Being smart is central to my identity. If you asked me to describe myself in one word… well, first I’d probably make some jokey-not-really-a-joke like “tired!” or “depressed!” but, if pushed, I’d say smart. I definitely don’t think I’m a genius or anything, and there are moments daily when I feel dumb as hell, but my intelligence is the thing I’ve been complimented on the most in my life, so it feels like the realest and best part of me. (It’s also something my therapist has repeatedly advised me to untangle from my self-image, so that I don’t have an identity crisis any time I try something new and am bad at it, but that’s another story…)
Anyway, all this to say, I’ve always been a smartie, and so there is almost nothing hotter to me than being outsmarted.
Let me be very clear about what I do not mean when I say I like being outsmarted: I do not mean that I want to be condescended to, or to have things mansplained to me. I do not mean that I want someone to pedantically quibble with things I have said. I do not mean that I want someone to assume I need their tutelage and then inflict it on me unsolicited.
What I do mean is… When someone clearly sees and understands exactly how smart I am, and in what ways, and can meet me where I’m at, and volley our conversation back and forth like a lively tennis match, perhaps playfully pointing out some actual holes in my argument or blind spots in my thinking along the way, well… I’m not sure what could be hotter than that. Further, while I do date people other than men, I think it’s worth mentioning here that a man who can value a woman’s intelligence on its own merits is usually a man who sees women as full people – something I wish I didn’t even have to say, but unfortunately the bar is low enough that I do.