Dating Mentally Mediocre People (Love & Learning)

this is video about a huge issue good
way to start the video this is a video but a huge issue in my life I you know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know how many people struggle with this issue I don't know I don't know it's I mean every single relationship I have ever been in including short-term relationships girlfriends that only lasted a few months every single relationship I have had the girlfriend say to me that they felt intellectually inferior that they felt they couldn't keep up that they felt stupid I do not mean this is some kind of Freudian interpretation of something that was hinted at I don't mean that this is subtext I mean they sat down at some point one time or another or maybe 10 times me repeatedly and said you know they felt stupid that they were they were drowning or losing self-esteem that this was a problem for them being in a relationship even though those same women every single one of them chose me in the first place because they thought I was intelligent that's what I tell myself I've got sometimes one of the Rays just broke down sometimes it really has been we're looking back at you realize these wouldn't had nothing to do with my intelligence you know I just have yeah yeah I've got more I'm talking to Melissa is just off camera my girlfriend who's no exception these issues I mean it's been a struggle in this in this relationship to but it's a struggle we actually all you know learn from and gain a lot of positive things is struggle worth worth doing I I got I got a question from a viewer I'll digress and the grass bag again if you are gonna call Daniel wrote in and he said I want your advice on something do you think based on your experience and are somewhat similar personalities that I could be content in a relationship with an overall intellectually mediocre woman as my as my romantic now I really do this particular guy Daniel um I do consider him really quite brilliant I consider him an extraordinarily gifted verse and in terms of the the raw materials he's got to work with and he's also someone with quite a lot of knowledge of the type of knowledge I value from my biased perspective just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder brilliance is in the eye of the beholder I care about stuff like history and politics and languages maybe he's terrible at math you might be you might be laughing maybe he's a terrible driver I'm nervous he maybe has road rage whatever uh-huh but you know in the areas of intelligence I I care about I both think he's very intelligent and that he's he's a real intellectual and he's someone who's gonna go on to he's gonna continue to care about and learn about you know history and politics and these these types of things so look I'm gonna start with broad brushstrokes and we're gonna get into finer brush strokes it's really hard to be honest with the other people in your life about what your emotional needs are it's it's really hard but at least we have a bit of a cultural discourse about that you know I need to feel respected I need to feel loved they need to feel appreciated I need you to actually take the time to thank me for doing something those kinds of discussions now in 2018 they've become mainstream and I think back in 1968 they were not I think there was a long struggle between kind of pop psychology and you know sort of culture of silence a culture of not showing your suffering not sharing your suffering and not trying to conceal any kind of weakness you again it may be different from one culture the next but the idea now that your husband or wife your boyfriend or girlfriend is someone you really do share your emotional needs with your sorrows with and that you look at them and say look if you can't if you can't provide this we got to split up because you know emotionally if there's something you need to you need to communicate and then you need to communicate if the other person's failing to live up to what you see is their their their their side of the bargain their responsibility and if you don't communicate what your emotional needs are you can't punish them for failing to live up to that you can't just no you can't skip to the punishment stage you know you can't seem to see me actually even with being a classroom teacher I say that all the time you can't punish students for breaking unwritten rules you can't punish students for failing to deliver on an assignment or something you you didn't explain to them oh that's that's my philosophy of teaching and a lot especially university level a lot of teachers do not do not live up to that very simple philosophy so likewise you know in a relationship you both play the role of the teacher and you both for the role the student has these things as these things go and go as difficult as it is to communicate the emotional needs I think we really lack culturally any kind of a script any kind of preparation for communicating intellectual needs um and I know have a lot of practice at age 40 and I can remember I'm cursed with a very clear memory I can't remember how difficult it was to communicate that to my first long-term girlfriend and communicate it I did I mean I can remember really saying look this is what I'm reading what are you reading you know this is what I'm working on this is the language I'm learning and you know what are you doing so I mean one of my one of my former girlfriends she was aspiring to be a painter and I provided for her I mean economically and in terms of our of the setup in our apartment I provided with her basically the studio to paint in and set up and you know I was doing a lot of things to encourage her and it's like