Ok I have just googled living with someone who is smarter than you. It dropped me to a "Prince" fansite forum. I should have just stopped reading there really. Along with the "Prince" fan club there were a few pages on, dating someone more intelligent, get yourself more intelligent, find someone more intelligent, is some one more intelligent better in bed, you know the stuff, and having scrolled past these annoying links I found a void, nothing, nada which leads me to writing this blog post.
Firstly I don't consider myself particularly dumb, and I am betting most of you reading this don't think you are either and we are all probably right. In Western society intelligence isn't as high on the priority list of things that make your life a success as it is in the East. We Westerners tend to value assets, wealth and good looks over higher brain function. Aspiring to be more Katie Price or Kim Kardasian than great thinkers. I know I know there are exceptions, of course there are. But living with a teenage girl, hair and makeup still come up way to high on the list of things that are important in her life than I'd like them to.
Anyway back to my point. We are a family that value education and experience, we are a family that encourages lateral thinking in all our children, while trying to lower their materialistic wants, we go for walks, we explore, we invite opinion and we respect their values and encourage them to express and grow them. Which is great and exactly what we wanted to do as parents but as the second born is starting to come in to his own regards his footprint on the world its definitely becoming more of a challenge. Let me now introduce a further dynamic in to this scenario. Daddy is a big brainer, daddy has a monster IQ. Now this is a blessing and a curse for us all. Living with someone who, while has always respected people, but felt always able to think 12 steps ahead of them, is not easy. We all love daddy's big brain, we all use it for our own selfish needs and we all get frustrated with it when it doesn't have the answer we are looking for or isn't working very well. Poor daddy has to deal with this as his family, and sometimes even daddy gets frustrated with his brain too.
Living with a man who is very smart should come with its own handbook and while these web pages claim to be able to tame the brain I would beg to differ somewhat. So this is my guide to living with someone smarter than you.
Step one: Keep a list, mental or paper of exactly where he/she has put their stuff because at some point you will be accused of moving it and not remembering where you have put it, even through you haven't been near said item for 6 months.
Step two: Let them get on with it, when intelligent children are arguing with intelligent parent, stay the hell out of it. Otherwise they'll both either look at you like you've gone mad, start shouting at you that "clearly you don't understand" or ask your opinion (this is almost the most deadly thing that can happen around a dinner table)
Step three: Live with the fact that you intelligent partner will have massively high expectations of you. Ultimately they've decided to shack up with you, and as they are intelligent this must be the right decision therefore if at any point you fall below practically perfect or almost as good as them, they will get all flustered and start doubting their decision making ability and then the world will start caving in on itself.
Step four: Improve you memory. Living with someone with a massive brain means you need to remember stuff, events, birthdays, days planned out, anything day to day or mundane. They are far to busy thinking about all the outcomes of every possible eventuality in every possible parallel universe and therefore can't possibly remember its your mother's birthday next week. Please don't expect them to its just not going to happen.
Step five: Explain what you want from them clearly, concisely and to the point. Don't be all wishy washy with your own needs, tell them when you are upset but don't do it wild man of Borneo style, it just won't get through. Explain why you need them to do a certain thing, or why they have to be in a certain place at a certain time, but don't go giving them the entire back story as to why this needs to happen, they'll just switch off and start daydreaming about something else and then they will miss the important thing you wanted to tell them, keep it short.
Now if I can just stick to this 5 step plan myself harmony in the home won't even need to be thought about.
Always looks so easy when its written down doesn't it......
