I feel guilty even posting this but here’s the situation.
I (M27) met a girl (F27) on tinder about 6 months ago and things have been going really well. We share all of the same values, I love her sense of humor, I find her attractive and all of the rest the green flags.
My problem is this and I know this sounds bad: I feel like we might be on slightly different intellectual wavelengths. There’s a lot of weird gaps in her knowledge and she tends to just watch reruns of love island and big brother in her spare time and whenever we have an intellectual discussion I feel like there is a slight disconnect and she doesn’t formulate points or discussion very well.
I’m not by any means an intellectual but it really frustrates me when I’m trying to have an abstract meaningful discussion with her and it gets stopped in its tracks not for a lack of trying by her but just because I sometimes can’t make sense of the points she’s trying to make since they don’t add up or it feels like she’s missed a beat.
Over the months I have hoped this was a hangup that I might get over once I got to know her better and could understand her more but it still bugs me. If it wasn’t for this one fact I would literally love everything about her. I’m dating with a goal of hopefully getting married and having kids and am wondering what you guy’s thoughts are. Am I overthinking things? Taking her for granted? Should I move on and risk never finding someone like her again? Has anyone got any similar situations I can compare to.
Thanks for any thoughts, I would really like another perspective as I would never say anything like this about her to anyone I know since I have too much respect for her.. even if that’s not how it looks.
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TL;DR: I feel like my girlfriend and I are on different intellectual levels and I don’t know if this is a reason I should move on
4 comments
You’re not overthinking things. You can think of it this way, this situation is frustrating you during what should be the easiest and honeymoon phase of the relationship. If it bothers you this much now, imagine how much it’ll bother you once you start arguing about other things.
If you’re thinking long term, then it may help to imagine how it’s turn out if/when you have kids for example. And how this could spill over to them
There’s a really fine line between “I’m the smart one” and “they’re the dumb one.” It can totally work if one partner is a little sharper. But when one is a bit dim and the other isn’t? Yeesh.
I’m not trying to throw shade at your gf. I’m sure she’s lovely. You just have to be the judge about how often this plays a part in your day-to-day with her. I’ll tell you right now, I couldn’t.
You can’t build a life with someone you can’t have a conversation with.
This is definitely one of those things that varies from person to person.
I had a BF who was a genuinely good dude. Caring, patient, very friendly. He was fun, polite and stylish. Loved his mom but not in a creepy enmeshed way. Definitely the type one could bring home with pride.
However, I’m a turbo nerd and he just wasn’t. He wasn’t dumb or incurious but he lived mostly in the physical world, mostly in his body. I live mostly in the abstract world, mostly in my head.
About 4 months in I realized I couldn’t have a deep convo with the guy. I tried for another month, but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t fair to keep dating him. I’d never fall truly in love with him because he wasn’t able to stimulate that extremely important part of me – my mind.
I let him go, and it wasn’t all that long before he found another woman who really did fall in love with him. They got married. He adopted her kid. Real cute stuff and I’m happy for him.
Someone else in my shoes may’ve been perfectly happy with the guy, because he brought a lot to the table. I just happen to have a specific need for deep, informed conversations on heady topics. We were not right for each other.
If you feel similarly, then it’s not wrong to leave her. She deserves, like my ex did, someone who loves all of her. You deserve someone you can love fully. Sometimes compatibility just doesn’t work out.