I Want Her Smart...But Not TOO Smart...

A male friend once told me, ‘the more intelligent and successful a woman is, the harder it is for her to be find a good partner’. Another levelheaded male friend said, ‘I want a woman who is attractive and smart…but not too smart’.

It would appear that when it comes to mating, an intelligent female is at a disadvantage. No man would ever complain about a woman being too beautiful, yet intellect it seems, should have its limits when bestowed on the fairer sex.

Why are men afraid of intelligent women? The first reason is the increased likelihood of conflict and discord within the relationship. The propensity and desire to argue, question and debate is a common trait among intelligent individuals. Debate and dissent often lead to the deflation of ego. Men need to protect their egos. Hence, a woman who threatens to deflate it sets off the red flag.

The second reason is that men like hiding and their biggest fear is that of emotional and psychological exposure. Men hate to have flaws in their thinking revealed, much less flaws in their beliefs and values. Women, by nature have the innate ability to read emotional cues better than men. However, most women lack the verbal and analytical skills required to convey her observations (about her man’s behavior) to him. That makes her safe, because she will never be able to conceptualize errors in his thought system coherently enough to make an impact. A highly intelligent woman however, has the ability to package and convey what she has observed and present them in a way that will actually force a man to confront his own inadequacies. Most human beings would rather suffer a lifetime living a comfortable lie than have to look at how weak and imperfect they are.

The third reaaon is that society equates intellect and career or financial success with masculinity, therefore a man who is living with a partner who is more intelligent and successful than him feels emasculated. Men feel uncomfortable and uncertain around smart, successful women. Strangely, men like philosophical sparring with members of their own sex. This is because they do not have to sleep next to their male mates. There is a comfortable distance between opponents.

There are men who insist that it is important that a woman is intelligent. Indeed, intellect is very attractive in the initial courtship phase for cerebral men, because they understand that an intelligent woman is usually more cynical and pragmatic and therefore much more difficult to bed. The thrill of the chase is heightened when she is aware of the mechanisms of the male brain and the sexual instincts. If a man succeeds in bedding a cerebral female, it would indicate that he scores highly in the intellect department himself. His ego is thus gratified by this assumption and he can do one of two things. He can move on to his next conquest or he can proceed to ‘feminize’ her by putting down her achievements or ignoring her when she wishes to engage in weighty conversations and meatier issues like politics, religion and ethics.

The fourth reason is that because intellectual confidence is a rare quality in females, most people perceive intelligent women as being arrogant. Men feel that women who are too intelligent are automatically vain, prideful, defiant, self-righteous and hard to control. ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ comes to mind when a man encounters a smart woman.

The fifth reason is the need to preserve personal identity after death. At the end of the day, men want women who will give them physically superior offspring, but they would like the child to inherit their brains and not that of another person. Most men would like to shape the personality of their own children and be the sole guardian of their moral education. By choosing an intelligent and successful woman as the mother of their child means that they will have to share the responsibility of this task and also the credit of it with another person. Smart women have their own notions about child rearing and impose their own belief systems on the child. Men do not like this as it minimizes the parts of his own personality that he has progenated in his child. He feels that in successive generations, his personality will be obliterated completely. Marrying a stupid woman is a man’s way of preserving his own ego-identity when he dies.

The sixth reason for the aversion to an intelligent female has to do with the lack of emotional energy men have for lengthy, complex verbal conversation. When it comes to talking, women have more stamina than men. The part of their brain that deals with language is more highly evolved than men. Men make great orators only because they speak for an allocated time, then spend the rest of their days in silence. Women need to verbalize their thoughts three times as often as males. Hence, a woman full of thoughts and philosophical queries and theories is plain tiring for a man. He simply does not have the energy to keep up. For most men, a frightfully smart woman is just too much hard work.

The seventh reason is that a man always needs to be right. He can be proven wrong once in a while, but he is usually never happier than when he knows he his right. When a man allows a highly intelligent woman into his life and his heart, he will always have to think twice about how right he really is.

Copyright 2007, Michele Koh