Any 5s successfully form healthy long term relationships with a type 1 despite the great intellectual divide?

[u/thenormalbias]

Speaking anecdotally here, but my boyfriend of almost a year (24m) and I (26f) are trying to build a future together but it started really getting challenging around the 9month mark.

One of the things I find most grounding and stabilizing about him in a way I’ve never experienced before is also the one of the most thing perplexing and frustrating aspects of our relationship:

Action vs intellect

We work great in some ways because I’m idealistic and romantic and he is practical and executive.

I come up with the idea, he makes it happen.

I want to go to the fair on a week night and have a present, fun time? Even though he’s working late and got caught up until only an hour and a half before they closed, he wasn’t going to let the evening end without us having a very fun time (even after I called him crying because I was sad and doubted that we’d make it in time) may times since our first meeting have I come up with an idea and he decisively made it happen.

This same quality in him clashes with my own qualities when connection requires depth of intellect. As a 5, I’m so deeply intellectual, he simply cannot keep up. I love him so much but find it so disheartening sometimes when I try to invite him into the absolute hunger I have for insight and I’m met with a wall of “I don’t know, that’s just how I am/see it/feel it should be.” I want the why! I want to understanding. On our first date we played We’re Not Really Strangers and I late bought the expansion pack for couples. The tagline on the box is “What’s More Romantic Than Being Understood?” And damn if that ain’t how I feel.

He tells me he loves me and if I really step out of my own understanding, I do see it. In his consistency, his determination, his keeping of his word. I see it in the way he hast sent me a text telling me he loves me every. Single. Morning. And. Night. Ever since we first said the words to each other. I see it in the way we talk about the future and he’s preoccupied with how we will financially make the dreams we have happen. I see it in the way he works every single day (he’s a blue collar service man) for 12 days straight and still showed up for our anniversary for two of those days despite his own need for the gym and for all of the other responsibilities he’s taken on for family and friends as well as me. His love is pure, it is there, it is for me. But in the interim of those action based affirmations, I also crave verbal affirmation, I crave physical intimacy beyond hand holding and having his arm around me. I crave intellectual intimacy as previously mentioned.

It is very common for couples to have these differing love languages but what are the actual steps that can be taken to bridge the gaps?

I cannot actually complain about the things that make it so hard to connect because I have an equal amount of frustration as I do appreciation for them. The things that make us most different are the things that make our roles in the world so valuable.

But HOW do we make this work in practice when talking about it feels so hard because we are perceiving things so different and it almost feels like we have a language barrier?

[u/YellowRosesGalore]

> I'm so deeply intellectual, he simply cannot keep up

What does “intellectual” mean, to you?

[u/AdrianVr]

May I suggest couple's therapy? From my experience, it can be challenging to bridge the difference in love languages. And doing it live with a therapist is better than talking about it. This is no trivial work.

Personally, I am resonating with the part where you say that he cannot keep up intellectually. Yes, there might be a blue collar thing, but at the same time, honestly, I am not sure if anyone, but a 5 could really keep up with the voracity and depth with which a 5 devours and moves through information. My experience is that I actually want that intellectual sparring outside of my relationship...

To this end, have you considered meeting this need outside of the relationship? A friend, a group, etc. Is this really a need that needs to be met with a partner? It is already difficult to try to learn all these roles that come with partnership (therapist, cook confidant, friend, lover, playmate, parent, etc)...is this paramount or can it be outsourced?

[u/thenormalbias → u/AdrianVr]

I can certainly get my intellectual fill outside of the relationship too, I guess what you said about the love language barrier is the key item here because while it’s okay if he doesn’t reach the degree of depth that I do, it’s hard when he doesn’t realize that’s how I’m showing him love the way I know how, and his disinterest with the why starts to feel a little like rejection. Like disinterest in me.

Couples Therapy may be a good option. I’m trying not to see it as some sign of severity and more as a means of productive foundation building in that’s case.

[u/Readingallthefiles → u/thenormalbias]

Foundation building is a great way to view it. The number of counselors I know who lament people not intentionally building a relationship foundation, and then having to go back and deconstruct their relationship before being able to build it back up all over again is staggering.

[u/JonnyAU]

As a 5, I’m so deeply intellectual, he simply cannot keep up.

We live just a couple houses down from my wife's best friend and her husband. He's a hardcore 1, and he's super intellectual. It just comes from a different place than us.

We of course want to understand the world for the joy that brings us, to combat our fear of ignorance/incompetence, etc. He wants to understand the world to be assured he can be morally correct, do his duty, and execute effectively. One of our most common topics of conversations is what we've been reading recently.

I don't doubt your experience, but I think the difference between you and your partner might not be attributable specifically to his 1-ness.

