I believe it depends on exactly what you define as “intelligent”
That’s where I’m at as well. Could go so many different ways; how do I know someone is intelligent? Do their conversations feel particularly deep to me? Do they invest their money well? Good at memorizing baseball facts?
At a certain point yeah, obviously if they just have wind blowing around inside their head it’s unlikely that I would find them desirable as a partner. So in a way it is very important to me. But the vast majority of people are capable of nurturing loving and rewarding relationships rooted in who they are as a whole, whether or not they are remarkably intelligent. So in another way it’s not important at all
Oh no
I can get behind this. There are many kinds of intelligence and their measurements are subjective.
Within that perspective, I’d say that I’d rather be with someone naive that is capable and eager vs someone stubborn and unwilling to learn.
Very important.
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I want to be with someone I enjoy talking to.
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I admit that I couldn’t bring much to the sort of relationship where intelligence isn’t particularly important.
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Intelligence is heritable to a significant extent, which is important in case children are produced.
One downside (in a sense) is that this approach will probably lead to two very career-oriented people being together, which causes some problems.
Edit: I’m saying this as someone who is significantly above average on the sort of intelligence measured by SATs.
I got a perfect score on my SATs and I’m in my mid thirties and working in a bakery (not as a baker, I just sell bread and clean. It’s lovely).
Granted, it’s part time while I get a master’s degree, but I’ll be working 20 hours a week for mediocre pay when I finish, teaching adult language/integration courses for new immigrants.
Intelligence and ambition aren’t necessarily related, though obviously you get farther if you get good grades. Ambition is correlated with studying, diligence, and focus, so it tends to lead to higher SAT scores.
Conscientiousness and ambition aren’t the same thing but they are related, and conscientiousness appears to be uncorrelated or weakly negatively correlated with intelligence. With that said, I have met relatively few highly intelligent people who aren’t career-oriented; I can only guess about why.
A friend of mine is married to an intelligent, educated woman who simply doesn’t want to work. I don’t understand her - I would be bored out of my mind if I went more than a few months without a job. But I do sometimes envy my friend. He can support his family on a single income, and when he moves for work his wife has no difficulty coming with him. He can take jobs far from big cities because he doesn’t have to worry about being somewhere where she can find a job too. (Right now they live near the beach on an island in Florida.)
Meanwhile my partner and I have twice as much money as his family but we don’t even live together because I live near my job and she lives near hers. We’re both busy so we see each other once or twice a week. We aren’t just dating - we’re in a committed long-term relationship, but work comes first.
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I wouldn’t want to spend my life with someone, who would not be capable of understanding the things I like thinking and talking about, so a lot less intelligent partnet would be a problem. I would also not want to feel like I have nothing to offer intellectually to my partner, so the ideal is to be in the same league. I can theoretically imagine some kind of combination of one partner being less intelligent but also outstanding in another department that the other partner is lacking.
Among the most important attributes, if not the most important. There has to be some physical attraction and usually that is what gets things going but it’s sometimes surprising how other attributes become more important as the relationship develops. Charisma and humour is huge. Creativity and skill is a massive turn on. Kindness and self awareness, vital. These are often dependent on or related to the base level of intelligence.
It changes over time, too. As a young man, I devoted very little consideration to intelligence but those weren’t really relationships, mostly sex cosplaying as a relationship.
Super important. I’m an idiot, and if we both are stupid we’ll be in serious trouble.
Very. Not saying that I need them to be extremely intelligent, but should be at/around the same level as me, and have similar interests as me. Otherwise conversations would be more difficult?
My husband would not describe himself as smart, but I think it’s probably because he never cared enough about school. He is pretty book smart and has a huge vocabulary in both his native and second language (his second is English, my native, and it’s fucking nuts to me that he’s got a wider English vocabulary than 70% of the kids I went to high school with), but he was just never into academia.
He is significantly smarter than he realizes though. He remembers every good tip or life hack he comes across, so he’s got a wide range of perfected methods for cutting onions, hanging pictures, keeping your place organized, etc.
He’s also very observant about me, to the degree that he literally knows me better than I know myself (I’m autistic and masked well my entire life until I immigrated to a new country and could really get weird without anyone stopping me). I tend to not care about things being right for me as long as they’re not wrong wrong. He’s noticed foods I don’t really like, routines I’m not aware of, and he is stupid good at turning me on (I tried lots of different phrasings here, I’m sorry it still sounds ick).
