptly without any warnings or trying to “fix” things. My gut just wouldn’t accept going on.

There’s not much to say to something like this, it’s cowardly, underhand, and depressing. That’s what I would have had to look forward to in that relationship.

OP posts:

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 14/02/2023 16:37

Is there any possibility the poem has a positive intended meaning?

Has anyone read anything good into it?

To me it reads like torture, trying to emotionally torture me by stirring up feelings.

I suppose to the writer, it may have meant sitting with terrible feelings and accepting them. So she could move on from trauma. Although I don’t think that was the spirit it was sent in…

She knew perfectly well when sending it that there was nothing clear in this. Except maybe for an anger and bitterness and pettiness inspired feeling of returning a gift.

The things I had boxed up and returned to her were her own possessions.
To be honest though, I didn’t really have gifts of hers to return, even if the thought had occurred to me, which it didn’t and hasn’t now. Unless I would find it fun to return a small used candle.

OP posts:

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 14/02/2023 16:41

ManchesterGirl2 · 14/02/2023 15:19

Honestly OP, she sounds weird and up-herself. Inability to communicate clearly did not equal intellect!

Move on to someone who treats you well and communicates in an open, down to earth way.

Strangely enough, “weird and melancholic” was how she described herself in our earliest days… I hadn’t seen much of that and thought she was exaggerating or cracking a self deprecating joke and told her not to be so silly.

I guess the words of Maya Angelou are very true, “when people tell you who they are, believe them”.

OP posts:

Agapornis · 14/02/2023 17:06

Ignore the poem. Bring the book to the charity shop, or sell it and get yourself some flowers (it's about a fiver on ebay). Put the jumper in the wash. Go hang out with mates.

There is nothing attractive about her self-importance.

Agapornis · 14/02/2023 17:07

Oh sorry, I misread that the jumper/sweater was yours - stick it in the wash and then charity shop/ebay that also!

IScreamAtMichaelangelos · 14/02/2023 17:35

Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her. Ignore her.

Are you getting the message OP 😂

Original poster

TheRightDecisions · 14/02/2023 17:37

CrescentMoons · 14/02/2023 14:44

This. I was dating someone like me who had a phD etc and he was banging on an intellectual connection but I also liked him
/ however after 2 months it transpired that intellectual meant agreeing with him and when I had enough of this and he point how how wonderful it was he had finally found a woman with more degrees as him and he was on an intellectual level I pointed out no - he wasn’t on the same level at all / he was far far beneath it. And I made the point that probably 99% of the women that he had dated were intellectually superior as he didn’t have the emotional intelligence they had ….

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I would have loved to have seen his face! What was his reaction?

OP posts: