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intelligence

I would like...

  • an intelligent husband or wife.

  • an unintelligent husband or wife.

  • i have no preference as to my partner's intelligence.


Results are only viewable after voting.

Lacko

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I’ve noticed that many of you often list as one of your desired traits in a husband or wife to be intelligence.

I’ve never done a poll before so I’m hoping this will work so vote above please. In either case I would like to hear WHY you think intelligence is or is not important in a partner.

Lastly, it would be great if you could define what intelligence means to you (e.g. high IQ, great education, knowing a lot of “facts”…etc.) so we know what you are writing about.
 

Lacko

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I chose intelligence because so much of a relationship for me is communication, and there probably won't be much if either doesn't know too much.

So by wanting intelligence you want someone who knows various things that are good to talk about? So does that mean you are solely interested in "facts"?

From personal experience I find that one can have a great conversation with uninformed people because everyone has an opinion and many uninformed opinions produce the most interesting of responses.
 
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Niels

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Because I'm nerdy, an old soul, a dreamer, an artist/musician, sensitive, serious, a goof-ball etc.

It is important that I feel comfortable around my wife.


My definition of "intelligent" is closely related to notion of "giftedness" as an internal experience... which I would argue is different than simply having an impressive IQ score. Being a fact regurgitator or human calculator does not imply creativity, compassion or depth of thought.
 
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why and what do you define it to be?

im curious about this...since i often hear people say this is important to them but why or what exactly they mean by that word is often unclear.
honestly I dont want to marry someone stupid
 
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Lacko

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to stir things up a bit...I will talk about how i voted.

I would like someone who isn't well educated. I often think of great women in my family that didn't have a great education for example my grandmother who didn't go to high school but they were still amazing wives and husbands. Of course not soley because they were uneducated but I always loved their content ignorance and I would love have that kind of person myself.
 
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Beautiful Fireball

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I highly value intelligence, partly because I come from a family full of people in education and hugely into culture. I have been brought up like that, and thats just how I am comfortable. I love learning and am constantly discovering new things about myself and the world around me. I want someone with that same drive and passion. I want someone who will enjoy discussing books, politics, religion and so forth because I like to discuss things like that, and in my opinion you have to know it to be able to discuss it. I just want someone who will challenge me to think and stuff like that and I think a person needs to be intelligent to do that.


And when I am talking about intelligence, I am not necessarily talking about what you learn in school.
 
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LOVEthroughINTELLECT

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Intelligence is the capacity and ability to process information.

Everybody is intelligent. The only variation between people with respect to intelligence is in degree and form.

Show me a person who has lived and who has never processed any information. There is no such thing as an "unintelligent" person.

It is important...well...because it is part of how we function. You know...like how breathing is part of how we function.

It is not any more or less important to marriage than it is to any other facet of life.
 
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Llauralin

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Intelligence is the capacity and ability to process information.

Everybody is intelligent. The only variation between people with respect to intelligence is in degree and form.

Show me a person who has lived and who has never processed any information. There is no such thing as an "unintelligent" person.

It is important...well...because it is part of how we function. You know...like how breathing is part of how we function.

It is not any more or less important to marriage than it is to any other facet of life.
To answer your tongue-in-cheek observation with a real answer...

Relative intelligence is determined primarily by the speed and accuracy with which a person is able to process that information - which is what is IQ tests attempt to measure. It is in fact possible to be more or less intillegent based upon the ability to process information with more or less speed and accuracy than the average person, the priority of which it is, I suppose, the purpose of this thread to determine. Of course, that's only the working definition of psycology, and many on here seem to have a lightly different one - often integrating less mainstream intellegence theory, like Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, and the addition of mental flexibility as a criteria (I can't remember where that falls in psycology though)
 
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Llauralin

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Anyway, to answer the OP's question...

I do consider intelligence to be important, but have no particular level thereof that I'd require in a future spouse, even if it were to be accuratly measurable. So I'll give some examples.

If, for some unfathomable reason, someone who were scarily brilliant and not crazy (or only mildly so) were interested in me, I'd be alright with doing the whole helper/support thing, and a good try at keeping up. That'd be cool, but not by any means to be expected. The difficulty is that often people who are tremendously smart in certain areas have very little ability to communicate what they're talking about to those who don't have much of a background, which means having to do a bunch of research just to talk to them, or learn the fine art of the pointed question, which gets old after a while (but is still fun, especially finding out about stuff I didn't even know that I didn't know).

somewhat high intelligence, but not scarily brilliant people I tend to get along best with, and I'd really try to find that, mostly because it's teriffic to be able to learn from each other. I'd rather give an example than a definition though, if that's alright. I have this friend, and we talk about stuff a lot, usually things we had in common. Sometimes, though, we talk about things he knows a lot about and I know of not at all, and visa-versa. So one day I was talking to him, and he started being happy and excited about Lisp, a computer programming language which is based upon the Lambda Calculus (created/discovered in the early 1950s), which is capable of traversing time to bring back the exact state of anything running something written in Lisp, from any point in time. I know absolutly nothing about computers, and didn't even think that I cared, but it just sounded so very interesting, and there were so many details, that I probed for information for about two hours, then got a book on it, did the excersises in said book, and now likewise enthuse, because Lisp is indeed a very cool thing.

That capacity for not only being interested in, but knowing well enough to do, explain, and link with other areas of interest, cool and unsual creations of the mind, is kinda what I mean by intelligence. And it's a bonus when a person uses "it's brain-meltingly difficult" as a joyous compliment to an area of study. :)

I'd put that kind of thing in opposition to not following thought for any length of time, or not well; having no interest in great ideas; not knowing or being bothered by how much they don't know; an inibility to recognize or analyze quality of though; vague or contentless thought and speech (speech and writing being our primary ways to convey the quality of our thought), not knowing what do without outside stimilation; can't or won't follow complex reasonings; don't know and remember things (facts, ideas, narratives, concepts, etc) of personal interest, and things of that nature. I try not to look at people and think that they're unintelligent though, and so shan't give any personal accounts of the above behavior.
 
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mina

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I would like to marry an intelligent man.

1. I like to talk about many things and would love to be able to talk to the person I love about many things. I like to read and would love to be able to discuss books with my husband.

2. I want to be proud of the man I marry.

3. I like to learn and with any future children I would like to have the home atmosphere that learning and growing and gaining knowledge is a good thing.
 
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