well look you know if I see you're not really putting the hours and you're not really working on painting you know what what's my role here and what's your role do you know do you want me to be asking you to know what you're what you're doing in lecture or not you know and there's a reciprocal element of that too you know obviously I want to be with someone who at least over coffee and over at lunch is gonna talk to me about what I'm reading or was gonna be reading some of the essays um I'm reading back then it was before YouTube so was writing and publishing informal articles and once in a while more formal articles I was doing research and writing of various kinds are you with someone who can participate in that are you with someone who can challenge you to achieve a higher level who can you know or even you can criticise which books you're reading so come on this is a really kind of you're reading a rinky-dink introductory book on this one you wouldn't get a move on to something more more challenging whatever if that's what you need the other person to be you've got to communicate that to them you've got to communicate the extent to which they're living up to it or not living up to it you got to thank them when they do you got to give them positive feedback you gotta say hey well you know thanks you know I really appreciate you pointing out to me like that my writing was bad in that essay or that I felt you know they failed to explain that point in a way an outsider can understand or you know whatever it is when they when they do live up to it you need positive feedback and thanking them and you got to be honest with yourself you know about what was their most not now okay as my life has gone on my emotional needs have decreased and decreased it may be listen to imagine but I'm sure if you go with I mean when I was when I was 16 Wow the emotional needs for the the role the woman in it I mean I was I was really damaged by the upbringing I had I was really damaged by the parents and the family apathy born into I was really damaged by the education I had and and didn't have and so on so the emotional needs that were really really high for the woman 16 I mean up to let's say 23 or something really really high the intellectual needs I had whether or not I could express them that well whether I could cooperate and collaborate that well we're really high right I mean you know just think of a sermon literally having in arms reach you guys no I'm still working on Aristotle you know sir I have textbooks here for Chinese that are sitting around in the desk books about politics and history within arm's reach and stuff you know um from me at age forty I don't need to talk to anybody about what I'm reading I don't need guidance or feedback or positive or even a sounding board like even when you sit down I have lunch with somebody and they don't have anything to say but they're at least listening to you and asking questions for clarification or asking what did you like about the book or something yeah it's 16 that can be crucial give me absolutely crucial it's your intellectual development and again whether that's 16 to 26 or whatever it can be so important to have someone just listening to you talk about your intellectual aspirations and interests you I mean whether or not you think of that as an intellectual need you you probably do have that kind of and you are probably playing that role for the other person too you know what whatever it is they're doing yeah intellectually now of course I'm tempted it here jump into you know learning languages learning really hard languages like Chinese but in some ways that's an extraordinary example that can't can't apply to things whether it's learning a language or learning to play music how different it is to do that alone completely alone as opposed to doing it with some participation and positive feedback from someone who loves you that's a huge difference I don't need to play the keyboard learning to play the trombone learning to read and write Chinese and you know what it's at a higher level with history politics philosophy the life of the mind with anything intellectual it is because that's that's the loneliest art form of all you know and it's the most immediate I remember my father always used to say that he used to say the hardest art form is is acting and here's why he said if you're a painter you can wake up feeling like crap feeling thief's wasted your whole life that you should quit you should just get a job in a law firm or real estate you know that you should you should give it up and then you can look at the painting on your wall you can look at a sketch you did stuck to your fridge with a magnet and you could say wow I've still got it like I've still got something could you sanction to and um you know you can be totally demoralized as a musician but you can stand there in the bathroom and the shower or whatever and sing or play or instrument or whatever and you can hear your own voice back and you can think wow you know I've still got it and he said when you're an actor and you stand there in front of the bathroom mirror looking at yourself what have I got what do i what do I have what's what's my role and you know when you're a 16 year old kid reading philosophy reading politics the life of the mind whatever it is no this is all this kind of stuff what have you what have you got it's the most immediate most impalpable thing at least as an actor there's that little bit of a distance between your brain and the expression in your face in some ways your face is your instrument right your face is your trombone your face is your canvas but the life of the mind you know what have I got what am I doing