F*ck Love: One Shrink's Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship

by Bennett, MD, Michael

  What to Look For

  What to Achieve/What Not to Be Fooled By

  Mutual attraction

  . . . from seeing each other as cofounders of a new family, with its own dynamic, set of rules, and no more than limited responsibilities to the families you came from because their appealing nature is nice but not all that important.

  Mutual respect

  . . . that comes from observing how each of you manages the tough and ugly parts of family life, rather than from how well you project a loving, attractive, impressive image to the outside world.

  Shared effort

  . . . that accepts the other person’s right to his own feelings for his own family and vice versa, as long as those feelings don’t cause bad behavior or familywide warfare.

  Common interests

  . . . in building a family that lives up to your standards, no matter what your parents expect or what you were raised to expect by parents who were substandard by any measure.

  Common goals

  . . . such as enjoying family when possible, given your joint priorities and common values, rather than visiting as a holy obligation to avoid a near-deadly dose of blame from parents, regardless of your other needs or the amount of pain it may cause your spouse.

  Should My Partner and I Break Up?

  Figuring out whether you should end things with your not-legally-bound partnerII is never a happy process, but it is a process nonetheless, even if it feels like a mystical, chaotic form of ancient torture. You first need to figure out the value of your relationship by looking at actions, not trying to read minds, and, if it’s not up to snuff, whether the bad behavior can be managed and the partnership improved. If it can’t be, then you have to decide whether you have a strong reason to stay in the relationship even if it’ll never be that great. If it’s any consolation, as processes go, figuring out whether to end things is easy; the hard part is actually separating and goes far beyond where any flowchart could lead.

  * * *

  I. While Judge Judy was a family judge, try to emulate her wisdom only, not her exact professional path.

  II. This chart isn’t intended for married couples because there are so many added complications to figuring out divorce, and we don’t have the budget for a flowchart the size of a king-sized duvet.

  Chapter 7

  F*ck Intelligence

  Even those whose knowledge of dating is about as limited as a caveman’s know that brains can be as important an asset in a partner as beauty. Mostly, however, people know that beauty won’t help you solve problems, keep your shit together, or even learn how to read—you need intelligence for that, a fact that even the totally superficial (or Stone Age) can appreciate. Assessing the overall value of intelligence in a partner or its impact on a partnership, however, requires a little more mental capacity than your average knuckledragger may possess.

  Being with someone smart has obvious benefits, especially if a partner’s particular intelligence complements your weaknesses and helps you manage a part of your life that is otherwise difficult for you to handle on your own; if you’re bad with people and your partner’s a social whiz, or if you’re bad with numbers and your partner’s a CPA, then you have much to gain from getting together. So does she, assuming you have your own complementary strengths to contribute.

  Unusual intelligence, on the other hand, creates expectations of accomplishment that are often a burden. For all the distinction, praise, and good grades it may bring early in life, it does not necessarily promise meaningful, enjoyable employment or good conversation. A person may be overcompetent at getting A’s without developing a preference or calling, because when you’re good at everything, you don’t have to be passionate about anything to succeed. That can make for someone who, despite being brilliant, is totally boring, unfocused, and uncommitted.

  While some kinds of intelligence are obvious (and may be overrated), others are less obvious than most people think and are easily underappreciated. Because intelligence comes in many different forms, people who are bright in one way are often less intelligent in others, and some kinds of intelligence are seldom reflected in academic achievement or recognized as intelligence at all. Those with people sense, common sense, and moral sense may not have advanced degrees, but their particular aptitude will have a huge effect on their ability to perform many jobs as well as manage a family and be a good partner. That’s why evaluating a possible partner’s abilities in these areas is critical, and why it’s important to never assume that other, showier kinds of intelligence are more important.

  You may also be tempted to assume that intelligent people who haven’t accomplished much suffer from a lack of confidence or a character flaw that causes them to underachieve. That assumption, however, is based on the false notion that intelligence plus hard work always equals success. If you’ve ever worked for the boss’s idiot cousin, followed national politics, or been a woman, you know that’s not the case. In addition to bad luck, achievement can also easily be thwarted by subtle weaknesses in the way the brain processes information, particularly when it requires prolonged mental focus, effective executive function, or other specific cognitive skills.

  So, instead of assuming that underachievement reflects bad attitude, pay attention to the fit between a person’s intelligence and the kind of work they have to do to decide whether their attitude is causing poor performance or vice versa. Those who are truly smart know their areas of stupidity; those that don’t tend to overrate the value of their intelligence and sometimes to be overrated for it.

  There’s nothing wrong with being attracted by intelligence, but if you are, don’t overvalue it as an asset in a potential partnership or fail to evaluate its risks and benefits realistically. Intelligence can help someone make a good living, be a good communicator, and be a good parent, but it’s just as likely to make someone bad at any or all of those functions. The only thing intelligence can guarantee in a partner is minimal literacy; after that, all bets are off.