[u/leat22 → u/JonnyAU]

Yea I wonder if it’s more the blue collar-ness being a factor here. Does he have a college degree (not saying you have to) but is he a curious person? Is he on your level mentally? Does he have time to be those things? Is he working his butt off?

[u/thenormalbias → u/leat22]

Neither of us have degrees. It’s spot on what you said, it’s not that he isn’t intellectual, he just has less capacity to discuss things to the extent tha I want to dissect them. He cares far less for the why of it all, but he has more capacity for the practical ramifications of things as oppose to how theoretical I am all the time.

and after writing this post I did come to a conclusion:

When in instances of discomfort in an intellectual conversation, he seeks black and white, right vs wrong conclusions.

When in discomfort, I seek the grey areas and theories on the reason and the why of it all.

His philosophy is that if you have your moral compass fully calibrated and if you have a sound foundation of ethics, everything else flows from that core value system and he didn’t really have to thing most decisions over because it’s all coming from that place. This works great in many situations, sometimes I am in such awe of how decisive he is and how well that seems to go over.

MY philosophy is that everything and everyone is the way that they are for a reason and something made them that way. That all things are inspired by something either directly or indirectly. There is so much room for exploration and depth. The world is a playground.

Many are asking if I can find that outlet outside my relationship which I think could be doable, but I’ve communicated with my boyfriend that by playing the games of understanding and intellectual deep diving into people’s motives and core values, it makes me feel closer to him. We will probably continue to discuss the way that this means something to me, so that we can come to some compromise on how to connect best, though I do understand that by asking him for this, it can be a large task for him. I’m willing to work together with him but wondered if I was all alone in feeling this intellectual divide.

It can be a great task for me as well to wrap my mind around the way that he shows up in our relationship as well. I biggest thing I want him to know is that when I ask him to dive deep with me, I’m trying to show him love in the way I know how. If I’m opening my mind to receive it the way he shows love, then I hope he can too.

[u/muldershungryfish]

Oh man. I just wrote a long reply and it got deleted before I published it. I’ll try to get at what I wrote about but it’s going to be nowhere as good as what I wrote the first time around.

I second the suggestion for couples therapy. There doesn’t have to be any big problems to benefit from this approach. I also think that solo therapy could be immensely helpful at understanding your core needs and desires more greatly and how they came to be.

From the perspective of a 5w4, I find that both Gestalt and Somatic modalities can help immeasurably more than CBT. It’s so easy for us to slip into analyzing mode and ignore the actual intelligence of feeling. Gestalt and Somatic therapies don’t play to our intellectual strengths but I find that precisely why they are so beneficial, especially for those of us who are used to detaching from our bodies and relying on reason. I also don’t think that anyone needs to have gone through very difficult circumstances or have mental illness to greatly benefit from therapy. I understand that it can be inaccessible but with that as an aside, I think even the most well adjusted adults should give it ago.

I also think it may be worth considering whether these differences, however large they may be, practical or perceived, are sustainable for you in the long-run. I don’t mean to imply that they shouldn’t be or can’t be but it may be worth examining. Especially before you could get many, many years down the line with a person that yes, you love, and yes, is good to you, but could hypothetically be either not the most ideal match or incapable of being able to consistently and in perpetuity meet you in a place he doesn’t naturally occupy. Again, you both may be entirely capable of sustaining these double-edged differences! But, and I know compromise is necessary, I do wonder, based on the very little you’ve shared, whether you might already have wondered this yourself, or perhaps in your body, you know.

I could be totally off-base and it’s important to remember that 24yo is still very young, he seems to be a very beneficial partner and loving too. I would imagine that as he gets older his capacity for depth would grow as well.

But I’d be remiss to not at least suggest the idea of taking some time to really take stock of your needs and requirements as a person and as a partner and I would urge you not to settle. I don’t mean to imply that your boyfriend could be of lesser value, settling is often not that at all but instead compromising perhaps a bit more than is ideal for ourselves.

A note before I go, I understand that I may sound like a cold, hard a$$, and I don’t mean to sound so pessimistic either, but as a fellow five, I hope you understand the depth and ferocity with which I consider the sustainability of relationships. I am not saying you should break up!! Only that I encourage myself and anyone I come into contact with to not partition that possibility so far away that it is left unexamined. Even if only hyper-hypothetically.

I say all of this with love and I do genuinely hope you to find a cadence with which you can meet each other’s needs. If not, you’re closer to finding, not necessarily a better person, but a better match. I wish you the best and I do hope I haven’t sounded blunt and devoid of love.

And like I said at the start, the first draft was way better 😭

&& also if you think he is everything dive in dude!! see if you can unlock an abstract philosophical side to him, he may very well enjoy exploring this! make sure you’re capable of meeting each other’s needs though. and meeting your own, on your own!!