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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007 |
I skimmed the Neglected Areas of Practice article, and this piece stuck out:
"Peer issues continue into adolescence and adulthood, and are relevant to socializing, relations with coworkers, dating, marriage, and family. A relevant and helpful concept for bright adults is that of an intellectual “zone of tolerance.” That is, in order to have a long-lasting and meaningful relationship with another person (whether in friendship or a romantic relationship), that person should be within about plus or minus 20 IQ points of one’s ability level (Jensen, 2004, personal communication). Outside of that zone, there will be significant differences in thinking speed and depth or span of interests, which likely will lead to impatience, dissatisfaction, frustration, and tension on the part of each participant. Others have found that people who marry each other or become friends are usually within about 12 IQ points of each other (Ruf, 2012). When one is highly or profoundly gifted, the difficulty of finding someone similar increases."
As crude and distasteful as it is to think of relationships in these terms, I think there is something to this. Even without having the scores, my spouse and I both readily recognize that we're closer to a 20+ gap than 12 and that that gap is a real barrier to understanding and empathy. Just the fact that "giftedness" literature seems to explain all the mysteries of the universe to me and falls flat with my spouse feels like both a symptom and cause of the problem. And it's even more exciting when the parent and the child have the 20+ gap.
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Joined: Apr 2017
Posts: 12
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Junior Member
Joined: Apr 2017
Posts: 12 |
Outside of that zone, there will be significant differences in thinking speed and depth or span of interests, which likely will lead to impatience, dissatisfaction, frustration, and tension on the part of each participant. Others have found that people who marry each other or become friends are usually within about 12 IQ points of each other (Ruf, 2012). When one is highly or profoundly gifted, the difficulty of finding someone similar increases." I tested as gifted as a child, but I didn't really feel like I was smart as a kid. I just always thought it was weird that other kids didn't know certain things. I always knew exactly who was smarter than me, and to this day I can name those kids. I knew my husband was the smartest person I'd met the first day I spent with him, but he had never been tested. He was a classic underachiever and got into a competitive college based solely on his perfect test scores. In college he took an IQ test, but it was unofficial (I think it was part of a class somehow) and he reached the threshold, or whatever the word is for the maximum score - I guess it's more complicated than that? Afterwards someone approached him about formal testing but around that time he dropped out of school. So I can't give you numbers, but I can say with certainty my husband's IQ is more than 20+ above mine. We both have ADHD as well. With that in mind, one of our biggest obstacles is that when we disagree I can't keep up with him. It's truly exhausting. He is also emotionally intense (which I just learned because of my daughter is an actual "thing") so when he is upset or feels deeply about something he just can't slow down. Often by the time I think of a response to something he said a second ago he's on to the next thing. Sometimes it even feels manipulative on his part, even though I'm starting to learn it's not intentional, because it seems like he's changing the subject when he's really thinking so far ahead. I've noticed it helps a lot when we need to "argue" something out if we are texting. I know that seems sketchy, but it forces him to slow down and it requires us both to think carefully about word choice. We also both have to ask sometimes, "Did you mean it this way?" Instead of assuming a particular tone is attached. As far as other aspects of our relationship, I think we challenge each other. In some ways I am a more flexible thinker than he is, so we collaborate well because I can sort of bend an idea a certain way, but then he can run much further with it than I ever could, and analyze it with greater depth, if that makes any sense. Practically, it's fun when I want to create an elaborate built in bed with bookshelves in DD room - I can take my husband my plans and in about 10 seconds he can point out the engineering flaws, determine how much wood we'll need, and calculate how much it will cost.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,272 Likes: 12
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,272 Likes: 12 |
Focusing specifically on IQ, this old thread from 2013 may be of interest.
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 313
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OP
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 313 |
Often by the time I think of a response to something he said a second ago he's on to the next thing. Sometimes it even feels manipulative on his part, even though I'm starting to learn it's not intentional, because it seems like he's changing the subject when he's really thinking so far ahead. I've noticed it helps a lot when we need to "argue" something out if we are texting. This makes perfect sense to me, only I'm often the one impatiently jumping ahead. I guess I too often assume that what seems obvious to me is just as obvious to my spouse and therefore not even worth mentioning, which leads to gaps in communication and frustration all around. On the flip side, I often feel like my spouse is being dismissive, uncaring or at least unhelpful by suggesting "Why don't you just do X?" when I can instantly call up a dozen reasons why X is a terrible idea. I feel like he's deliberately oversimplifying things, while he thinks I'm making things too complicated. In reality, this is probably just a matter of how our very different minds work.
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Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 1,390
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Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 1,390 |
On the flip side, I often feel like my spouse is being dismissive, uncaring or at least unhelpful by suggesting "Why don't you just do X?" when I can instantly call up a dozen reasons why X is a terrible idea. I feel like he's deliberately oversimplifying things, while he thinks I'm making things too complicated. In reality, this is probably just a matter of how our very different minds work. Maybe. But I have worked very hard to remove the phrase "why don't you just..." from my vocabulary, because every time I start a sentence that way, I come off like a dismissive jerk. It's really hard to stop and rephrase in a positive way, but it really helps to substitute phrases like "have you thought of..." and "could you try..." (I have said the phrase, stopped myself before the end of the sentence, and rephrased with an apology more than once, and it does cool things down when I do.) Maybe you could talk to him about how you feel belittled when he uses that phrase, and ask if he would be willing to substitute one of the others.
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