Four Dating Tips for Smart People

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These tips may help you find a well-suited romantic partner for a long-term relationship.

Embrace your intelligence. Today’s zeitgeist is about equality—even the word “intelligence” is often disparaged as elitist, even racist. Yet we all vary from each other on everything from eye color to sexual orientation to political orientation. And we vary in—choose your term—cognitive ability, reasoning power, intelligence.

And just as a Trump lover is less likely to have a successful long-term relationship with a Trump hater, a materialist with an ascetic, a sexual dynamo with a sexual apathetic, you’re more likely to find compatibility with someone of similar intelligence. There’s nothing wrong with that. Embrace your intelligence. Here’s how:

Search for peers. Intellectual compatibility is more important to a relationship than some people realize.

To that end, dating sites can be useful. Without bragging, your profile should demonstrate your intelligence—show, don’t tell. Keep intelligence in mind also as you decide whom to respond to, how you respond, and how you react to their responses.

In-person opportunities? Consider taking an in-person class that would attract intelligent people; perhaps a liberal arts course at a university extension, an advanced financial planning class, for example. Attend public lectures on topics of sufficient interest that even if you don’t meet anyone, you’ll be glad you went. Come early and approach potential partners during the pre-lecture chat—the lecture’s topic is a natural conversation starter. And afterward, usually people hang around to chat. You might too. Also, ask friends to set you up with people they sense will be intellectually and otherwise compatible.

Don’t dumb yourself down. Male or female, don’t hide your intelligence. The stereotype is that men are made insecure by smart women. That’s true only of the kind of guy an intelligent woman shouldn’t want to date. Good men will treasure you for your good mind. So make your intelligence core to your relationship, from first interaction onward. For example, you might have deep-dive discussions of personal as well as societal issues, for example, the pros and cons of Trump's policies from liberal, conservative, and libertarian perspectives. You might go to plays, join a book club, and get together with intellectually compatible friends. Of course, unnecessary showing off is ill-advised but, like everyone in relationships, you want to be loved for who you are, and your intelligence is an important part of that. Be who you are.

Intelligence isn’t the main thing. While intellectual compatibility is important, it’s probably more important that your partner be kind, honest, have a compatible sex drive, bring out the best in you, and not be so problemed as to be a poor partner. Romantic relationships, including marriages, too often break up, often painfully. It’s worth holding out for someone who gets at least a B on all those factors, and then using all those IQ points of yours to make the relationship an enduring pleasure.

I read this post aloud on YouTube.

This is part of a series of tips for smart people. The others are: Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World, Seven Money Tips for Smart People, Tips for Smart Gardeners, Nine Time-Management and Procrastination Tips for Smart People, Five Learning Tips for Smart Adults, Seven Stress Management Tips for Smart People, Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers, and Ten Tips for Parenting a Smart Child.