Prioritizing Intelligence When Dating

Far more than affection and attraction are necessary in order to maintain a lasting dating/marital relationship.  Consistency, honesty, and loyalty are vital to an intentionally healthy relationship, but worldview overlap is often trivialized: it is rare to find couples with a bond based largely on a shared and sound worldview.  To have a sound worldview, one must be intelligent, and intelligence, like a rational worldview, is often overlooked when people search for romantic partners.

Many people do not seem to intentionally seek out romantic partners who are genuinely intelligent.  They certainly might praise any intelligence that their partners possess, but they do not make it a high priority when dating.  In fact, it can be difficult to find anyone who legitimately makes it a priority at all, especially since many mistake mere education, a good memory, or articulate speech for intelligence.  Consequently, many people do not even know what ideological correctness looks like.

When it comes to ideological matters, the pragmatics of living with someone of a different worldview are often given greater weight than the fact that two contrary worldviews cannot both be correct.  What I mean by this is that many people are more likely to avoid a relationship with someone with a different worldview because of the inconveniences of making personal decisions together with them than because they care about truth (or because they do not want a relationship with someone who does not share that concern).  As long as their relationships entail superficial peace, many people will tolerate obvious and major errors in their partner's worldview.

The person who places relational fulfillment above worldview compatibility when seeking a romantic partner is not worthy of having a partner.  The person who seeks subjective pleasure over truth does not deserve to experience subjective pleasure until they align themselves with reality.  Dating as a rationalist can be quite difficult in a shallow world, but an intellectually and morally deficient significant other is worth avoiding, even if such avoidance means one must live without a romantic relationship.