here having someone you love even maybe an intellectually meteoroid mediocre person but he's given you positive feed but that could be it could be very important so look what I need from a partner at age 40 my needs are very low compared to what they used to be because now I have so much depth of experience and self-confidence and ability and education of course mostly self-taught mostly autodidact mostly selfie but I also have a lot of formal education I can teach myself Chinese alone in a closet you know you guys aren't noticed but I taught myself lotion while chopping firewood and made my own text books that I've done all this stuff myself I've worked on so many languages and philosophies and whatever I've done a lot of stuff alone and have become a bit of a cold learning machine or I can I can intellectually thrive in a vacuum with nobody to love me or with somebody to love me but he's not involved in that way intellectually I'm gonna go out on a limb here dear viewer and say you don't want that there's there's a reason why people would rather pay fifty thousand dollars to learn a language like lotion in a university in Fresno instead of chopping their own firewood living in a hut getting their own shocked themselves alone it's really really hard doing those things alone and you know having one person who loves you involved is infinitely more than zero okay this is the real world most people in love in matters of the heart take whatever they can get and get whatever they can take you know do you have ten people choose between do you have ten people who can really love you I don't mean tell me ten people will sleep with you ten people will just have sex with you and pack up move out the next day you know someone who really has what it takes to love you to really be a part of your life in a constructive positive or um if the only person you've got who's indicating they want to try to you know build a life with you they want to try to love you they want to try to support you if that person is intellectually mediocre you can try and you have to make it your absolute top priority to communicate to them what are your emotional needs what are your intellectual needs and they've got to do the same back for you it's possible this woman assuming it's one more these women plural that Daniel was considering dating it's possible they chose you Daniel because they have intellectual needs to Melissa one of the benefits she gets from this relationship is someone to motivate her and director and reward her for the reading she's doing you know Melissa comes out of a background where she's aware she just didn't learn that much in high school she just didn't learn that much in university came up the other day I asked her you know when was the first time you even heard the name Mao Zedong what was it you heard the name Stalin and the stuff these huge towering parts of recent you know political history that were totally lacking from her education upbringing and her becoming her going from being a kind of isolated sheltered person from Detroit to being a cosmopolitan kind of politically savvy well-educated person almost nobody nobody will put an ad on but what are the dating apps tinder tinder is a day yeah no one's gonna point put an app and put an advertisement on on tinder saying yeah I'm single what I really want it's someone who can help me develop from being a kind of isolated you know totally educated person into being a sophisticated you know cousin volatile person but that's what a lot of women want sure so what a lot of men want to I mean again we could be talking about a gay relationship where it's it's two men and the gender inequality is taken out of this and we could be type of a relationship where the woman is older and the man is younger all these combinations and you can be an older guy but getting older is not getting wiser you could be an older guy with a low level of education you you're with a more educated woman and exactly part of why you want to be with her is because she provides the kind of stimulus and motivation for you to be all you can be for you to develop more to get to get more out of yourself and you know there's a difference here the the emotional needs we think of as fundamentally comforting and gratifying when they're met and never forget this the intellectual needs are exhausting right it's hard work and it's not about feeling good about yourself it's not it's about pushing your limits and learning from the experience and failing and failing and failing until you gain proficiency and being wrong and finding out that you're wrong and noticing that you're wrong and maybe you're your boyfriend or girlfriend's pointing out that you're wrong then noticing it and thinking what you're doing on learning from the mistake that's the process and I think one of the real signs of being an intellectual is that you realize this doesn't end when you come home and off your hat and hang up your coat that your home life in your apartment with your boyfriend or girlfriend this is me be the most important Laboratory of all you're gonna do more learning in the bedroom than at the library long term over the the years and decades of your life ahead so if you don't have an intellectually gratifying stimulating motivating relationship it's just going to be a huge disadvantage in your life in every way say again most people take whatever they can get and get whatever they can take if you've met someone and they really think they've got what it takes to love you that's number one job apartment and at any age at any age they may not know themselves what they're capable of yet so if you give them a chance maybe maybe intellectually they can surprise you