If your partner is lovely but thick as mince, how’s it going?

[Shan5474]

The list of attributes I look for in a partner includes things like being warm, kind, caring etc. Intelligence has never actually really featured very high on the list. I’d choose someone lovely but dim over someone OK but clever every time. Obviously the whole package is preferable but no one’s truly perfect.

If you love someone who’s great but silly, naive or downright daft, how’s it going? Do you get frustrated or is it easy to overlook because they’re such a great person?

I spent far too long with a guy who could spell and punctuate beautifully and whose grammar was impeccable. Unfortunately, he didn't know The King's Speech was based on real life events and had worryingly little knowledge about anything outside his own sphere of interest (cars). Perfectly well educated, just absolutely zero intellectual curiosity about ANYTHING and absolutely zero emotional intelligence either (I think the two might be linked). Get him on the subject of 1970's Fords and he was Mastermind though.

So not stupid stupid. But very very very narrow of focus. No conversation. No interest in anything. If I'd been a 1970s Ford Cortina however, we'd still have been together.

And there's no inverse correlation between them, anyway -- it's not as though someone's level of 'nice' decreases as their level of 'clever' increases, or vice versa.

And that hoary old myth you see so often on here, that a high level of academic intelligence is compensated for by a low level of common sense, or a chaotic life, is just as mythic.

I know large numbers of academic high achievers, with multiple postgraduate degrees and award-winning research careers, and they're all still able to function at a high level in the other areas of their lives, from, you know, dressing themselves to maintaining relationships to doing DIY and looking after their kids.

It’s the sense of humour that I need in a partner. So I guess I would rather be with a funny bricklayer than an unfunny lawyer. I have turned down otherwise decent partners before because I knew the jokes would be thin on the ground.

For some of us I believe that raw intelligence, in the form of IQ for example, is not high in the list of qualities that we look for in a relationship. Emotional intelligence, which is different, along with kindness, adaptability, determination and other character traits outweigh any perceived lack of IQ.

We should be careful in dismissing someone based on them not being as intelligent as ourselves as they may bring many other qualities to a relationship that we are lacking.

I couldn't date somebody who was dim. I learned that as a teenager when I discovered the boy I was dating was, in the OP's words, thick as mince.

Intelligence is one of the most important qualities in a man, as long as he has a practical side too. Thankfully my wonderful DH is both seriously smart and practical.

You have to have similar levels of intelligence/intellectual curiosity and at least some of the same interests, or at the very least, a passing interest in the things your partner is interested in. Education is largely irrelevant in most cases although it can be subjectively important for some people (in the same way that for some people, office based "careers" are important even if someone is making the same money as a tradesperson or whatever).

I realised a long time ago that one of the reasons I'll never be close to SIL or FIL is because while they are both very nice people, they're not particularly smart. MIL irritates me a LOT at times and isn't always a very nice person, but I hugely admire her fierce intelligence and often wonder what she would have achieved if she'd been born in a different time and place. If I had to choose one of the three of them to spend an afternoon with, MIL would win every time because conversation would never flag.

Well, yes, you want to be around someone who is interested in and informed about the world outside the Ford Cortina, and who is capable of being articulate/acute/amusing about it!

Shallowness is also a turn off. Plenty of people are intelligent enough to get by - they can work, pay their taxes, and so on. But they have no opinions on anything. My ex was like that. He wasn’t stupid. (He had a degree in sports science.) But he was boring. He had no depth, no imagination, no curiosity. If I read something in the paper about, say, the discovery of a dinosaur skull, or the launch of space telescope, or whatever, he’d just stare at me as if to say “why are you telling me this?” Apart from the rugby scores, nothing interested him. He had no aesthetic sense either. He wasn’t moved by a sunset or the falling snow. I never heard him say anything was beautiful or ugly. And he had no interest in people.

There is something sexy and cool about confident people with minds and thoughts of their own. With men especially, I like it when they don’t follow the crowd, when they think for themselves. My ex was macho and good-looking, but simple. I think that’s the best word for him - not stupid, just simple. I suspect that’s why he loved rugby. He could lose himself in the team.

I think there's too many difference types of intelligence to say one way or another.

I'm not fussed about exam results but emotional intelligence and good common sense are really important to me.

