[anon200]

It seems so difficult to actually look at your own relationship from an outside standpoint and define it as healthy or not. Thus, I am turning to you guys. Please help: I need feedback on this.

I met my boyfriend a year ago (yes, this has been a fast, upcoming relationship) and from our first date, I was completely thrown off. I've never dated someone so arrogant or bossy, but somehow I was enthralled. He's extremely educated, but very independent. I have never dated anyone like him in the past--I'm usually attracted to sweet, quiet guys. His pushy personality threw me off at times, but I guess I looked through rose-colored lenses. He yells easily and swears at me, but he's still respectful. There have been times where he told me I'm unintelligent or that I just don't "get" things. I cry extremely easily and it angers him more when I become emotional. I find that I am scared of him even though I know he won't harm me. One red flag is that he threatens to break up with me every time he's really mad at me. It usually ends with a "F$# you, I want you to move out as soon as you can!" the first few times I took seriously, and then after a while it's like I've become a good actress. I follow a basic routine: he yells, I cry, he tells me he wants to leave me, I cry, he later comes to me and apologizes". At that point, I can deal with it. But it's like he keeps pushing my limits. He's even used the "I don't like you any more line", but of course later comes in and assures me he loves me.

I know that I make a sweet girlfriend (not trying to sound arrogant, but this is one of the few things I do feel confident about myself). He knows that I am and has even said that I am. (This is one of the reasons he has had few girlfriends and all of them have been uber sweet). But he uses that against me when he's mad. The first time he called me a B$%ch, I was appalled. I told him never to call me that again....he now calls me that whenever I even so much as disagree with him. He knows I really have low self-confidence, but I feel like he targets my weak areas for that reason. He likes to call me dumb, but not in a direct way (because that would be an obvious form of abuse, right?). He'll often say "you're either retarded, or you just refuse to listen to me", which will either force me to tell him that I am retarded or that I'm purposely making him mad--but I'm doing neither...right?

We sleep in separate rooms because (1) I snore loudly and he's an extremely light sleeper, and (2) he's independent and we both believe in having separate spaces. This arrangement is fine and understandable to me, but he tends to abuse it. Before I moved in with him, I saw him almost every day. We spent a lot of time with each other, but since I moved in, it's as though he feels like me living there compensates for the time we spend together. I go to work and school all day, every day. He works six hours a day and then comes home to get on his comp and play games. Fine with me, but he's in his room all night. He pops out once in a while to grab a beer and say hi, but goes back. I go to bed and around 5am he comes in, wakes me up, and then gets mad when I seem grumpy or more interested in sleeping. But I guess that's a fairly minimal problem.

The last, and worst part of our downward-spiraling relationship is the sexless aspect of it. The first six months of sex in our relationship was very promising. We had sex daily. Now, I haven't had sex with him for over a month. I confronted him about it, but he's never really given me a reason why he won't have sex. I have to admit, I have an icky feeling that he could be cheating on me. But I do trust him. My biggest worry about this relationship is that perhaps I am in a fairly abusive relationship, but I don't realize it. I know that I am at a crossroads and that I should either (1) accept it as me simply making myself a victim and getting over my fears so that I can pick things up and work to improve the relationship, or (2) accept that things are bad and that I need to get out before I let myself become too attached to leave.

[WildChild]

In a healthy relationship both persons feel honored, loved, cared about, respected, supported and up lifted. The balance may shift with one more up than the other at any given time, but over time it's fairly equal. What you have described is in no way healthy, it sounds like he is abusive, manipulative and real A-hole. You are a bit confused someone who yells easily, swears at you, calls you a b*tch and tells you that you are retarded is NOT respectful - that's all verbal abuse.

He is manipulative and yes you are in a negative, abusive relationship, g et out now and get some counseling so you don't land your self back in the same kind of situation again.

[Coraline]

Does he play World of Warcraft?
If he does, this is the source of your troubles.

[anonymouswhitefemale]

People who are intelligent often have difficulties getting on with women (you mentioned that he hasn't had many girlfriends). I say this, because I am somewhat similar.

I've lived an extremely independant life, and I'm totally comfortable with who I am outside of a relationship (well, mostly). I'm confident in my decisions and my opinions, as life has shown me that I'm basically always right.

This is quite a difficult state to enter a relationship in. We're logical creatures, we're used to everything making sense, and not having to deal with irrational, petty idiocy. Which, to be honest, is exactly what you get going out with a girl. And because of this independant strength and knowledge, our skills at maintaining a diplomatic relationship suffer. For example, I can quite easily make someone feel stupid, purely by accident, without any malice behind it whatsoever. Which I am sure is very frustrating for the woman in the relationship.

