Yeah. And I’m also having difficulty taking this thread seriously for the same reason.
As someone on Big Bang Theory said, why can’t you have sex and then listen to NPR for a while?
Take the Mensa test. Now, talk your wife into taking it. Tell her it will be fun, and that the result of the exam doesn’t really mean anything. Just get her to take it. If one of you get into the Mensa society, that person will have all sorts of erudite folks to exchange lofty thoughts with. If neither of you get in, you can rest easy in the knowledge that your original evaluation was a little harsh.
If you both get into the club, you’ll both have a cool new thing in common. No matter what the outcome, I’ll bet you’ll have a different view of your wife than you have now. Don’t forget to come back here and post the results.
You have two children under five, and it sounds like you are in college full time, so is she also working?
At any rate, I’m just guessing as to the division of labor here, but it sounds to me like she has been taking the night shift with the children all along. Try this: Make it your business to be the last person to sleep and the first person to wake, every day, without fail. If the children need attention during the night you be the one to attend to them.
Do this exclusively for three months with out a break, and then ask yourself how much smarter she has become?
I don’t understand why everybody is doubting that the OP’s wife is actually stupid. She probably is.
Probably. She married him.
BTW, I endorse this suggestion.
Well, that’s probably half your damn problem, right there. She’s still the same person she was when you foolishly married her, but now you realize it was foolish. News flash: that’s not her fault.
It’s something I’ve never understood, this notion some guys have that it’s just so goddamn enchanting when women are dumb. Granted, I think it’s pretty enchanting when my pets are stupid, like when a 10-lb cat thinks it’s found the perfect all-concealing ambush spot behind a chair leg, so I guess I understand the sort of genial contempt that makes some lesser creature’s limitations amusing and attractive. But why on earth would anyone want to look at their partner the way I look at my pets? It just seems so…well, stupid. Eventually getting pissed off because that partner is stupid seems like the stupidest thing of all.
(Actually, I take that back. The stupidest thing of all is when women act dumber than they are because some guys find it so enchanting and eventually get pissed because said guys don’t respect them. A) Who would want such a guy? and B) What was your first clue he didn’t respect you, Sherlock? The fact he thinks it’s cute that you’re dumb?)
Look, OP, I don’t know you or your wife, so I don’t know how smart either of you truly is, how the labor is divided in your household, what kind of discussions you try to have with your wife, etc. Without knowing at least some of those things, it’s impossible to give meaningful advice so I’m not even going to try. What I will do is give you a list of things to consider that may have bearing on your situation and help clarify where you want to go from here.
–If you’re truly smart, people will notice that without you telling them or showing off so they can see how smart you are.
–No matter how smart you are, there is always, always, always, someone who makes you look like a drooling moron. How do you like for those people to treat you?
–Interest in or knowledge of a certain subject does not equal intelligence, nor does lack of interest or knowledge of any given subject equal stupidity. This one is especially important, because we’re all prone to judge people’s intelligence by what we consider important. (I’m totally sitting here judging you and thinking you can’t possibly be all Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius if you can’t even keep your there/their/they’re straight. I know it’s wrong, I know that plenty of very intelligent people don’t take the interest in spelling and grammar I do, and I know I’m as prone to mistyping things while I’m thinking about other things and not catching it on proof-read as anyone else, and yet here we are.)
–Taking care of small children is not an intellectually stimulating task for an adult. It can be rewarding and interesting and entertaining, but it’s absolutely not intellectually stimulating. If you think it is, I challenge you to watch Nick, Jr. for 5 straight hours and not feel like your brain has atrophied.
–If a person is exhausted and stressed as most young parents are and can still find the time and energy to listen to you talk about something they don’t understand and smile when they do it…well, that’s not something you’re going to find every day.
Do you treat her like she’s stupid? Do you do a mental or even actual eye-roll when she says or does something you think is stupid?
I’m not stupid, but I have worked for a couple of bosses who had the ability to make me feel like a bumbling, stumbling, inarticulate stuttering moron. I’m not exactly sure how - partly the way they spoke to me, partly the way they treated me. Perhaps it was their contempt I felt or just that they were so used to dealing with incompetent people that they just treated everyone as if they were stupid, but it was toxic. If it had gone on for long enough, I’m sure my self-esteem would have been shattered enough that I would no longer have the ability to think.
