When BBC Internet survey participants (119,733 men and 98,462 women) were asked to choose from a list of 23 traits those they considered most important in a relationship or a partner the traits that ranked highest were: intelligence, humour, honesty and kindness.
Even without the result of the survey, most of us can agree that intelligence is a good thing to have and stands as a desirable trait you or your possible partners might look for. People with highly developed intellectual capabilities are not mundane and require a certain amount of intellectual stimulation from their partners and their surroundings. Being in a relationship with a highly intelligent person calls for a lot of patience and commitment, mainly with some of the bad habits they might possess.
Whether it is you or your (future) partner that has a high IQ the following notions may help you understand why it is sometimes so hard for intelligent people to be in a long-term relationship or fall in love.
High Degree of Independence
Intelligent people often feel secured both physically and emotionally on their own. Being independent allows them to make decisions without thinking about how it might affect others. That’s the main reason they fear commitment – it poses a threat to their independent way of living by introducing change or control. The truth is that if your partner loves and respects you he/she will most likely not try to control your life or actions.
Career Oriented
Intelligent people are visionaries by nature. They have ambitions they want to realize at some point in their lives. Since they are primarily oriented towards gaining knowledge and then succeeding in their work, they often lack time to lead a healthy a social life. All this, in turn, results in them settling down and starting a family a bit later than other people.
Overthinking
Highly intelligent people are detail-oriented and are constantly observing behaviours and actions of other people and drawing conclusions from them. With their need to analyse every minor subject, they often create problems which can sometimes lead to endless fights in a relationship. Sometimes, you just need to go with the flow try not to examine every single situation, which is something the very intelligent people might have trouble with.
Mind Over Heart
Since feelings can be misleading at times, extremely intelligent people prefer using facts and logic prior to making assumptions. The inadvertent coldness of their hearts is one of the main reasons why they have a hard time finding love. They always try to assume and predict their partner’s next move to prepare themselves for what’s coming. Despite being generally predictable, people don’t always follow the same patterns and can confuse the highly intelligent when their partners do the unforeseen.
Good Memory
Having a great memory allows the very intelligent individuals to store evidence for future analysis. This, as a result, may lead to bringing up a fight from a couple of years ago to prove a point during a current argument. Highly intelligent people often don’t understand how bringing up previous quarrels can be upsetting since logic suggests that the more information you have on a particular problem, the easier it is to find an answer.
Keeping Score
Good relationships prosper when the people involved give without expecting anything in return, just for the sake of the good feeling they transfer onto the other person. Keeping score is a way of creating a point of reference; it lets the highly intelligent know where they are standing and adds a measurable criterion to something else ways disorganized and subjective.
[1] Richard, L. “The Preferred Traits of Mates in a Cross-National Study of Heterosexual and Homosexual Men and Women: An Examination of Biological and Cultural Influences”. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6427708 [Accessed 10 Jan. 2020].
[2] TruthTheory. “7 Reasons Why Intelligent People Face Difficulties In Having A Relationship”. [online] Available at: https://truththeory.com/2016/02/25/7-reasons-why-intelligent-people-face-difficulties-in-having-a-relationship/ [Accessed 10 Jan. 2020].
[3] Blake, T. “Bad Relationship Habits of Extremely Intelligent People”. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@tesiablake/bad-relationship-habits-of-extremely-intelligent-people-cbcf4cbafd6b [Accessed 10 Jan. 2020].