Dear Mallory:

I don’t think the problem is his intellectual prowess that is too much for you to handle, not at all. I don’t think you need to tolerate his … selfish lectures, ongoing diarrhea of the mouth just because he is a good partner in other ways.

I like to call things as they are, and correct me if I am wrong, but when a person talks at you on and on and on, not paying attention to the fact that you are not involved in his output, that it is a one-way-output, from him outward, that it is not a conversation, not an interaction. It is a vomit of sorts, only the vomit is words.

I would have a serious conversation with him. I would teach him that a conversation takes two. It takes the willingness of two people to converse (“co” is a prefix meaning together). Teach him what an interaction means, an action back and forth between two people, at the least. Not a one way stream of … anything.

No wonder you get anxious. I would too and I do in such situations.

It is not about him having a superior intellectual capacity that you are lacking. It is about him not having the simple understanding of the concept of a conversation, a discussion.

anita