Seen But Never Known: The Curse of Cognitive Disparity in Intimacy

Exploring the structural asymmetry of intelligence mismatches in modern love.

“The greatest tragedy in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
— George Bernard Shaw

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If you think a 22 year old woman and a 35 year old man can't have anything in common, why do you think a 140 IQ man and a 110 IQ woman can?

There is all this outrage over age gaps, but precisely none over IQ gaps. Do you think a non-autistic man two standard deviations in cognitive ability above a woman cannot manipulate her to the most insidious and absolute of degrees through just the sheer breadth and magnitude by which he outclasses her? Because I assure you, he can possess her in ways her opposite sex peers could only dream of.

He can perceive and plan, encode and employ in myriad ways she is blind to, his capacity for dominance transcending her mere comprehension of the concept, able to recondition, rewire and rearrange her in ways she didn't even know possible. She may read inane magazine grade fluff pieces, misattributing cathartic armchair psychological jargon like "narcissist" to him in an attempt to seem aware and informed when she's upset, but she doesn't actually have the capacity to perceive what's going on, nor penetrate the depths of the mind of the man who can comprehend her singular fullness in ways not even she can.

Now before you panic at this realisation, you need not worry, for when the intelligence gap is too wide, the less intelligent person becomes something akin to a pet. That is to say, a type of affection can be felt for them due to an appreciation for certain moral qualities or traits they might possess, like courage, conscientiousness or compassion, but ultimately the one C that matters most - comprehension - is absent. And so he is a forever obscure and impenetrable depth to her, an unsolvable puzzle - which may prove tantalisingly agonising for her, but ultimately unrewarding for him.

His self-expression, breadth of being and depth of thought is never truly appreciated by her, because she cannot grasp it. Colour and vibrancy is lost in the air between them as it travels from his mouth to her ears, as her mind naturally gives rise to an ineffable gulf in its habitual dilution of his complexity, blinding her tragically to his totality, thereby rendering true connection impossible.

IQ does not merely reflect abstract reasoning ability - it sets a ceiling on one’s capacity for psychological development. The higher the IQ, the more complex a person's neural architecture becomes. Emotional maturity, depth of self-reflection, capacity for abstract pattern recognition, and spiritual integration are all constrained by the limits of one’s processing power.

A woman with a 110 IQ will plateau at a certain point cognitively, relationally, and spiritually. No matter how good her intentions, her mental bandwidth limits her ability to keep up with a man who lives several layers above her in perception. Her emotional responses will feel sincere, but to the high IQ man, they will often appear simplistic, recycled, and insufficiently individuated.

This is why mental age is the far more pertinently relevant metric than biological age. A 22 year old woman with a 130 IQ will be closer in maturational structure to a 35 year old man with a 140 IQ, than a 32 year old woman with an IQ of 105. Without this parity in abstraction, one partner will inevitably become a teacher or a caretaker rather than a true complement, and thus the relational dynamic is doomed to collapse into instruction of her, compensation for her, and boredom with her.

Such a woman is unable to properly intuit him and give him what he needs, because she cannot map his crevices and indents and subtle patterns. After all, how can she engage with what she cannot perceive? Truly then, soul deep connection is not possible between the intellectually dissimilar, because dominance without resonance comes at the cost of depth. Yes, the man can rule more easily with less challenge - but at grave cost, and for an ultimately less fulfilling prize. To use a grotesque metaphor that drives the distinction home: it is like being the king of a dump rather than a palace, infinitely easier, yes, but exceptionally less rewarding and infinitely more pointless.

Some disordered, shallow and insecure men who prioritise control over depth of connection may relish in these kinds of relationships, as they look to maximise the power differential at the expense of all else, whilst some women may enjoy them, because irrespective of their insecurity and how small he effortlessly makes her feel, she sees him as a sort of high status all knowing magician she can treat like ChatGPT. To her, he is a pattern recognising problem solving demigod she can go to with all her problems and questions, where he always responds with something "smart sounding" she doesn't really understand, but feels assured by because "he sounds like he knows what he's talking about". For the woman, this is akin to having a direct connection to divinity, a splash of water to the face and a breath of fresh air in a desert of dry and comprehensible dimness, but for the man, it is utterly underwhelming and banal, for she is completely incapable of bringing him anywhere near to his limits - she is in all her most tragic essence - underwhelming - insufficient.

Just think of it, for all their familiarity, such a man would be a stranger in his own bed with the one who is meant to be closest to him - and so if you would speak of love and connection and the capacity to exploit power differentials, why do you never speak of this? Why do you always speak of age gaps, but never of intelligence gaps?

High intelligence, when not constrained by cowardice, but applied with full intent to the totality of the pursuit and mastery of another being, is the ultimate form of dominance. If this is not the case, then why do we fear the capacity for artificial intelligence to manipulate us and take all our jobs? Because it is. That is to say, the natural hierarchy of society is in large part an intellectual hierarchy - and all societies have as such since the dawn of time stratified their population by cognitive ability through the complexity tiers of their professions.

This is why I am of the (what should not at all be) rather controversial position that an age gap couple of more proximal IQ is more ethical than a similarly aged couple with a much wider one.

Of course, women don't get insecure about how other women are smarter than them - only about how much more desirable, fertile and physically attractive younger women are. And so due to this motivation alone, there will never be the cultural energy and outrage for the IQ gap that there is for the age gap, in a feminised culture where the opinions of spinsters, divorcees and relationally dissatisfied reason-deficient women are cacophonously centred in public discourse to our collective detriment.

This is why - most uncoincidentally - the attitude of a culture towards age gaps is indicative of how patriarchal it is. Any culture that sees them as a good thing is patriarchal, and any culture that doesn't, isn’t. Why? Because in non-patriarchal cultures, the family unit has collapsed and divorce has become normalised, dare I say, routine. This means older women who should have long since been permanently removed from the market, continue to see younger women as competing potential wives to be sabotaged in their pursuit of seeking a masculine axis to orient themselves around, rather than as daughters to be mentored from a solidified position of wifehood.

Truly, if people weren't just being manipulative and self-interested, but were actually operating from principle-based thinking, they would see there's a lot of merit in what I’m saying. IQ gaps near categorically allow for an equal, if not even greater power differential than age gaps, with no capacity for mutual soul fulfilment. And yet there is relatively little outrage over IQ gaps, and vast hysterics over age gaps, despite being the historically demonstrated proof of concept with the capacity to generate deep mutual fulfilment. This isn't to say age gap relationships can't come in a predatory flavour - because they can - only that they often aren’t, and need not necessarily be, whilst an IQ gap relationship almost always will be, even if not intended to be due to the structural irreconcilability of the dynamic.

Power flows naturally to the one who sees more, thinks deeper, and understands further. His perceptive bandwidth eclipses hers, so even in kindness, he will be forever out of reach, experienced by her, but never truly known to her, because no resonance can exist between the comprehended, and the incomprehensible.

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