Basically, being strong minded and independant makes a healthy relationship much harder to achieve. Most intelligent guys are borderline arrogant/selfish (maybe even slightly autistic). It's just the nature of the game I suppose, physically big men will throw their weight around a bit and intimidate, wheras intellectually big men with throw their brain around. As for him swearing at you etc., it could be that he's being an arsehole, or it could be that he's frustrated - bear with me for a minute. I know this will sound completely arrogant, but when I'm having a discussion with someone and they cannot take in what I am saying, miss the point, make a big deal out of something irrelevent, it can be very frustrating. The same sort of frustrating as being asked "do I look a bit fat?", you saying "no, of course not", and recieving "aaaah, you think I'm fat!". It's like a lose lose situation, where basically she's going to be getting mad at you no matter what.

So, in terms of his relationship with you goes, I can completely understand the independance, seperate rooms, and not spending every second of every day together. However, something on top of this is clearly going wrong at the moment. Something is driving the two of you apart, seemingly with a final destination in mind somewhere down the tracks. There's probably little resentments building up on either sides, he's taking things out on you, you're taking things out on him, these resentments, while not enough to break the relationship, start to make you not want to spend as much time together, especially intimately. Personally, I think that once things get sexless, it's just a matter of time until the rest crumbles.

As for why he doesn't want sex... Could be anything really. It could be that he doesn't fancy you any more, or that he's depressed and subconciously he's striking out at those closest to him.

Ok, so I typed more than I should have.

To boil it all down: are either of you happy? It doesn't seem like it. You both need to sit down and evaluate all of this or give it a nice clean break.

[WildChild]

Anony, Let me preface this, that I'm not trying to dump on you. Writing this was a helpful thought process for me. You may be aware that women are largely verbal processors while men are internal processors. You triggered a thought journey and I'm sharing it. I think you have often shown real insight into people's feelings and offered some excellent advice. Your response really struck a chord in me.

I just divorced a man who is exactly what you described, with a twist however. He is highly intelligent in certain limited ways - reads computer code like most of us read a newspaper, retains trivial that non one else cares about and trots it out regularly to show his superiority. He has been diagnosed as narsistic.The twist? My IQ is a good 40 points higher than his, all the stuff about irrational, petty 'female' idiocy is a bit out of line with me. He may be high IQ but his EQ is in the cellar, burried some place. His real problem, is that he is so enamored of his own intelligence that he can't tell that most of the time he comes off as a borish idiot. Having decided that he is superior, he can communicate with hardly anyone, gets fired like clockwork, if there is and error on a bill or problem that needs correcting, he insults everyone who could help him and gets no where with it. Over and over, when someone would try to explain something to him, something in their field, he wasn't able to understand because he was so busy trying to figure why they must be wrong because he was certain he was smarter. I ran into it, he would try to argue my areas of interest with me, he had no idea what he was talking about, that never stopped him. He come off looking like an idiot, smugly certain of his intellectual superiority.

He is the classic bull in the china closet, can't discourse, he berrates. Can't handle social situations, insults people right and left without knowing it. It must be a terrible way to live, it's certainly difficult to live with. In his illnesses it became nearly deadly, he'd read every drug sheet, examine the chemical structures (who cares?) and proceed to get nearly every side effect on the list - including the ones that No One gets, they're just on there for legal reasons! Drove the doctors nuts, he'd listen to only half or maybe a quarter of what they said, decide he knew what they were going to say and fill in his own ideas. He convinced himself that he was getting alzheimers and started to exhibt symptoms, when in fact because he gets his hormones by injection, he's at far lower risk than most men. It became maddening to live with.

I know one factor in this and I think it's far more pronounced in males (probably because of the way the hemispheres of the brain communicate), is that highly intelligent people's brains work differently. I've had a couple of small brain injuries and don't retain and process info like I used to. I'm aware of it and it's frustrating - it's like when you have word on the tip of your tongue and can't get a hold of it. But I still usually grasp things far faster and in a different way than other people. I can see possiblities in things that other people don't seem to grasp. You may experience this too, however I take an educational approach, ask questions, try to understand their perspective, instead of assuming they are idiots. Often times they can see something I don't, also they are in the majority and like it or not are pretty firmly in control. You p*ss them off and they will shoot you down. How smart is it to keep p*ssing them off? You've got to learn to live in the world as it is. That's the only way you can effect change. Yes there is a lot people just don't 'get', that there are things that could be easily changed and make everyone's life simpler, but if 'they' don't get it, being rude, arrogant and demanding won't change that.

I like the the definition of insanity, often credited to Einstien but probably originating with Ben Franklin, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If what you've been doing, how you've been relating to people, isn't working, then as an intelligent being, you need to change it. Think about this, you said, "when I'm having a discussion with someone and they cannot take in what I am saying, miss the point, make a big deal out of something irrelevent, it can be very frustrating." Who has the problem here? The guy who can't communicate his ideas in an understandable fashion, suited to his audience or the listener?

