Paul Brian
It’s harder for smart people to find love.
How do I know?
Take a look at my IQ. Then follow the trail of my tears. You’ll see a clear correlation.
Here’s why it’s so hard for brainy people to be happy romantically…
1) They overthink
Smart people think. It’s kind of in the definition.
Thinking can be useful and lead to all sorts of progress and discoveries in society.
But lone geniuses don’t tend to do well in love.
When van Gogh cut off his ear he didn’t do it because he was feeling great about his love life, let’s put it that way.
Smart people think too much.
They worry about the future and feel sad about the past. They wonder if somebody feels the same as them so much that they end up getting stuck all in their own head.
Been there, done that.
It’s really stressful!
2) They’re picky
Smart people get horny, too.
They care about physical attraction. Let’s not lie: we all do to some extent.
But it’s not enough for them, and neither is a surface-level personal connection.
They sometimes try to lie to themselves and say an “OK connection” is fine, but it never is.
The problem is after the physical attraction wears away the brainy individual often wakes up and looks around with a feeling of growing horror.
Despite being attracted, they often find themselves dating people they don’t actually feel enough of a connection with to feel really invested.
There’s no doubt that one of the top reasons intelligent people have a hard time finding love is that they’re picky.
When I say picky, you could also use the word selective.
It’s not necessarily bad, nor is it spoiled or wrong. It’s simply that it makes it objectively harder to meet someone than if you are quite easygoing and not as intellectually analytical and active.
3) They’re sensitive
Intellectual and smart people come in all shapes and sizes. They are from all walks of life and they don’t always have titles or academic credits to their name.
Intelligence is not about your job, where you’re from, or how the outside world sees you.
Although there are ways to measure intelligence such as IQ tests, it has many aspects, including creative intelligence, perceptiveness and situational awareness, mathematical and verbal ability, emotional intelligence, and more.
The common trait that most intelligent people share is a fairly sensitive reaction to emotional and romantic matters.
Why?
It’s because smart people notice a lot and they tend to be highly honest with themselves and unable to lie about what’s going on.
If a partner is disrespecting them, cheating on them, or miscommunicating in hurtful ways, they aren’t able to sweep it under the rug.
They keep noticing, analyzing, focusing on what’s wrong, and feeling more uncomfortable.
This makes it hard to find love in some cases because most love has quite a few issues and attraction is never easy. The intelligent and intellectual person finds this especially hard.
Which brings me to the next point:
4) They can see lies easily
Nobody likes to be lied to or let down, but smart people tend to notice it more.
They can spot a lie or an intentionally misleading action or word a mile away, and they don’t like it one bit.
This is one of the reasons intelligent people have a hard time finding love: they won’t accept being lied to.
If their partner says they are busy and can’t meet them but the smart person later notices glitter on their face and realizes they were out clubbing, they’re not going to be able to unsee that.
Leaving the smart person on read? Not going to fly.
Even if they send a message and somebody else pretends never to have opened it, intelligent people tend to have a sixth sense about whether they’re being ignored or jerked around.
This makes it harder to find love, because there are many of these kinds of games and deceptions that go on in modern romance, especially in the beginning stages of dating when neither individual has gotten that serious yet.
5) They’re sometimes less emotionally aware
Another of the reasons intelligent people have a hard time finding love is that they sometimes tend to be less emotionally aware.
This is a generalization, of course, and I’m not saying all smart people are like Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory.
But some are.
And even those who get what emotions are, feel sensitive (as I mentioned earlier), and really do understand a lot of what’s going on, often have trouble separating the inside world from the outside world.
What do I mean?
I mean that they spend so much time inside their heads that it can be hard for the intelligent person to treat reality as its own category.
They may deeply like someone and build up the idea that person is into them as well, without realizing that this is often not the case…
Or they may list off a number of attributes and then meet a guy or girl who meets them, assuming it will therefore work out.
Not so fast, brainiac.
In fact, some of the worst and most unhappy couples I’ve met were people with too much in common who ended up boring and annoying each other with their predictability.
6) They value intellectual achievement and ability
Next in the reasons intelligent people have a hard time finding love is that they value intellectual achievement and ability to a greater extent than the majority of people.
Among younger single folks a very smart guy who can’t get a girlfriend he likes due to being “braincells” or those who are too smart to be satisfied by most women.
This obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek and naive self-label nonetheless captures a certain truth about the difficulty of a smart person in finding someone at their level.
No woman who’s a Ph. D. in chemistry and loves opera wants to go out on a date with a guy who talks about the new Nikes he bought for an hour or goes on about how much he hates traffic jams. (Wow, surprise).
