Three months ago I went to Italy with my then boyfriend, Philip. As we were checking into the hotel, I struck up a conversation with the receptionist in Italian (just one of the five languages I speak). But while I was enjoying myself, chatting away, it became clear that Philip most certainly was not.Even the appeal of male intelligence has strict limits. I didn't do well with girls in junior high and early high school until I learned how to conceal aspects of my intelligence that turned them off. I had to learn to stop doing the info dumps, the impromptu lectures on things that I found fascinating, and instead make use of it as a weapon of social dominance. The same girls who found the intelligent discussions of historical patterns and new technological developments so profoundly uninteresting were observably intrigued when I verbally flagellated another girl or a boy who had challenged me in some way.
He shuffled from foot to foot, muttered something under his breath and rolled his eyes like a stroppy teenager. Then in the lift he turned on me. 'I was wondering when you were going to let me join your conversation,' he snapped. I tried to laugh it off but I knew this was the beginning of yet another argument.
'You always have to be the star of the show,' he continued in our bedroom, as he began to systematically work his way through the mini-bar. Apparently I was argumentative, a know-all and an intellectual snob.
What had I done? It should be depressingly obvious. I had dared to dent his fragile male ego....
For me, this is stating the blindingly obvious. I've lost count of the times men have rejected or insulted me simply because I was brighter, wittier or cleverer than they are. They have called me 'intimidating', 'scary', 'difficult' and 'opinionated'. Translated, that means: 'You are too clever and I don't like it.' An older male friend - supposedly tired of me dominating dinner-party conversation - even wagged his podgy finger and told me I would never get married because I was too confident and demanding....
And that's the thing. When it comes to love and marriage, I have watched with depressing regularity so many brilliant men choose beautiful but dull women.
The appeal of female intelligence is even more limited, mostly because it so often comes in the company of extremely annoying and unfeminine personality traits. This correspondence is exacerbated by the fact that the average smart boy has been punched in the face a few times for annoying his less intelligent peers, while the average smart girl has had her annoying behavior rewarded by adults without any similarly negative consequences.
The key word in the article above is "argumentative". That is the main reason why highly intelligent men can't stand intelligent women. The fact that a man is capable of having a substantive intellectual discussion with a woman doesn't mean he wants to do so every time he makes a simple observation. When an intelligent, educated woman responds to a statement about it being cold outside by saying that it's really not all that cold because it's only 273 degrees kelvin, that doesn't make him admire her intelligence or her education. It makes him want to murder her, burn the body, and spend the rest of his life with an 85-IQ stripper with big breasts who isn't set on permanent disagreeable mode.
As offensive as this may seem to the average smart girl, I'm actually doing you all a favor here by explaining what everyone - everyone - really thinks about you. You're not threatening, you're just really obnoxious and annoying. People don't admire you the way you admire smarter men for the obvious reason that they don't value intelligence as much as you do. You're not in an elementary school classroom anymore. Stop raising your hand every time you know the answer.
The fact that female intelligence is not a male attractor does not mean that it has to be an outright disattractant. Like the highly intelligent man, the highly intelligent woman has to learn how to utilize her intelligence in a judicious manner.
