I've got a problem - I know I'm the bad guy here and I think what I need is a new perspective or tools to help me change a toxic behavior/mindset I have so that I can more fairly take my relationship to the next level.
I've (27M) been in a serious relationship with my girlfriend (25F) for just under 2 years. She's an unbelievable girl - beautiful, wacky, fun, loving, motivated. You name it; she's got it - that is everything but intellectual interests. Quite frankly, she doesn't know much about fairly common subjects and when it's just me and her, I can just ignore it, explain it to her, or (when appropriate) laugh about it with her. But when some of these moments of obliviousness come out with our friend group, I honestly feel a really embarrassed by it sometimes. She doesn't know names of major politicians, hasn't heard of the most popular movies of all time (recently it was Schindlers List and The Godfather that came up in conversation), gets confused easily by words she's hearing for the first time and doesn't try to figure it out using context clues and then feels stupid when people are clearly giving her a funny look (or rarely laugh at/say something that suggests they think she's clueless).
She's talked to me in the past about how sometimes I (unkowingly) give certain looks of sadness or disapproval and she knows it's because I'm embarrassed. I HATE that for her. I HATE that I feel it and even more that she sees it and that it affects her.
The thing is, I've seen her in her element and she absolutely has moments of brilliance. When she knows what she's talking about, she's an extremely effective communicator. She is NOT stupid. She is dyslexic and definitely has confidence issues around the subject of intelligence because certain things take longer for her. She's said things in the past that suggest she considers being intelligent a requirement to be knowledgable. It's as if she thinks people 'just know' all these facts out of no where but I don't see her put in effort to learn more on her own. I've tried to encourage her to read more or take deeper interest in certain subjects that she has expressed interest in in the past so that she can feel more confident but she either brushes it off or feels embarassed/insulted by me.
It stresses me out that she's so insecure about something but won't put in any work to improve. I honestly can't tell if it's because she doesn't care too, is scared to or just doesn't like the way I approach it and it's exhausting. I know that like a lot of men, I try too quickly to provide a solution when she just wants to be heard but this is an ongoing subject of her complaints and negativity and it's killing me to see her not try.
So, there are really 23 questions here:
1) How do I not feel embarrassed when she's acting a bit clueless in public? I think it's more of a 'I feel like her cluelessness is a reflection of me' sort of thing and that's just not fair. I know it's not but I feel it and I'm looking for guidance on how not to feel that. (I do get easily embarrassed about my own things too FWIW).
2) Intelligence is a tricky thing to give feedback around and it's something she takes very personally but I know she's capable of improving. Or at the very least improving the breadth of knowledge she has. Is there an effective way to approach this or give this feedback to her? I really just want to be encouraging and help her confidence with it but feel stuck.
3) (edit add) For people who have been around couples with dramatically different intellectual interests, how do you feel about it? Do you think the 'dumber'-seeming one is in any way reflection of the 'smarter'-seeming one or does it not come across that way at all?
Separately, she's getting therapy for other stuff from her past (we're both very open to therapy - see people any time we think that's the best answer) - would it be worth bringing up to see if she'd feel comfortable discussing that insecurity with a therapist? How would you approach this?
TL;DR My girlfriend can come across clueless sometimes. It makes us both embarrassed and I'm struggling to help myself not feel that way and to help with her confidence.
Thank you so much for any direction or perspective you can give!
Edit 1: Thanks so much for the advice and perspective so far - the podcast idea is so simple but so helpful to address a medium she may not be as resistant to with her dyslexia. Shared learning experiences was also a good suggestion...starting a list now. I also wanted to add a couple comments for clarity.
1) I am not considering this a dealbreaker by any means at this point. It might be somewhat of an incompatibility (objectively) as some of you all have suggested but We have great conversations and a great time together in private.
2) She is not ditzy from a personality standpoint - a couple comments had the impression she's a 'whaaat?!' girl and that's not how it comes across. It's almost the opposite - she comes across put-together and then randomly doesn't know something super common which catches people off guard.
3) She was fairly sheltered growing up and it's definitely a factor. Her parents were very religious and from a fairly rural town. It's almost like I need help 'motivating' her or 'exciting' her about learning because she never had that influence.
Edit 2: Podcast recommendations about semi-intellectual subjects to start with?
Edit 3: Thanks everyone for the honest feedback - I knew I had some blindspots and wasn't sure how my post would come across but I've received valuable insights regardless. I'm still open to additional perspective (so keep it coming!) but I feel like I have a good sense of places to start (approaching my own insecurity about being perceived as unintelligent and seeking to involve more shared learning experiences in our relationship).
Final Edit I am SO unbelievably thankful for the wide variety of responses and willingness of people to engage in a dialogue with me.
I get that my assumptions of how to fix it (or that it needs fixing) or assumptions about what the key questions were were off base and rubbed some of you the wrong way but if I didn't assert some assumption in my post, I wouldn't have gotten the valuable feedback I ended up with.
Given that the tone of this post was set by a need to fix an issue, I think the result was a lot commenters extrapolating and projecting this issue onto other parts of our relationship. My tone was dramatic but this is something that has come up maybe a handful of times in a 2 year long relationship filled with love, laughter, and adventures together. We've fought through terminal illness scares, losses of close friends, job loss, and hardly ever fight (and even then, keep our 'fights' very productive rather than insulting).
We are VERY happy. I love her very much and she loves me as well. We are very confident in our relationship and future which is why we both work very hard to address and perceived weak points (and in this case getting perspective before fucking it up on a dry run haha).She is a VERY happy person. This is an overall small issue in a much healthier relationship than this post would suggest.
Her biggest compliment of me is that I have accepted her in ways that no one else ever has (and the same is true of her to me) and it seems that my insecurity about this specific issue is the weak point and is being projected onto our relationship in an unhealthy way so I came here to address it and think I have the types of responses I need to think about this in a healthier way.
Submitted November 29, 2018 at 10:49AM by throwawaypc2018 https://ift.tt/2zxiPTT
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