Intellectual comparability- is it essential?

[Tarcietiger]

I’m being a bit nosy and wondering how vital people find having a comparable level of intelligence to their partner to be.

Do you think a relationship can work if one partner is much more intelligent than the other? If not, why not? If yes how?

Have you had experience of being with someone who is measurably more or less intelligent than you or does that rarely happen due to the laws of attraction?

Personally I am married to someone who is academically way (way) brighter than me. I am a college drop out with dyslexia who struggled at school, he has a 1st class MSc and Masters degree from a top uni and is a high level techie. I think we have equal levels of common sense. We are happily married but I do find myself zoning out when he tries to explain things like quantum physics to me, In contrast he finds small talk really hard and hates illogical questions like ‘would you rather have a tail or a hump?’ If I want to have a gossip or talk about daft things I tend to do it with other people or I’ll risk his eyes glazing over and feel like we haven’t really got into the spirit of what I’d hoped to discuss 😂. We have a shared sense of humour though and a similar sense of style / politics / moral code which has made our relationship sustainable.

I think I would get frustrated by you "zoning out" if I were your husband rhapsodising about quantum physics, especially if he was doing it in a way that was accessible to a layperson.

This "zoning out" implies limited intellectual curiosity and capacity and a lack of respect for something that he clearly is excited about and wants to share.

I'm afraid I would feel quite scornful of a partner who consistently did this whenever the intellectual load put them out of their comfort zone.

@MadameMonk I really like the way you describe it. I've been struggling to articulate why I find intellectual ability so essential.

I think some posters are reacting against the idea of your partner just being hard work emotionally - having an obsession with discussing abstractions all the time or correcting you in some kind of snooty way. Or very serious. like "deep" political talks every minute.
In reality to me being clever is about spotting connections between things, creating original ideas, observing the ironies and absurdities in life and basically being full of joy to the max. Creativity is intelligence. Knowing how the world works is intelligence. Speed of thought and critical thought are part of it..

And sex, omg, for me it's wholly about finding the right fantasy or idea to share with your partner as you do it... I couldn't imagine fancying someone who wasn't great with language.

For me it's all as vital as kindness.

Anyone, regardless of their intelligence, is capable of being boring, kind or charming.

I do think that if you find a man who is proud of his wife being more intelligent than he is, and is genuinely unthreatened, then you have found a good’un.

I think you have probably answered your own question. You are not having the kind of conversations that you want with him and have to go elsewhere. There Is a mismatch and you dont think you are on the same wavelength

If his chat makes you zone out and your chat makes his eyes glaze over, I'm afraid there's only one solution.

Sex. And plenty of it.

By the way, quantum physics is actually a great leveller. Nobody understands it. People become acquainted with the rules and the maths involved, but nobody really gets it. I think that's important to bear in mind. It's also possible to be completely resistant to the charms of it and still be an intelligent person.

@FuckingFabulous

Yes, it's important. But it's far more difficult to live with someone who thinks they are a genius when they're not. My ex thought he was a lot cleverer than he actually is. I expect he still does. There's only so many times you can cringe before you start going cold.

For example, a friend and I were talking about an assignment she'd just set for her class on Romeo and Juliet. He scoffed and said, "Bit of a cop out, setting an English assignment on a Leo DiCaprio film." She laughed like he was joking but I knew he meant it. To diffuse the tension when she slowly realised he meant it, I said, "I would hope it's about the Shakespeare play more than the film." He smiled all cocky and sympathetically said to my friend that I was obviously confused, because Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.

Love this!

@OutwiththeOutCrowd

If his chat makes you zone out and your chat makes his eyes glaze over, I'm afraid there's only one solution.

Sex. And plenty of it.

By the way, quantum physics is actually a great leveller. Nobody understands it. People become acquainted with the rules and the maths involved, but nobody really gets it. I think that's important to bear in mind. It's also possible to be completely resistant to the charms of it and still be an intelligent person.

Love this reply @OutwiththeOutCrowd

My fave comment for the month!

I used to be an intellectual snob. I was wowed by men's academic accomplishments, and paid less attention than I should have to other things, like whether they were kind and considerate. When I started dating again after divorce, I quickly realised that I didn't want to play that game any more. I didn't want to be considered "suitably qualified" by other academic snobs, so I was very vague about my qualifications on dating profiles and wrote that I was more interested in men's personalities than their qualifications. Because after nearly half a century I now know there are plenty of fascinating, intelligent and thoughtful people out there who have very few qualifications, for lots of reasons.
I've taught at a Russell Group university, but I'm currently having a great time with someone who left school at 16. We are never, ever short of things to talk about.

Long may it continue!

For me it was important - I like intellectual curiosity (not necessarily IQ, although sometimes they come together) and interesting conversation about big stuff, I'll let DH explain stuff about his niche science job and he asks questions about my industry and we discuss politics a lot etc. But we're also very silly and frequently have entire conversations based on a ridiculous premise ("If you were a fish and I was a crab would we still be friends?" was a recent one) and have an entire basically made up language centred around bringing each other food and/or attention. We take Love Island and our gaming hobbies as seriously as we do anything else...

What I'm saying is - yes, but not by itself.

I've dated people where we only did part of that (either academics who thought anything 'unserious' wasn't worth it, or less intellectually-minded people who thought I was overly serious), and it wasn't enough for me. I personally need someone to be able to do both - match me on curiosity and interest in big 'boring' topics, but not think that anything else is lesser.

I think it depends on the kind of intelligence.

Analytical, logical, dispassionate then IMO it doesn't matter so much. For example, my very clever cousin who is a lawyer is very happily married to a man who isn't as intelligent than her (he has other qualities). They get on extremely well.

Creative intelligence I think needs people of a similar level.

It matters a lot to me. I don’t think it objectively matters, it’s a personal thing how important it is.

For me it helps if they are smarter, so I can learn from them, but overall it helps to be fairly close range

I don't think educational attainment always reflects intelligence. I am, on paper, far more qualified than my husband, but I wouldn't say he's less intelligent than I am. We have very different areas of interest and expertise, but we are compatible in that we're both curious and interested in each other. Neither of us zones out when the other is talking about their work or something they're passionate about, and we enjoy learning from each other.

I think intelligence isn't the only thing. My late husband was intelligent but didn't go to university - by choice - and then got a chip on his shoulder about it in later life. He had zero self esteem and expressed that by putting me down for having gone to university, researching when I had an issue that needed addressing around parenting, that sort of thing. It did a lot of damage. But it wasn't his intelligence that was the issue, the difference between us wasn't that big - it was all about his attitude.

For me it’s the single most important thing.

I need someone intelligent and interesting. My boyfriend is very intelligent, top grades from a top university but he is also interested and knowledgeable about many things.

My ex is intelligent but he isn't interesting to talk to.

I briefly dated someone who is lovely but not as intelligent as me and I would get bored with his conversation.

But also we all have subjects that we are more or less interested in and that's fine. That works for friends too. I have a few friends who I zone out when they are talking in depth about a reality show or camping gear. I'm sure they zone me out when I bang on about stuff they're not interested in too.