  So, before making assumptions about intelligence, think hard about what other abilities your partner will need for the partnership job description. Then sit back and watch that intelligence in action—what it does, not what it is—before deciding whether someone’s far more capable than the caveman you made the person out to be, and whether the person’s particular kind of intelligence will help your partnership or dumb it down.

  The Good Things You Want Intelligence to Deliver

  • A companion who’s so smart that she makes you feel as smart as you always wished to be by making you a willing participant in the kind of intellectual conversations that used to bore you to death.

  • A sidekick whose brains will be your secret weapon in any debate, argument, or bar trivia night when your own mind comes up short.

  • A sense of excitement, not dread, when you imagine what you will hear at your future offsprings’ parent-teacher conferences.

  • A guarantee that your partner will always have a choice of good jobs that don’t require driving, lifting, or asking if someone wants to add a drink and make it a value meal.

  • An endless supply of thoughtful responses and clever solutions to the work and family problems that you find most bewildering.

  Profile of the Brainy

  Here is a list of traits associated with someone intelligent:

  • Physical attributes: Piercing eyes (sharpened either through glasses or LASIK surgery), terrible posture (from reading, sitting at a computer, or doing both while also trying to be inconspicuous at a coffee shop so he doesn’t get kicked out for taking up a table for too long), may dress more functionally than fashionably, and may have a gait and general manner that’s only slightly less clumsy and absentminded than a newborn foal’s.

  • Common occupations: Getting yet another graduate degree, getting tenure, completing the New York Times Sunday crossword, consulting, researching, and generally doing jobs that are hard to label or explain.

  • What attracts y
ou first: The opportunity to have a smart conversation about something you’re interested in, to learn something you didn’t already know, to hear something cleverly put, or to watch someone who’s confident about managing a situation that would leave you frozen and slack-jawed.

  • Red flags: Noticing that socially appropriate things that should be said aren’t while smart things are being said but at the wrong time and place, not being able to identify a single recent instance of multitasking, struggling to find any prior relationship that survived the conflict with work, finding important tasks undone because the amount of thinking far surpasses the amount of actual doing, discovering that once-informative conversations have turned terse and patronizing.

  Seeking Intelligence

  Intelligence isn’t hard to identify, or at least, the lack of intelligence is as easy to identify as a misspelled neck tattoo and a car-window decal of Calvin peeing. Even so, it’s much harder to find someone with the exact kind of intelligence that meshes nicely with yours, because intelligence alone is not a good guarantee of compatibility or the ability to work well together. So by all means, add intelligence to your list of desirable attributes, but be aware that it provides no shortcut to your procedures for identifying the character traits and functional attributes of the person you’re seeking as a partner. If you’re going to look for someone who’s smart, be smart about how you go about it.

  Here are three examples:

  • My boyfriend is smart, which I like and admire, but sometimes he talks down to me because I didn’t go to college, and he can be condescending. I’m smart enough, but I don’t have a lot of confidence (or advanced degrees like him, as he loves to point out), and his achievements sometimes intimidate me. My goal is to find the confidence to answer back when he gets snobby and nasty.

  • I like to date smart girls, which is easy since, lucky for me, I work in a field that requires a great deal of intelligence. The unlucky part is that my job is also competitive, so whenever I date someone who’s in my field, we tend to worry about who’s more skilled or more likely to be promoted, and things get ugly. My goal is to find someone smart who doesn’t care about who’s the smartest.

  • I wish I wanted to date smarter girls, but if I’m being honest, I’m much more attracted by women who aren’t that bright. The problem is that, as much as I’m into them, the attraction is always short-lived because they don’t make interesting partners in the long term. My goal is to figure out how to find smart women hot so I can have a relationship that lasts longer than two weeks and is enjoyable with our clothes on.

  Like so many apparent antitheses, intelligence and looks actually have a lot in common; people who seek them don’t just tend to overvalue those qualities in others, but to feel insecure about those qualities in themselves. So, while you may pride yourself on seeking smarts over sexiness, overvaluing either may express more about what you think about yourself than what you desire in a partner. On the other hand, while dating a beauty will probably only teach you about the Paleo diet and CrossFit, dating a brain will teach you far more about yourself, namely the complex way that intelligence shapes what you have to offer to and gain from others.

  Dating someone superintelligent will make you smarter, at least when it comes to learning the role that intelligence plays in a relationship and gaining a stronger sense of your own mental strengths and weaknesses. Getting the genius girlfriend of your dreams may bring your notions about intelligence down to earth (and if you’re unlucky, it may be with a hard thud).