Also, the ability to get a joke.

But doesn't a shared sense of humour require a level of intelligence? I wouldn't want to have to explain why something is funny, if we were watching a political satire show, and the other person had no knowledge of current affairs and didn't get any of it.

I think bricklayer vs lawyer is a straw man here, though. I'm an academic, with multiple postgraduate degrees and a lot of research awards, married to someone else with multiple postgraduate degrees, and my BIL, who is a bricklayer who left school at 14, definitely fits my criteria for 'clever'. He's enormously curious about the world in a very good-humoured way, is a funny, observant conservationalist, and is a total delight to talk over a film or series with. He's also a mine of information about local history.

I think that it very much depends on if you envisage your set up and relationship in a particular way.
I don't need a mirror image in terms of hobbies and interests, nor do I need someone who earns a set amount .
I got together young with my husband and have had a 25+ relationship.
I noticed similar morals and how we handled money. That and sexual attraction was what was important to me.
If I want to talk at length about other stuff in particular I've got friends and book club and also my children. He also can geek out at work and his friends and the kids too.

I think that rather than intelligence, morals, reliability and your attitude to money are bigger indicators of whether a relationship will last.

In my experience stupid is amusing at first, then becomes extremely irritating.

My husband is intelligent. No degree or anything but it is obvious through conversing with him etc that he is intelligent. He has been a musician and reads music and I am lost when he goes into detail! He was not exposed to serious conversation with his ex wife as she just never talked about anything serious. It was always just oh the kids did this, where shall we go on holiday etc. He said he was glad that his brain was stimulated when he met me because I listened to him when he wanted to talk. I love talking about the world and what is happening. I love learning about different things. I have a degree myself and I don't feel a partner needs to necessarily have one.

Stupidity is a turn off for me and it’s not necessarily related to education and knowledge.
They could be intelligent but had never been to school. How do we define intelligence ?
To me it’s the thinking process/ problem solving/ being “on the ball” rather than slow and a bit dim/ a numpty.

Middle ground is best obviously.

Hmm think it all depends how it is deployed! Dim but also very sure of how right they are about things and closed to learning - hell no.
Not academic but curious and self aware - you can grow together, that’s fine I would say!

I absolutely expect everyone to be cleverer than me.
I can't stand stupidity in other people!

Dim, as in unable to have an opinion of their own but constantly take opinion of others, unthinkingly. They don’t know what to say when challenged on an argument because it’s not their informed opinion in the first place.

I knew someone like this and it was so annoying !
For some reason he valued and took on opinions of doctors ( high status in his mind) and when asked to expound what he meant he’d look confused and change the subject !

Not attractive !

My partner seems to cope ok with me just as you describe 😂

DH is about the same intellectual level as me, and I'm not going anywhere any time soon, but if I were, then I'd prefer nice-but-dim over big-headed smartarse any day.

But why couldn't he initiate some form of more 'serious' or wide-ranging conversation with his ex-wife? Women aren't responsible for applying brain stimulation to men who are too passive to do it for themselves. With the internet at your fingertips, you've got vast, joyous amounts of information on everything from the mating habits of the Javan rhinocerous to the history of major art thefts to your MP's entire voting record (OK, that may not be joyous) to learning Xhosa to the audition tapes of actors up for a really unlikely part/when they were children to livestreams from webcams all over the world.

It's not like in Jude the Obscure where access to knowledge is locked away inside elite educations.

Not thick as such, but completely lacking in ambition. Just wanted to play golf or walk his mum’s dog.

The result? It completely killed my sex drive and we broke up.

But that's a completely false equation. You don't get nastier the cleverer you get, just as you don't get nicer the stupider you are. There's no relationship between intelligence and niceness.

I couldn't be with someone I didn't think was intelligent. I would end up looking down on them, and that can't be healthy.

I could have written this 😂 🙄

But what if they were the absolute nicest person you’ve ever met, treated you amazingly (and they were physically attractive) but not very bright? Would you ditch them for someone who was clever and also hot but just treated you OK and was an alright level of niceness?

That's never your full range of choices though, is it? In that situation, I'd stay single! I absolutely would not be in a relationship with someone dim (however nice or good-looking they were) or someone who only treated me ok.