When I say my wife is stupid, I mean she just isn’t all that bright, ya know? I’m not Einstein or anything, I’m in my senior year of college for electrical engineering, so I’m of fairly high intelligence. We’ve been married for about five years, and in the beginning it was fine and wasn’t an issue. Over time I’ve gotten to where I wish she could even understand the vocabulary I use. She is a sweetheart though, she sits and listens and smiles and everything but I’m tired of talking to a wall. Sometimes I wish I could have waited and tried to get a smart educated woman from college, someone who could actually discuss things with me. My wife is insecure about her intelligence to boot, she’s afraid of me finding some smart pretty girl and leaving her, which makes me feel even more guilty about everything. You see five years ago I was a partier. My wife was, and still is, a partier. I still like to get down but I’ve also grown up too, she is the same.
Basically, to keep this from getting any longer, my wife is sorta stupid and its no longer cute to me (I used to think it was adorable). Her irresponsibility has gone from something that was exciting and fun to problematic. If there weren’t kids involved I’d have already said bye, but there are two beautiful kids who don’t deserve to have divorced parents cause one mentally in stimulating for the other.
Get her to join the Dope. There are a lot of intelligent people here and people often use sophisticated vocabulary that I have to use the online dictionary sometimes. She can do the same and strengthen her vocabulary while becoming more knowledgeable in general by participating on this board.
A college friend of mine was considerably smarter than his wife, and he made sure she and everyone else knew it. She was always apologetic about her “stupidity” and I never understood why. She eventually went to college to become a respiratory therapist. She worked hard to pass her classes, but she did it. She wasn’t stupid, but because she wasn’t as smart as her husband (who I’ve since come to regard as a bit of an ass) she always acted like an inferior. Frankly, I thought she deserved better, but they’ve been together for 38 years, so I guess they found something that worked.
As to what you can do - make sure you’re not beating her down. Encourage her to take some classes in something that interests her. Maybe you can watch something on TV that you’d both find interesting - preferably not “reality” TV. My husband and I watch a lot of the “How do they do it” shows and programs on astronomy. There are also some historical shows we enjoy together. Surely a smart guy like you can find something that she’s interested in and encourage her to learn more about it, whether it’s the wives of Henry VIII or life on a coral reef or any number of topics.
Of course, if she doesn’t want to grow up, there’s not much you can do about it.
Is she not attending college because you are and she needs to stay home and take care of the kids? If so, it could be entirely fixable. If you are headed for a job that will pay for her to go to school and day care for the kids she could up her education in whatever field works for her. What are her plans, assuming you haven’t already decided to leave as soon as you’ve graduated and nailed your first engineering job?
5 year itch, you married too young (apparently while still in high school unless you skipped a year between it and college).
And ftr - you really don’t sound all that intelligent.
Show her this thread - let all her insecurities ring true - sounds like you probably help to re-inforce them - and enjoy the rest of your miserable life.
My first impulse is that you need to get over yourself.
The second is that you have to figure out if the two of you are going to be compatible long term; can you grow together in ways that keep a marriage successful?
If not then you not doing those kids a favor by giving them parents who will end up hating each other, one because he thinks he is better/smarter than his wife, and the other because she is married to a self-important jerk who thinks she is a dim bulb and does not appreciate her.
My first marriage slowly ran out of gas because my wife was a wonderful woman, of well above average intelligence, who simply didn’t care to take her brain off idle. For well over a decade I tried to get her to extend her vocabulary, get interested in things above sitcoms and drop her assumption that “she just wasn’t smart enough” to think any higher.
I don’t have any useful advice in this regard. It comes down to what you can tolerate, how much change you think is possible, and whether or not you have the dedication to keep working at a difficult situation.
I don’t know what to think of the OP, but this is a legit issue and something people should consider in any relationship. For me personally, I’ve dated women who weren’t all that smart but were nice people–and that can be fun and harmless but I would never let a relationship with someone like that turn into a marriage and to be fair you should probably keep such a relationship very casual.
We all have different criteria in what is important in a mate. I know many happily married couples with large “intelligence imbalances”, but it can also be a common cause of relationships falling apart. For some people it isn’t so important your partner be your intellectual equal, maybe it’s more important than they’re caring, empathetic, have similar interests (that’s harder with large intelligence discrepancies, but not impossible) and etc.
But if the OP is becoming an electrical engineer and is trying to talk to his wife about engineering topics, that’s not really a sign his wife isn’t smart but that he’s too socially inept to realize occupational jargon isn’t something you share with people outside your field and it doesn’t make people stupid to not understand it.
This is my first post here, so be kind. My thoughts on this are that I’m really surprised that you married your wife, in the first place, if her intellect isn’t on par with yours. I seldom date or surround myself with people who don’t want to learn. and if our intellect is so different that I have trouble listening to the person without wanting to either teach them or trying to shut them out, then it’s not worth it to me.
What I do appreciate is people who might not have the education but are willing to learn. I totally love that!
My wife is quite intelligent, but early in our marriage she had a tendency to act stupid. It was related to some insecurity about her intelligence. It made for some difficult times, but eventually she got over it. It’s all a matter of how important it is to you to have your wife be an intellectual equal. Which doesn’t really mean equal intelligence, just a common interest in nerdy brainy type stuff. You and she can surely find other outlets for your individual interests, marriages don’t have to be about people having everything in common. For instance my wife loves the arts, and goes to museums and plays and the like, yet shows no interest in hobbies I have like building potato guns and burning stuff and blowing stuff up. People who know us say that we complement each other with our differences.
As a way to amend my first post, only eccentrics pointedly use intellectual parity in partnering. Normal people marry for other reasons. Just some things I noticed in the OP:
At your senior year in college, you’re just starting to peak intellectually. That’s the usual case. But it’s a strange stage to be in when you’re already married for five years.
Your post is incomplete. You haven’t told us the good things about your wife. What about her looks, her personality, home making skills?
Is she better than you in some things?
Now, let’s talk about you. I take it you’ve tried working before. Did you ever experience being pulled down or cut to size by someone not as smart as you? Did you ever fail in the common sense or experience department?
Last, how’s your experience with people smarter than you? Could you have married one such?
$5 says your wife is on a different message board right now, complaining about how boring it is listening to you drone on about engineering jargon, and she tries to smile and look interested, but she’s one theoretical physicist joke away from braining you with a monkey wrench.
A quote for the OP, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” - Socrates
Just something to think about. Honestly, I was wondering if another poster could further explain this quote because I don’t really get it either. But it seems relevant to the thread, so I decided to bring it up.
Two problems with the OP. One, calling your wife stupid on a message board is a deep sign of disrespect. Even if no one knows who she is, it still shows how you feel about her that you don’t mind saying these things.
Two, it’s not an intelligence problem unless she’s mentally challenged. She doesn’t understand your vocabulary? Are you Cormac McCarthy? I have a law degree and everyone understands my vocabulary.
If your kids are not getting hurt, and your wife is a decent person (a “sweetheart” you said), then what is the problem? Intelligence is a means to an end. It would help if you told us what she’s not doing that you would like her to do that requires her to be smarter?
It will make sense when you’re in grad school…a minute before you take your comprehensive exam.
But it boils down to this: every time you learn something new, your awareness of how much you don’t know expands. You get one question answered (“Why is the sky blue?”) only to find another question waiting for you (“How do we know all colors aren’t the result of Rayleigh scattering?”)
You get both smarter and more humble at the same time.