How Do The Most Intelligent People Manage Romantic Relationships?
Intelligence is one of the most important psychological characteristics, since it has a great impact on our lives. And this, naturally, also includes the emotional and loving side of each person. Now, interestingly, and although statistically the most intelligent people tend to be more physically attractive and in better shape than the rest of the population, that does not mean that they always have a better chance of finding a partner.
For example, evidence has been found that women with more and better training and the possibility of opting for more qualified jobs, a population group with many more people with high IQ, show a tendency to remain single. On the other hand, regardless of their sex, gifted or close to intellectually gifted people are more sensitive to criticism and have greater difficulty finding someone to fit in with, since they prefer to be with people from whom they can learn and whose company is intellectually stimulating.
Now… once a partner has been found, What is the level of health of those love relationships? Are they of the same quality as those of the rest of the population? From what has been proven, there are interesting singularities in courtships and marriages formed by highly intelligent people.
A recent investigation led by the Dutch psychologist Pieternel Dijkstra has proposed study the way in which high intelligence and love are related
To do this, they started from the reference framework of attachment theory, according to which the attachment bonds formed during childhood (normally, with fathers and mothers) define the way in which in adult life we manage our relationships with others. For example, in cases in which parents mistreat their children, they tend to adopt a relational style based on avoidance, fear and mistrust, while those who have had plenty of room to express your emotions and preferences They have a much more open attitude.
These relational styles are also expressed in the way we manage conflicts. Thus, 5 ways of facing problems with others have been defined, taking into account the degree to which one values one’s own preferences and conflicts and the way in which one values those of others:
It is clear that in principle The best styles of managing interest clashes They are the integrator and the commitment one. The rest of them can cause problems to fester and generate even more negative consequences. What relationship modes do the most intelligent people use in their love lives, and why?
Intelligence: the ingredient of mature relationships?
To carry out the research, Dijkstra and his team had the collaboration of 196 heterosexual people from the Mensa organization in the Netherlands. Mensa is an entity that brings together gifted people from all over the world, people who have obtained a score of at least 140 points on intelligence tests and that represent less than 3% of the population.
To detect the particularities of these volunteers, the scientists collected data from these gifted people, and also from another group made up of 146 adults not belonging to Mensa.
The results show something curious: although the most intelligent individuals did not express being especially dissatisfied with their emotional relationships as if they were characterized by poor quality, they showed a greater tendency to adopt the avoidant style when managing conflicts with the other person.
A possible explanation
Pieternel Dijkstra and his team hypothesize that the reason why the most intelligent people tend to use conflict avoidance in their love lives without suffering the negative consequences that this has is that, on the one hand, they maintain romantic relationships with people of a lower level. of similar intelligence and personality type, and on the other experience life from a more rational perspective
This is something that corresponds with many things we know, such as that the idea that opposites bring each other is just a myth and the opposite really happens, and that less intelligent people are more impulsive and their disorganization and problems with control themselves make conflicts more frequent.
This can contribute to the fact that their conflicts occur rarely and that they can be resolved by distancing themselves from the situation; Since intelligence makes one learn quickly and better, these people would be able to do this without becoming obsessed with the fear of abandonment by their partner.
