Is it safe for a wife to be smarter than her husband? Of course! Men who cannot afford social ornaments sometimes want inferior wives. Why? Often because they harbor a great feeling of inferiority. Therefore, at all economic levels there are some men who want apparently weak and docile women whom they can completely dominate, who do not put up any arguments and who do what they are told without any “yes”, “and” or “Goals.” Likewise, there are women who want to be dominated or who are so eager to marry that they will do so under such circumstances.
What about the “common man” who does not have serious feelings of inadequacy, who cannot pay and does not want a social adornment? Do you demand that your wife not have too many brains?
He certainly wants her to be smart enough to do her job well. He doesn’t want to be ashamed of her for her stupidity. In reality, too, the marriage will be more successful if the wife is smart enough to be interesting and to help develop satisfying personal relationships.
Still, the man generally does not want to feel inferior to his wife. But feeling inferior is not the same as being inferior. Some men quietly take pride in a wife who is smarter, as long as she is smart enough not to make him look and feel inferior, especially in front of his friends.
Some men, like some women, want others to handle things for them. This desire can result from an unwillingness to take responsibility. It can come from a deep-seated desire to be dominated. Whatever your base, there are men who want to be dominated by their wives. In such cases, both of you should know about it beforehand.
The problem is not limited to what men in general, or this man in particular, may want. There is also social demand. The boy and girl planning the marriage must have a clear understanding of what the whole situation really is, including its contradictions, which they must somehow resolve.
Our culture expects the husband to be intellectually superior to his wife. However, in reality it is not and in many cases it cannot be. According to the law of possibilities, there will be almost as many wives who are superior to their husbands as there are husbands who are superior to their wives. So what to do?
In real life, the situation doesn’t turn out so bad. From a vocational point of view, the wife often goes astray while giving birth and raising children. With a twenty-year head start, even a relatively inferior husband can usually stay in the lead. And as a result of differences in what society expects, the wife usually runs with the throttle only partially open.
As the husband advances vocationally, or rises in company, the wife busies herself with preparing church dinners and organizing flower displays that consume her time and energy, but do not appear on the paycheck or her vocational position.
However, these advantages are not always enough to keep the husband in the lead. If the difference in capacity is made, it quickly becomes known.
Such a situation may be hidden by a polite little conspiracy to uphold the fiction of male superiority, but everyone knows who to turn to to get things done. In our days this fiction is increasingly difficult to maintain.
More and more wives return to work as soon as their children are old enough to be left alone and get real money and recognition.
In some cases, the wife will outgrow her husband. The problem often turns into a real problem the moment your income exceeds his.
My feeling is that the strongest marriages are those in which husband and wife have roughly the same level of intelligence. We may think that the problem will be serious, only if the girl is noticeably superior, but this is not necessarily true. The girl who marries an intellectually superior man may face equally dire problems. She will be more secure if she chooses a man closer to her own level, so that over the years the relationship can be more easily maintained.
There is as much chance that the wife is superior to the husband, as the other way around. All who marry must face this fact. In reality, there is no more justification for a man to feel ashamed because his wife is superior than there is for a wife to feel ashamed because her husband exceeds her.
In any case, character and personality are much more important, as long as each of the couple is smart enough to do a good job.
