I also think there’s a threshold here. As one of the few who have geniuinely said that I couldn’t do a long-term relationship with someone who was stupid, I’ll clarify a bit.
I would personally need someone who is at least sharp. No need for genius level IQ or anything…just smart enough to have a quick wit, or understand most major concept stuff. Even more important to me is someone who enjoys learning…I couldn’t marry someone who had no problem remaining woefully ignorant on a wide range of topics. Again, that’s me.
This post makes sense to me. I think different people are looking for different things in a relationship. I’m definitely the intellectual nerdy type who only falls for smart people, but that isn’t how it’s going to work for everyone. What makes a good marriage isn’t that the two people are the same, but that they’re compatible. That they like each other and get along, and are good at being life partners for each other - supporting each other without enabling each other, cooperating and compromising, communicating well.
I’ve observed that the combination of having some things in common and some things that are different can be a good basis for a relationship. Being too much alike or too far apart makes it tough.
One thing to consider is that one partner might have more I.Q. type intelligence, and the other might have more social or emotional intelligence. They can help cover each other’s weak points and make a good pairing.
My wife is beautiful, caring, and a wonderful mother, but of average intelligence.
She got into state college, I had a full scholarship (well, 4) to Vanderbilt among others.
Fortunately for me she’s a great shot and lets me see her naked now and then.
September will be 23 years.
My dad, who was a very smart guy, married a rather plain-Jane dim bulb because (I realize now) he wanted someone who would worship him and do his bidding without question. (I won’t go into some of the things he subjected her too, even though he was not physically violent.)
What really pissed me off 40+ years ago was that she had a really HOT (and I mean smokin’!) sister who was a schoolteacher. I was hitting puberty at the time, and would have given anything to have shacked up with her.
What a choice! Of the two, I know who I would have chosen, hands down.
Intelligent Wife/Dumb husband - snowball’s chance in hell.
Hopefully things are changing with the young-en’s these days but from what I’ve seen women cannot seem to stay with a man that she finds ‘inferior’ to her in some important way - usually intelligence or making money.
The most heartbreaking couple I ever saw was a couple that married right out of college and he became a teacher and she went to law school, became a lawyer and her career took off financially.
I was friends with her and she just could not…could not get over the fact that he was ‘less successful’ then her (never mind that he was a fine teacher and doing well in his career). He was a great guy and great for her and, the kicker is, she KNEW this.
I remember having dinner with her after work when she said she made up her mind and said she was going to ask for a divorce. She said that she just could not respect a man that was less intelligent and less successful than her. I wasn’t so sure that he was on either of those points unless you only count more successful as meaning makes more money, but kept my opinion to myself.
She found herself a different guy but never seemed really happy/in love anymore and, even to this day, still brings up her ex-husband/memories in positive ways.
In that regard, Intellectual-Anything except another intellectual will never work. And they better get along otherwise because they won’t have any friends.
Ditto on multiple types of intelligence. If both partners have more than one type of intelligence; if each recognizes and respects the other partner’s type of inteligence, they have a good shot at success, even if their types of inteligence don’t overlap. However, once the sex runs out, as it does with long-term partnerships every so often, it’s good to have some overlap for the sake of conversation.
In any couple there will always be things at which one does better than the other. That is not a problem. But viewing a relationship like a competition, or having rules such as “the husband must always make more money than the wife,” that IS a problem.
One of the nicest women I’ve ever met was the American engineer who came to work on a process improvement project in the factory where I was working as a lab tech. Her husband was a plumber. Nobody questioned the pairing and people thought it was super cool that he had come over with her and their two little kids, choosing to be the housekeeper for that one year abroad. Thing is, we know she had a bigger degree than he did; we know he was taller than she was; but we have no idea which things each of them was smarter at and which things each was more skilled at.
Differences in intellectual interests or even intelligence aren’t a problem in a relationship.
One partner having contempt for the other is. If a person thinks their partner is intellectually beneath them, they will have a problem. If they think of it as the person being good at other things (kindness, optimism, street smarts, physical skills) they will be fine.
So, it’s a matter of framing. When my now husband and I met, I was in graduate school and he was working right out of high school. He isn’t into formal education and isn’t good at SAT type things, but he’s not “stupid” - he’s intelligent in other ways. He’s very creative, he has a natural instinct for his physical surroundings - he’s aware and perceptive and has a fast reaction time (was faster when we met, like super reflexes, but we’re getting old). I’m perfectly fine with some people thinking he’s stupid because he can’t spell or do higher math, because I know they’re wrong. Since he’s spent so much time with me and also because he likes to read (he reads seven or eight novels a month usually) he has a great vocabulary, so very few people seem to draw that conclusion anymore anyway.
So I’d say, it’s possible for an outsider to look at a couple and think the woman is highly intelligent and the man is rather stupid, and have the couple work out. But if the couple themselves think that, then no, it won’t work. Big difference.
My brother in law is a full-on legit genius (genetic engineer) and his wife is the least intellectually curious person I know. What’s more depressing is that she’s a schoolteacher. I shudder to think of little minds that she’s closed. She’s not stupid, just not curious, which is so depressing.
Anyway, they seem happy enough with the relationship. I think he likes to have a place to turn his mind off and talk about celebrity marriages and cute outfits for the kids. I’ve tried to talk with him about his work and you can tell it’s painful for him to dumb it down enough for me to follow. It must be something like trying to teach a dog to read for him.
One spouse having a more prestigious job isn’t a smart/dumb dichotomy, though. There’s no reason a plumber can’t be smart - indeed, I’d suggest it ain’t as intellectually simple a job as some people may believe.
In terms of raw intelligence, I don’t know that it’s that important. My grandfather was very, very intelligent; my grandmother wasn’t stupid but she wasn’t a genius. They were happily married, completely devoted to each other, for 62 years.
But then, could I be with someone who I felt was a lot dumber than me? (Granted, there aren’t many people that dumb.) I don’t think so… but then I don’t know. Who knows? There’s more to life than smarts.
Hey, some intellectuals are extremely annoying to be around-and I’m not one interested in visiting modern art museums. Can two different people have a good relationship-certainly, as long as they agree on the important stuff( food, sex, kids, sex, sex…)
Obviously, it’s going to be very person dependent. That said, the description of his wife is a description of a person that would make me go crazy. I’d much rather have someone who is of average intelligence but intellectually curious (great term), than a smart person who isn’t. I find it extremely hard to be friends with people like that, let alone life partners. Perhaps it’s snobbish of me, but a thirst for knowledge is such a core part of my personality and I have a very hard time dealing with people who don’t, at least in some small way, share a little of that. It doesn’t need to be even remotely on the same level as my appetite for knowledge, it just has to be present.
I used to teach. Lack of intellectual curiosity is a COMMON trait among teachers IME. Comes from the low prestige of the ‘profession’ attracting lower caliber college students into the profession.
phreesh brings up a good point. Maybe the real differences I’ve seen are better described as different levels of intellectual curiousity.
As for Blinks example, I know quite a few couples where the woman is substantially higher-earning than the man. I’ve only seen it be a problem when she wants to stay home with children and they face a major reduction in lifestyle. I don’t think I’ve seen a case where they ended up deciding for her to stay home.
That’s a decision that men have bene making for hundreds of years though. . . so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
