Can two romantic partners enjoy long-term happiness if there’s a notable disparity in their IQ (or overall intelligence, if you prefer)?
Some qualifications: I’m not talking about relationships between those of at-least-average intelligence and developmentally-disabled persons. That’s quite a different topic and one that pushes legal and emotional buttons. My presumption is that both partners in this hypothetical relationship are capable of managing their own lives with no outside assistance and can do more complex work than developmentally-disabled people typically do. I’ll even rule out IQs between 70 and 84, as “borderline intellectual functioning” falls in the penumbra of mild retardation and “normal” intelligence.
Let’s assume that one partner has an IQ around 90 and the other has one in the 140s. I know that IQ scores are controversial and that IQ isn’t an absolute indicator of intelligence. But let’s still say that there’s a disparity between the partners’ general cognitive abilities that most people would notice if they knew the couple well (e.g. differences in abstract thinking).
A large part of the relationship’s prospects for success or failure is contingent on the partners themselves, certainly. What are your experiences with situations like this (or that you believe are like this)?
A friend of mine is super, super smart. In first grade they tested him in the 160’s (yes they used to give IQ tests to us way back then. Mine was 136 I believe).
He failed at relationship after relationship until he dated a woman who is a bit…slow. Not bad or anything but definitely not the brightest bulb.
They hit it off and have been married ever since. No, it is not a one-sided relationship either…she gives as good as she gets
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I too had problems with relationships when younger but I attribute my being a teacher for most of it. However, I was attracted to smart, educated women. One time, a coworker told me (with profuse apologies if she offended) that I should go date a secretary. I blew it off but I always remembered what she said and so I tried it.
I am remarried - but both my ex-wife and current wife are high school grads/no college.
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A coworker of mine has a PH.D. and is flaming up the courts rising up in the world. She makes GOBS of money. 3 years ago she met a guy and married him. Again, high school and no college. Met him - not a bright bulb but they get along wonderfully.
Education/smarts is overrated.
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I do admit that is sucks sometimes to not really be able to talk about some things with my wife. However, its not as bad as you think because she has many other positive qualities that I just love
I’d say it’s an obstacle, though not one that can’t be overcome. There is always the risk of either partner becoming bored, or the less intelligent partner feeling minimized or controlled, but that really depends on how the SOs conduct themselves. If they have a lot of interests in common, and can appreciate one another’s perspective on those interests, I don’t see why it has to be a problem.
Remember, IQ tests are not the be all, end all scale of intelligence. The partner with an IQ of 90 might, for example, have a great eye for beauty, or a natural inclination towards music, or have a talent for cheering people up when they feel sad. I can’t imagine a walk through a beautiful park with someone I love would be greatly enhanced if they also had a strong grasp on the process of photosynthesis.
I guess it depends on the person. I am always really tickled by people who make very subtle jokes and puns, and can pick up on the ones I make. I don’t think I could date someone of significantly lower IQ than me, because my sense of humor would go over their head all the time. Plus I worry that they might be into stupid shit I despise, like jersey shore and mtv and soap operas. But then I’m kind of a snob.
I don’t have high physical standards, but I do have very high intellectual standards. If I have to be single because I’m too picky, well, I’m okay with that.
I hate to say this, but I think it will work out better if it’s the woman who’s the dumb one. Men, even men who think they’re evolved, sensitive, New-Age males, don’t like being obviously less astute than their mates.
Would it have been funny if Gracie was the smart one and George was the dolt?
I have no idea how it would work in a same-sex relationship.
ETA: Oh, and the test has nothing to do with it. You don’t really need a test to know if you’re smarter than someone else.
What happens is that some women are ultra-nurturers and want to take care of their spouse in an almost motherly way. And some geeky guys seek this out because they need someone to help them in this way. Not all geeks are really smart and not all ultra-nurturers are non-intellectual, but it often works out this way.
I can’t see the reverse happening too often, though.
Yes and/or no. Some people could do well with someone very similar in any characteristic, others would do better with someone very different. Some could do well either way. I don’t think there’s any general conclusion to be made here.
No data here. All I can do is say it reminds me of a joke I can’t quite remember. Adam asks God a series of questions about Eve. ‘‘Why did you make her so soft?’’ ‘‘So you would love her.’’ After several similar questions and the same answer, Adam asks ‘‘Why did you make her so dumb?’’ ‘‘So she would love you.’’
I know three couples where the brains are largely on one side, two where the man is smarter, one where it’s the woman. It’s not something I’d want, but it seems to work for those three couples (two of them better than the third–the smart woman one is a little rockier).
My experience leads me to say no. I dated a girl in college who was probably one of the dumbest people I ever met. She got good grades in school, but her common sense and general awareness of the world around her was severly lacking. I’m confident that, despite her decent academic performance, her IQ would have been abysmal. It just got way too annoying. We couldn’t carry a meaningful conversation, she rarely got my humor, we didn’t share a lot of interests…it just wasn’t good.