Some basic communication classes can be great help. While I found speach classes useful, love being the devils advocate and switching sides, back and forth- if you can't argue at least three positions convincingly, you don't really understand the subject. But speech is really more mind games, what was the real eye opener for me was technical communication. Technical journalism or speech, learning to write specs and instructions that can actually be understood is a skill few master and more needed than any other. Women are better at this than men. Here's what really got my attention: a stage in a lecture hall, a curtain dividing it in two. The audience can see both sides, the people on the stage cannot see each other. A table on each side, an identical pile of tinker toys on each table. One person on the stage must build something with the tinker toys while verbally instructing the person on the other side to build an identical structure. They can't see each other or what the other is doing. Sometimes audience reaction will cue them that they aren't doing a very good job of communicating. The items are never the same the first few tries. Two women after a couple tries would get it and could do it, the men never quite got there. My experience was within the context of an engineering program, I don't know if men trained in a more 'people oriented' field would be better or if women who have less technical training would do as well. The point is, it's about communication skills and the abiltity to use language that the listener can understand and that is in itself a kind of intelligence.

You need to use your intelligence to smarten up, get more flexible in your thinking, learn to go inside and find the child who can play.That's what made Einstein truly genius, he had a sense of humor and pathos, he had perspective about what he created. He could explain things on a human level without making people feel stupid or inadequate. Figuring out the theory of relativity was highly intelligent, explaining the theory of relativity in terms of the difference in time perception for a man sitting on a hot stove or sitting with a pretty girl was genius. People (read mostly men) who suffer from this need to get over being intelligent and start learning to show some genius!

[anon200]

Thank you for your replies. I really appreciate it. It has really put things into perspective and it was helpful to hear both sides. I do realize I need to understand him better and try more to look at it from his perspective. I am overall happy with him, but like you say, it's really differences and misunderstanding that is driving us apart.

[anonymouswhitefemale]

Wildchild, no offense taken, and even if it was offensive I hope you'd say it anyway.

I wasn't trying to say that it was the correct way to act, merely give a window into that person. A little understanding goes a long way. There are different types of intelligence, and one of those intelligences is social awareness, and it's something often left underdeveloped in more intelligent people.

Until I was about 20, I don't think I really listened to other peoples opinions. I mean, I did, but I would just try to figure out why they were wrong and how to support my own viewpoint (although I might reevaluate my opinion based on it later). I think part of it was being underchallenged all of the time. Nobody I met would ever really 'win' in an argument, but really that mainly just demonstrates my ability to debate, rather than knowledge. Since I've grown up a bit, I see debates as a way to learn rather than prove my superiority.

Think about this, you said, "when I'm having a discussion with someone and they cannot take in what I am saying, miss the point, make a big deal out of something irrelevent, it can be very frustrating." Who has the problem here? The guy who can't communicate his ideas in an understandable fashion, suited to his audience or the listener?

I see what you're saying, but what I'm getting at is simply that if you're trying to explain something that is above the level of understanding the other person can achieve, there is basically no way to win. If you say, never mind, it's a bit complicated, you're saying their stupid, if you explain it in dumber and dumber and even more simplistic terms you come across in the extact same way.

But yeah, I'm not saying that acting like that is the ideal way to be, just explaining how it comes to be. You see so much support of people who have had issues in their lives, but when someone's been a bit separated from society they're just an arsehole.

It's all about tolerance and understanding, and not reading the worst meaning into everything that the other person says.

[WildChild]

it's not a matter of talking down to someone so much as talking With them. Many communications experts, sales trainers and relationship trainers teach a technique called mirroring. This involves learning to mimic, not to tease or make fun but to establish rapport. You match your volume, speed and vocabulary to the person you are speaking with. I'm talking about something very much like that, in that you speak with people at a level they can understand. If you were explaining physics to a musical genius would you consider him stupid because he didn't understand it? No, you would respect his area of expertise and tailor your conversation perhaps by using an analogy that might be more understandable. If you were tutoring highly gifted kids would you present the material as you would to a class of graduate students? Probably not, they may be highly gifted but they are kids and lack a level of life experience and maturity of thought.

Virtually everyone has one or more area they excell at. The man I'm seeing now is essentially a mechanic and construction guy, he's got a basic degree, doesn't have an extensive vocabulary, but he is a great listener, fabulous lover, connects with people, can fix darn near anything and if you listen beyond his vocabulary he has fine mind and is very philosophical. He thinks! Deeply. If I heard only the words and not the message I might have passed up quite a guy! So he can't do calculus, may have no idea what diffiQ is, my father is a PhD but can't do those either! I can't work with computer code, but I can take a piece of paper and make a pattern for darned near anything; clothing, furniture, a building or a tool. There are different kinds of intelligence and no justification for disregarding any, we need them all to function as a society.

Perhaps there is more intelligence in finding joy in what we are good at and appreciating what others are good at than in determining who is smarter?

[sTyLeRock]

lol

Does he play World of Warcraft?
If he does, this is the source of your troubles.

OMG LOL!

[UMMINGBYRD]

Gotta go, gotta go....

Sweetie,
listen to yourself. Then ask yourself what advice you would give your best friend, mother or sister if they came to you with this same problem. Do not be a door mat for this guy, or any other. It is not even a healthy friendship for that matter. Sounds like you both need to move on ... Chuck this one up as a lesson in what kind of relationship not to be in.... I hope you heed my advice. Best of luck.....