I can’t imagine what life would be like if it was my partner, not a boss, who treated me that way. Consider your part in your wife’s ‘stupidity’.
Or maybe she really is not good enough for you. In that case, set her free, pay your child support, and look for someone who is smart enough to keep up.
Your marriage will not last. The resentment you harbor will continue to grow. It’s sad that you got married too young and had kids but you did. The only thing you can do to salvage the situation is to get a divorce now. That way you and your wife will still have time to find an appropriate mate and happiness. It sucks for the kids but you being who you are leaves the situation no choice.
There are a lot of kinds of intelligence. I like to read nonfiction and learn how things work. I use a lot of specific words in my speech while my wife uses exremely general terms (referring to the mantle/fireplace as the “chimney” for example). While this bugs me sometimes the fact of the matter is she is fully bilingual while I am not, extremely observant, ambitious, and organized.
If I judged my wife’s intelligence solely on word choice (in English) I would be doing her a grave disservice. In our relationship, I humbly tell people SHE is the smart one (she’s almost finished with grad school 
). Conversely, she doesn’t think I’m dumb for not knowing Social Worker jargon inside and out. Nor does she put me down for having interests/competence in things that aren’t really relevant to day-to-day life.
bows to greatness
~VOW
That’s not the part most people are doubting.
When I see threads like these, with a brand new join date, I also have a hard time taking them seriously.
She is probably going nuts if she spends all day around two little children who probably do/talk about things that only little kids would like and then her husband comes home and starts talking about stuff that only engineers would like.
After reading the way the op talks about his wife, for some reason, I remembered the movie ‘Sleeping with the enemy’…
Okay. How do marriages work out for those who are geniuses who understandably fail to find a partner their intellectual equal?
One scenario is the Aspergerish geek who, if lucky, marries a partner with the social awareness he (more commonly) or she lacks … as discussed here.
Feynman’s first wife died early; his second divorced him. Einstein’s marriages were disasters. I’m trying to think geniuses who had happy marriages and other than the Curies (both brilliant, her perhaps more than him) and possibly the Pasteurs.
We’ve apparently covered this before … Is a large IQ disparity an obstacle to a happy marriage/relationship?
My gf is not stupid. However, she is no good at math and is also about 8 years younger than I am, so there is an experience gap in appreciating things like why the stock market is so interesting, and also a math gap. But she’s great otherwise and a good balance for my own shortcomings.
What I have done is made friends with some guys with degrees in astrophysical engineering. They understand computer games, modern physics, XYCD cartoons, the tech industry and so on. She isn’t thrilled to hang out with all of us together, but I can scratch my nerd itch without depending on her to do it.
We share plenty of other interests like politics, religion, social questions, etc. We read books and articles out loud to each other which, over time, gives us more and more material we can be ‘on the same page’ about. We do non-brainy things together, like hiking, shopping, and fucking. I also try to gently discourage her from watching so much tv, which IMHO will rot anyone’s brain.
A couple thoughts. You are currently engaged in intellectually stimulating and creative activities and she is not; she’s at home taking care of small children. Your realities are completely different. It may have nothing to do with intelligence per se.
Let’s assume she is intellectually inferior. If you want to not continue to resent her, I suggest you help her get involved in things she’s got a talent for, and observe her mastering stuff you wouldn’t have a chance in hell of learning. Maybe she can sing better than you, or play the ukelele, or serve a volleyball. There’s something she can do better than you, and you both would benefit from becoming more aware of her strengths.
I’m a smart person. I think my husband might be at least a little smarter than me, but we really click on an intellectual level. But there are some days he comes home and wants to talk about advanced statistical analysis or Excel syntax or whatever, and my eyes glaze over, not because I’m not capable of understanding but because I have no desire to understand. But I rarely say, ‘‘Bored now, next subject.’’ I smile and nod, because it’s the polite thing to do.
How often do you talk about stuff she’s interested in? She might come alive when she actually cares about the subject at hand.
Very true - I know some people most would consider dumb that are freaking geniuses in their hobby areas. General knowledge even might not be interesting to them, but talk to them about something that excites them and they go to the library, break out Wikipedia, etc…