I know two couples, in both cases the wife has advanced degrees and is very academically minded (both were attorneys and had clerked for federal judges), while their husbands only had a high school education without any desire for more.
Both have happy marriages as far as I can tell. One of the couples has been together since she met him in a feed store when she was 19. They are now in their mid-30s.
They just seem to clash, personality-wise, more than the other two couples. She tends to be a person who doesn’t tolerate much bullshit and he’s rather full of bullshit, so…
It’s important to keep in mind that education is not the same as intelligence.
Dating someone less educated is not that hard to do because there are many intelligent people who for one reason or another never received advanced education.
My own relationship is an example of an education disparity, but NOT an IQ disparity. I have an advanced degree, whereas my boyfriend was a security guard when we met. I do believe that we are on the same intellectual level based on the conversations we have, our writing/vocabulary skills, plus the fact that both of us had IQ tests performed as children and our scores were comparable. We can relate to each other very well and it’s not a big deal that he is less educated because he is very well-read and well-informed about current events.
I think that in many circumstances an IQ disparity is a barrier to a relationship, ESPECIALLY if the woman is the smarter one.
Look at the stereotype of a 1950s housewife: A passive, sweet dimwit.
So, yes, if all you want is someone to raise the kids and clean the house, sure, a lot of guys would be okay with marrying a woman who was a dingbat.
Perhaps there are cases of women who want a husband who will just do grunt work around the house. However I think most women expect to be able to have conversations with their husband. That would be quite a challenge for a guy who isn’t capable of comprehending half the things his wife is talking about. I think a smart woman would feel very lonely in a relationship with a dimwit man.
My very brief experiment as a young woman with trying to date a guy who was very pretty but also clearly rather stupid also seems to fit with this perception I have. It just doesn’t work very well when women try to date guys who aren’t on their level.
Intelligence, as in raw brain-processing ability, actually ranks pretty far down in what makes a compatable couple.
Assuming both partners are reasonably capable of functioning as adults, shared values, common goals and personalities that mesh all beat intellect hands down in making a successful partnership.
The less-intelligent person may well balance the more-intelligent in other ways: introvert/extrovert, optimist/pessimist, task-focus/strategic thinking, etc.
Both my first and current wives had fathers who worked with their hands (one of them even built his own house.) They’d never say it to my face, but I’ve gotten the impression that both of them would have happily traded a few of my IQ points for an ability to to perform basic household repairs without having to take me to the emergency room and call in a professional to fix what I had started.
IQ doesn’t always correlate to good relationship skills. It’s not unusual for high IQ, verbally clever and intellectually nimble people to be piss poor at “reading” other people and their emotional states.
Really dumb people eventually get aggravating because you really can’t hang with them without wanting to blow your brains out. I’ve dated high school grads, and I’ve dated doctors, lawyers, and executives. Personality compatibility is (IMO) 10X more important than pure intellectual compatibility.
In my experience men are generally (IMO) more tolerant of less intellectual partners. Women, in general, have a harder time with partners who are less intelligent than they are than men do.
Generally I’d say no. I’ve seen so many couples where it seems they shouldn’t get along, but they do, for whatever criteria you’d want to pick (personalities, smarts, disposition, background, wealth, even mental illness).
If someone has a 140 IQ do they feel the same towards a 120 as the 120 does to the 100? Theoretically I think that’s supposed to be the case, but I’m not sure if that really manifests itself in a personal relationship as opposed to in academia or a project. I feel like there’s diminishing returns in the social sphere for IQ, but maybe I’m too stupid to notice and I’m being whooshed all the time? If we’re just joking around, gossiping, talking about the news or whatever it’s not really as apparent IMO. I feel like there’s some low barrier where once you can understand subtler jokes or observations it doesn’t get much better after that unless you make a joke about a topic you have to be extremely intelligent to understand in the first place but the form of the joke or observation itself isn’t greatly enhanced by more intelligence.
There is a huge difference between my parent’s mental abilities.
My father has a IQ of 84, my mother, somewhere between 130-140.
My father repeated first grade thrice, my mother got the highest marks for economics in her entire state…
It caused huge problems, as they didn’t really have any common grounds for communication and he couldn’t understand why she got upset. They stayed [mostly] together because my mum’s disability made her dependant on him, and his childlike immaturity made him emotionally dependant on her.
I had a friend who dated someone who was very slow. She was less-than-agreeable, as she found it difficult to put herself in others positions. She got arguementative when she was confused.
Because of these two examples, I would be personally apprehensive about getting into a serious relationship with someone significantly less intelligent then myself.
I think this would be a more common problem for men, then women, as intelligence positively correlates with the financial success and social savvy that many women desire in their men, but such factors aren’t such a killer edge for women, what with them being judged more heavily than men on beauty and youthfulness.
