the miracle of intellectual intimacy
Very few times in my life have I gotten involved with someone with whom I have the potential for both emotional/physical and intellectual intimacy, but I find myself in that situation now and I love it. I love that we can go from talking about emotions and personal experience to discussing politics, science, history or technology. And then back again.
I love that I am having the opportunity to talk about some ideas I've never talked about with anyone other than perhaps a professor in graduate school. Parts of my brain that have been asleep for a long time are starting to stir, and other parts that are well used in my work situation are now adjusting to also being used in the context of building a relationship, which is so much richer. It's one thing to have intellectually stimulating conversations with people at work, with whom I have no real emotional connection, but to have this be part of my personal relationship is almost too good to be true.
I suppose I had a few opportunities for interesting conversation while growing up, but nowhere near as much as would've allowed my mind to develop to its potential. My friends (all girls) were willing to talk about "deep" issues, like the meaning of life, but mostly we talked about emotional topics, not intellectual ones, although we often shared our love for literature with each other.
The guys I dated, on the other hand, seemed incapable even of talking about emotional issues. I'm not sure what we talked about, other than stupid superficial stuff that aspiring young yuppies think they're supposed to talk about. If I tried to steer a conversation in a more interesting direction, I always met resistance both from the perspective that I was a girl and thus not expected to have such thoughts ("don't go getting so serious on me!" or "why do you worry your pretty little head with ideas like that?"), and from the perspective that intellectual pursuits are for nerds and geeks and clearly these guys did not want to be associated with such things. I must've had bad taste in men! ;-)
If only I hadn't had let the social pressure to choose a certain kind of guy influence me so strongly, there's no telling what kinds of interesting guys I might've become involved with when I was younger. I actually had access to some pretty interesting guys at my school, but never chose them for some reason. It took me coming out as a lesbian and experiencing a wide range of relationships with other women to finally work my way back towards giving men a second chance, once I had finally let go of those annoying social pressures.
I look back over my youth and have some regret that I got so caught up in superficial concerns, like appearance, and that I allowed myself to be defined by the way I looked, as that has so little to do with who I am and what I might bring to a relationship. And I regret how much I let appearances affect my choices in relationships, as that has so little to do with the kind of intimacy I might've found with other people. But I suppose I take some comfort in the thought that if even someone as smart as I am could be so powerfully swayed by social pressures based on rather stupid premises, it's really not a surprise that the masses are as well. Which is all the more reason to encourage children today to start questioning social conventions at an early age!
I love that I am having the opportunity to talk about some ideas I've never talked about with anyone other than perhaps a professor in graduate school. Parts of my brain that have been asleep for a long time are starting to stir, and other parts that are well used in my work situation are now adjusting to also being used in the context of building a relationship, which is so much richer. It's one thing to have intellectually stimulating conversations with people at work, with whom I have no real emotional connection, but to have this be part of my personal relationship is almost too good to be true.
I suppose I had a few opportunities for interesting conversation while growing up, but nowhere near as much as would've allowed my mind to develop to its potential. My friends (all girls) were willing to talk about "deep" issues, like the meaning of life, but mostly we talked about emotional topics, not intellectual ones, although we often shared our love for literature with each other.
The guys I dated, on the other hand, seemed incapable even of talking about emotional issues. I'm not sure what we talked about, other than stupid superficial stuff that aspiring young yuppies think they're supposed to talk about. If I tried to steer a conversation in a more interesting direction, I always met resistance both from the perspective that I was a girl and thus not expected to have such thoughts ("don't go getting so serious on me!" or "why do you worry your pretty little head with ideas like that?"), and from the perspective that intellectual pursuits are for nerds and geeks and clearly these guys did not want to be associated with such things. I must've had bad taste in men! ;-)
If only I hadn't had let the social pressure to choose a certain kind of guy influence me so strongly, there's no telling what kinds of interesting guys I might've become involved with when I was younger. I actually had access to some pretty interesting guys at my school, but never chose them for some reason. It took me coming out as a lesbian and experiencing a wide range of relationships with other women to finally work my way back towards giving men a second chance, once I had finally let go of those annoying social pressures.
I look back over my youth and have some regret that I got so caught up in superficial concerns, like appearance, and that I allowed myself to be defined by the way I looked, as that has so little to do with who I am and what I might bring to a relationship. And I regret how much I let appearances affect my choices in relationships, as that has so little to do with the kind of intimacy I might've found with other people. But I suppose I take some comfort in the thought that if even someone as smart as I am could be so powerfully swayed by social pressures based on rather stupid premises, it's really not a surprise that the masses are as well. Which is all the more reason to encourage children today to start questioning social conventions at an early age!