He DMs in dnd, and he’s so good at it. I tried dming once and realized that it was the equivalent of using your weekends to train for a marathon vs doing beer league soccer (dming vs being a PC). I just don’t want to work that hard while having fun. He has no issue keeping track of dozens of plot hooks or stat blocks and he incorporates new information from the PCs into his story as he goes. I don’t think it’s possible to be a really good DM without being smart (or at least about as smart as the players, and we’ve played with some pretty smart people and with kids, who are wayyy more creative/hard to predict than adults).
I want to go on, but at some point, he’d feel like this is TMI, so I’ll stop now.
I always looked for partners who were academically talented first (well, first for intelligence, I do think kindness is more important), and I’m so glad I was open to people who don’t make that their whole shtick, because I don’t deserve a husband this wonderful.
This was so good I read it twice. Thank you for sharing.
is he single?
Fun fact…no.
Important, but not as important as loyalty.
Simplified at the cost of accuracy:
On a scale from 1-10 on attractiveness you get ±1 for being below/above one standard deviation on intelligence.
Other standard deviations: Sad/happy ±2 Mean/kind ±1. Different/same life goals ±5.
Not much. As long as she’s a person with common sense and a bit of intelligence, I’m fine.
It has always been the most important. Now I’m gonna say something that usually results in people telling me I’m arrogant and sincerely this isn’t arrogance it’s just fact: I’m extremely intelligent. And I could not really have a spouse who wasn’t. When my wife and I met we both found such relief because we both feel this way. She’s highly intelligent and that was the most attractive quality to me.
I recognize though that it’s not the only quality of merit. She’s also extremely kind and loving and supporting, and independent of intelligence those too are extremely attractive and praiseworthy. I guess really I wish everyone could simply find a person who they are attracted to in many many respects. That’s the best foundation I think.
I’m extremely intelligent.
If you feel the need to say it, you probably aren’t as intelligent as you think you are.
Intelligence vs wisdom… he may have the one, but probably not the other.
True intelligence is knowing how stupid you are. -Socrates
Eh, it’s a largely anonymous internet forum. No one could possibly know from reading a single comment, nor does it exactly afford bragging rights.
…what? How do you expect them to demonstrate their intelligence within the span of a single comment, without telling you? This “comeback” doesn’t work if their intelligence constitutes actually relevant context.
They don’t need to prove their intelligence, but this entire line just throws off “but awkshully” vibes of someone who thinks too highly of themselves. Bolding mine.
Now I’m gonna say something that usually results in people telling me I’m arrogant and sincerely this isn’t arrogance it’s just fact: I’m extremely intelligent.
You know who brags about their intelligence enough to be told they are arrogant? Morons. Morons who think they are super smart do that.
If they left that one sentence out then the rest of their post as written would have made them look smart.
Mmh, I see what you mean. Fair enough!
If I were the type to choose a partner, I’d say it’s very important for them to be not dumb, but less important to be actually smart. It would still be a positive, but someone who’s not a genius but still had many other good qualities can still be fun to hang out with. It’s also a mindset thing-- someone with little knowledge but a will to learn is better than someone who knows more, but refuses to learn anything new. (Not that knowledge == intelligence, anyways.)
This is going to sound so bad, but I can’t look for someone smarter without limiting my options too much, just as I am tall for a lady in my area so can’t make taller than me a requirement.
So: smart enough to be funny, to understand the things I talk about? To understand how money works , live in the world easily, not stupid? Competent in some area, different from what I am good at? Required. Smart enough that I think “wow you are smart!” Not a consideration. I do think I assign extra ‘points’ to intelligence, it makes someone more attractive, but it’s not something I need as much as I need kindness and open mindedness, and in myself I value those qualities more too.
Smart enough for her strengths to make up for my weaknesses.
I prefer smart women that don’t need to rub it in your face. Dated a woman who is incredibly book smart, doctorate in neuroscience, funny, sexy, pedagogic, and very confident and strong. Never makes you feel stupid because you don’t know something. I miss her.
Not to pry but what happened?
Uber religious.
A classic