She wants a guy who’s at her level: even if his intellect is quite different, she at least wants it to … exist.
7) They are frustrated by lack of critical thought
The lack of critical thought and reasoning is difficult for intelligent people.
They may appreciate a great sense of humor, everyday topics and the interactions with their friends and family that are more humdrum.
But they find it hard to be very attracted to or serious about people who think in very simplistic ways.
Who am I talking about here?
Well, the thing is that critical thought is something we all have the opportunity to develop, but there are definitely those who practice less of it.
Those who repeat opinions they’ve been told or that will make them feel a sense of belonging…
Those who never critically examine their own worldview or interpretations of society and just buy into pre-packaged narratives…
Those who’d rather work for 20 years in a terrible job because it’s what they’re used to than think about genuinely different alternatives they could try by taking a risk…
Smart people have a hard time finding this kind of thing attractive because they just can’t relate to buying so easily into obviously over-simplified and self-limiting narratives.
8) They have a harder time staying interested
It’s not as if being smart necessarily makes you “better” than those around you.
Indeed, a big part of critical thought is realizing that intelligence is only one of many useful attributes that Mother Nature has created.
If you’re stuck under a fallen tree you’d much rather a massive Conan-type guy came and lifted it off you than a slight man who goes on about the theory of relativity while commenting on the tree’s foliage patterns.
Not everything is about being smart in this world!
One of the downsides of smart people is that they sometimes tend to be a bit impatient and less satisfied by what the world provides.
The spirit of curiosity can be very good for discoveries, pushing limits, and finding new frontiers.
But it can be quite bad for love!
It’s hard to find love when you lose interest quickly or feel a lack of a challenge. But the paradox is that if there’s always a challenge or some kind of complex situation it’s also not much of a relationship.
The result? A lot of time spent single!
9) They’re more argumentative
Let’s be honest about another downside of highly smart people when it comes to finding love and establishing relationships.
They tend to be more argumentative.
If you don’t have any strong opinions on World War Two or social inequality, you may just smile and nod if the topic comes up.
When you’re smart, you tend to have knowledge and some kind of opinion about just about everything.
Intellectual people like to share their knowledge, learn more and be around it.
When they hear opinions or statements they consider stupid they don’t usually let them go.
The result is arguments, either because they’re calling out lies or inaccurate statements, or because they’re being told they are mistaken about something and don’t take kindly to that.
Can’t we all just get along?
10) They’re often busier at their job
Another of the reasons intelligent people have a hard time finding love is that they are sometimes more dedicated to working overtime.
People of all intelligence levels may be lazy or hardworking.
But intelligent people tend to bring their work home and have an even harder time drawing a work-life balance and sticking to it.
Intelligent, intellectual people have a much bigger risk of becoming workaholics. And I mean that in more of a negative than a positive way.
In the middle of a conversation with their wife or boyfriend, the smartypants may be running through some challenges he or she had at work earlier.
In fact, they may be just waiting to scamper up the stairs and back to their computer so they can check out the latest numbers in the algorithm they’ve been working on.
11) They’re more self-conscious during sex
Last and far from least is that highly intellectual people tend to have more issues in bed.
I mean there are plenty of smart people who are good between the sheets, but think about it:
What’s good about sex and intimacy?
Living in the moment, feeling pleasure, being absorbed by the sensations of the body and the physical connection.
One of the things that is most certain to ruin that is being stuck in your head, analyzing or being self-conscious.
Smart people often have a harder time finding love because they find it harder to get into their body and enjoy things like sex.
Or, they may enjoy sex and feel guilty.
Or, they may enjoy sex but then analyze how much they are enjoying it or not and end up not being able to finish, or getting too excited about being in bed with a real live human and nutting too fast.
Oops.
Finding love when you’re full of brain cells
I don’t mean to be hard on smart people in this article.
There’s nothing wrong with being smart.
But it can be hard if you’re intelligent and intellectual to slow down and find love like the rest of the world.
There’s so much disappointment out there for everyone, but it seems twice as hard for those who spend a lot of time in their head.
Living in the past…dreaming or dreading the future…getting in relationships only to immediately want out…
Intelligence in one’s career or interests is sadly not equal to relationship intelligence and all too often they are at polar opposites.
The solution for intelligent people is twofold:
Realize and embrace your intelligence, seeking out someone who you truly connect with, while at the same time understanding that life will always be imperfect and rarely live up to the ideals and ideas in your head.
