An odd term for an adult male to admit to, but I have an intimate knowledge of the series. Being a triplet, it was always difficult to watch my favorite shows because I had to fight two other females my age for control of the remote. Brothers can duke it out, the problem that presents itself in situations like my own requires more finesse. Needless to say, I watched quite a bit of shows like Seventh Heaven, Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Real Housewives of Orange County (multiple cities), and my favorite Gilmore Girls.

As weird as it is to think of the concept of heteronormativity, a category of which I self-identify, not very many people really know how much I enjoy that drama packed show [Gilmore Girls], not even my sisters. To start I intend the term Gilmore Girls to elude to the idea of finding the perfect significant other [The main premise of the show]. I can only speak for myself, but I require her to be quite the intellectual. So I will use the analogy of the evolution of Rory Gilmore’s boyfriends as a portrayal of the common evolution of emotional maturity within young adults in which the evolution is as such: Dean, Jesse, and Logan. Dean is the epitome of the perfect high school boyfriend. Dean is a quasi-dunce, loving, rash, and emotionally unintelligent. Dean and Rory meet for the first time in the small town’s dry goods store; from there it was love at first sight. However, the relationship hits a sand bar when Luke’s nephew Jess comes into town. Jess is the epitome of the bad boy type that women are so commonly attracted to. Jess was a complex character and was the embodiment of the wittingly charming bad boy type with disdain for authority that in real life, “would bring all the girls to the yard.” Immediately, Rory is enticed with his love for literature, and emotional and intellectual complexity. This all happens at the same time Dean says the worst word in any young relationship… the “L” word [Love]. After Jess, we have Logan entering the picture. Logan is still sort of the bad boy type, but the distinction between him and Jess comes down to self-absorption and immaturity. Jess out of all three was the most intellectually apt and emotionally mature, but timing wasn’t on his side.

So, I am going to continue this article a bit differently than the last few I have written by telling you [the reader] a few brief details about myself. I am a 22-year-old soon to be UCF graduate. I study political science, but I have been dubbed a jack of all trades. My hobbies range from politics international and domestic, terrorism, history/anthropology, science (mostly biology and chemistry), human geography, music (I play two instruments and compose), art (I run my own photography business), poetry and writing (I am writing my own novel), jewelry etc.

I speak Spanish proficiently and have the intention to master a few more languages after that. My intentions for bringing these things up aren’t to come across as a Don Juan or some other Byronic hero, but rather to explain that my favorite hobby in life is to learn. I was one of those nerds throughout middle and high school who took extreme amounts of joy not in playing sports or being on any sort of team-oriented around physical exertion, but I was a proud member of the Academic team. To most these teams seem like jeopardy, and they are in a way.

However, we could “snipe” the questions by answering before the moderator was done reading them. So I like to use the phrase jeopardy on methamphetamines and that drug from limitless to elude to the type of skill needed to compete in the fast-paced environment. Some of my favorite movies are documentaries; let’s be real here I do not know of a single person that likes to documentary and chill. So while drinking and clubbing remain as prominent hobbies among the student populous, I got over that pretty quickly. It isn’t that I haven’t done it before, or that I don’t drink because that would be a lie, not that either is a bad thing. Anyways, I find myself drawing parallels between Jess and myself minus the whole bad boy thing. Have I been overly lucky in the whole relationship department? Not entirely, no.

Now, I can only speak for myself because that is the only thing I am certain of. I find myself time and time again witnessing and experiencing this same pattern. Most people will say they are looking for a significant other who can hold a riveting conversation and possesses intellect. However, I have found with regard to myself that most people put a cap on how salient they hold the qualification of intellect. Most of the time college-aged men and women find intellect to be attractive when their significant other is just at or slightly above their emotional and intellectual capacity. The ideas previously mentioned earlier, heteronormativity and gender roles as well as psychosocial attitudes and misperceptions of what it means to possess high amounts of intellect. Francis Heylighen’s redefinition of Maslow’s theory of self-awareness places additional importance on cognitive competence in addition to Maslow’s awareness of one’s potential in tandem with high levels of tenacity. What all this superfluous cybernetics mumbo jumbo means, is that those who have high levels of intellect usually can notice a change in word patterns attributed to stress, happiness, anger, or sadness; while others notice differences in body language and micro-expressions and tone of voice, or a combination of all three.

So what this all amounts to is if you decide to date someone with high levels of intellect, that person you commonly sit across is the equivalent of a mind reader. The difference is he/ she is not reading your mind (to my knowledge that ability doesn’t exist) but they are reading your physical reactions to the present ideas and environment, and let me tell you from my own personal experience, no one enjoys hearing that someone who knows exactly what they are thinking even though no verbal sentence portraying their emotional state has been uttered. It took me quite some time to develop a “switch” in which to turn that sort of stuff on and off.

The presence of that knowledge in a relationship encourages the building of emotional walls by both parties. So I suppose the moral of this article is geared towards an audience of readers much like myself with a message that emphasizes the ideas of persistence and acceptance. Accept that you will get hurt in life, and in relationships because isn’t that the goal? Putting yourself in a position of vulnerability with another person, but trusting that they will not ever intentionally hurt you? You just can’t prevent that sort of thing if you intend to have a functional relationship with another person. Lastly, accept yourself, and don’t give up the search because it is said that with seven plus billion people in the world you have six soulmates walking around, and all you have to do is meet one. For those who find themselves being analyzed and picked apart constantly, be patient it is a defense mechanism, or at least it is for myself. After all the berlin wall wasn’t torn down the day after its construction, and most likely timing isn’t on your side in regards to maturity.