  When you date someone smart, you learn the most from the experience by observing how you respond to the way a person’s intelligence does or doesn’t enhance her character and sense of humor and your way of interacting with each other. As usual, once that chemistry asserts itself, it does not necessarily turn out the way you wish and your influence over it may be limited.

  If you have a better-educated boyfriend who sometimes gets snobby and nasty, it’s understandable that your lack of education would undermine your confidence and tie your tongue. You might hope for a therapeutic intervention, heretofore-hidden savant status, or a bite from a radioactive genius or some other affirming or brain-building experience that improves your self-esteem and hands you the words to put him in his place. Unfortunately, self-doubting people tend to remain self-doubting, even after they’re well educated, just as snobby people stay snobby when they’re not educated at all (call it Cliff Clavin syndrome).

  Instead of looking for a way to retaliate when he steps out of line, ask yourself whether his various assets (the good times, his reliability, his ability to do his share and act respectfully most of the time) outweigh his nasty moments. If not, your goal isn’t to put him down, but to put him aside and move on; even he would agree that leaving a mediocre partner who constantly insults your intelligence is the smart thing to do.

  Should you decide he’s a keeper, at least provisionally, then offer him your observations and recommendations about his snotty side at a time when you aren’t feeling angry or small. Don’t feel compelled to argue or give details to prove your point; it’s simply your opinion that he sometimes acts condescendingly and talks down to people and he should try to stop. If he doesn’t agree that this is a problem, he should ask others whether they’ve observed it. React to his future bouts of snottiness by withdrawing from conversation and resuming only when his mucous attitude is under control.

  If you find yourself both attracted to and competitive with smart women, you will have trouble developing a good partnership. Once competition starts, it’s hard to tell who started it, so it’s natural that you should wish to find someone who shares your interests and intelligence but isn’t competitive with you. You might even yearn for the good old days when women knew how not to compete, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a smart woman who yearns to do anything with a guy like that but punch him in the dick.

  Instead, do your best to get your competitive nature under control and reduce your combative behavior in a possible partnership. It would be nice if competitiveness were just a symptom of insecurity and easy to control and even erase as you become more confident professionally and personally. Unfortunately, if that were the case, it would probably already have improved after one or two relationships, and you wouldn’t find yourself losing relationship after relationship by trying to win each battle of the wits.

  Since competitiveness is more likely to occur when you and your partner both share the same type of intelligence and apply it in similar ways, your best bet for controlling the competitive element is to look for dates who are less like you. That’s not to say you should look for women who aren’t smart, just who aren’t your particular type of smart or don’t use their smarts the same way you do. Yes, it may be harder to talk to someone who isn’t familiar with your work or fluent in its language. But if you branch out and date people with less familiar types of intelligence, you may well find people with whom you create sparks without kindling those old competitive fires that have traditionally left you feeling burned.

  Guys who prefer women they don’t intellectually respect are probably not that unusual; a guy’s sex drive has its own weird way of responding to anxiety, so he may feel more sexually aroused by someone he doesn’t care about or doesn’t feel threatened or intimidated by than by someone whose opinion and affection matter.

  Guys might hope to gain the confidence required to feel more sexually attracted to, or even brave enough to get within ten feet of, intelligent women; smart ladies are better at seeing guys’ faults, making jokes at their expense, and leaving them for being such schmucks. Unfortunately, probably no therapist, pill, or shiny sports car has the power to make that confidence happen. In addition, if you value hot sex more than a respectful relationship, then you really are a schmuck, and stupid as well, which bodes ill for your relationship future. So, instead of waiting for a confidence boost, learn to accept that the strength of your sexual desire is clearly a bad criterion for partnership.

&n
bsp; Obviously, some desire is necessary, but so is a partner who can do her share, be a good parent, and keep you in line when you’re about to do something stupid. You’re smarter if you rate a partner by the qualities that will make her a good partner rather than by those qualities that give you a constant boner. If you’re ready to downgrade the importance of hot sex, credit yourself for being a smarter guy than many and for having a better chance of finding a partnership that will last.

  Intelligence is well worth seeking in a partner, but it’s foolish to overvalue, not just because of the drawbacks, but because it doesn’t exist as a single, isolated asset. You learn about it by observing how your partner’s intelligence meshes with your own and affects the way you solve problems together without letting his smarts distract you from evaluating his work ethic, commitment, and values. Then you can be sure your search for an intelligent partner won’t get in the way of your dating intelligently.

  Quiz: Cranium Questionnaire—How smart are your expectations for intelligence?

  1. After a few months together, your new boyfriend introduces you to his old college friends at a bar, and one of them mentions offhandedly that your boyfriend never actually graduated from their (sort of) alma mater. Later, you ask your boyfriend:

  A: Whether he has any plans to finish college or if he’s content to live as a dummy/a liar/a single person without you.