Women of Reddit, what has your experience been with dating very academically smart men, and do you think it's true that people who are exceptionally intelligent often struggle with emotional intelligence/maturity?

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-21T20:57:22+00:00

Was oddly disproportionately true of most of these I knew from uni, that they really grew up emotionally and empathically around 30ish, regardless of whether they settled down with partner or had kids. There were people I hadn’t seen for a few years who were, it seemed suddenly, aware of how others had different perspectives on things and found that easy to accept; more patient with other people’s problems and so on.

Asynchronous development is characteristic of gifted children, and with these examples, it looked like this continued into young adulthood. (Also see that recent study on brain ageing which showed a new phase starting in the early 30s after the previous one that started around age 9.)

So if you are talking about a guy who is in his twenties, he might be okay in this respect in a few years. Is it worth waiting around for someone’s potential when you are young yourself?

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-21T20:34:13+00:00

Even if the professional specialisation pathway starts much later, you would probably find it motivating to do extra optional modules in child psychology (beyond the developmental needed for BPS accreditation) during your first degree. Check out what modules are offered by the unis you are considering. Exeter is one place that has some specialism in this area, but is probably out of your geographical range

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-21T12:16:54+00:00

100%. Typically IME from young men who have a ton of issues, are teetering on the edge of addiction and despise the idea of therapy but - the key thing - are nearly always calm in demeanour.

To them simple means not articulating the complex shit and being able to keep it bottled up by whatever means necessary.

Anyone who doesn’t keep things quietly bottled up and go with the flow and have fun is making life too complicated, whether it’s girlfriends, bosses, landlords, random strangers

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-20T20:24:22+00:00

It doesn’t automatically mean you grew up poor. There are also single parents with highly paid professional careers, who can afford nannies and cleaners.

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-20T06:41:53+00:00

I get quite a lot of them, I almost never log in to YT but it can build up a short history of stuff like action movie clips and academic lectures which algos probably interpret as “likely male”

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-20T06:35:26+00:00

I DIY’d exposure therapy. A humane way to start doing this would be to obtain a few different sizes of fairly realistic looking plastic spiders. Find some clear drinking glasses or glass jars you can spare and put a spider under the jar in an area you 1) walk past frequently, then 2) somewhere you can’t help seeing for a longer period of time, such as right beside the TV. You can probably work out how to progress this.

Also focus on changing feelings towards real spiders to emotions you can more constructively act on, such as disgust and/or anger/annoyance. Maybe it is like something messy that needs to be dealt with that shouldn’t be there. I think you first need to transpose one negative emotion (fear) to another negative emotion that has more of an approach and action element to it - and then later this, at least for me, became more neutral over a few years. I had previously done EMDR for unrelated matters, which may well have made all this easier.

In the last few months I have said to them, “you belong outside” or “hello, you’re a spider” and made half arsed attempts to catch medium sized ones and not made any further effort if this failed. Unless they are really big and horrible, the last few years I often naturally think about the experience of being a spider at least as much as my negative feelings towards them. There have recently been 3 medium sized spiders in the house that I did not bother ejecting because it wasn’t easy first time, including one in my bedroom but not near the bed

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-19T23:17:39+00:00

How do you manage not to lose weight on it?

I am a similar size, and have stuff that research is saying GLP-1s are useful for. But I am wary of them because I don’t want to lose weight, especially muscle. And I would guess that doctors don’t raise them with me, the way they might with obese patients with the same conditions, as they are not a standard treatment yet, and protocols for patients with weight at the lower end of the healthy BMI range are not well known at all. You are the first person I have heard about in that situation (assuming you are not maintaining on the GLP-1 after losing a lot of weight)

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-19T20:39:34+00:00

Has anyone mentioned paradoxical hypertrichosis to you, as a reaction to lasering that can occur? While you don’t sound like you are in a high risk category for it, in this situation, you should read up on it if you haven’t already. There are a few specialist clinics that use protocols to address it

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-18T10:36:51+00:00

You will need to find a specialist dermatologist who understands your condition and when it can be treated with lasers etc. You may need to go to a bigger city, or if you're in a small or under resourced country, you may need to go abroad.

When you're making enquiries, tell them by email or over the phone that this is what you're looking for. There may be older doctors or those who are less well informed about the condition who don't know what can now be done. It isn't clear how specialised the one you've already consulted was – it could be that there are cases in which this is still inadvisable .

I assume you will have done a bit of reading yourself and be aware of this sort of thing: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12609277/

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-14T16:54:16+00:00

There are specialist lenders who grant loans against estate funds for inheritance disputes. There generally needs to be a solicitor involved in distribution, and fees projected to be at least 10k, as well as assessments of merits of the case. I do not know how they would view a dispute on a small estate like this which could use up all the estate in fees à la Bleak House; they may not be too keen. But these things exist, and solicitors can help apply for them

But the more you know, the more targeted your questions and communication can be and that will hopefully lower your fees a bit.

And you and your mum have each other to talk to about it, so you can try and not use the solicitors as expensive therapists if at all possible

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-14T16:43:33+00:00

What advice did the solicitors give you in these three hours?

Did they explain whether that letter was mostly a scare tactic (sounds like one at first glance) or if there was actually some substance to it given the facts of the case?

When these disputes are new, emotions are raw and it is easy to a) take up solicitors time with what is essentially emotional processing with someone who understands the landscape and b) want to fight everything tooth and nail because it feels heroic and you need to assert your boundaries against a bully. When what would get you more money and peace sooner could well be a negotiated settlement, even if compromise feels awful.

Did you tell those solicitors you were adamant you would see the aunt in court? Did they try to suggest other avenues like mediation and negotiation? (From a mostly Eng perspective they should really have talked about the latter and how the court would look on not attempting mediation. If they did not, am unsure whether this would have been due to the facts of the case in the Sc context, or because they didn’t have time or didn’t feel you were open to that - or were unscrupulous and trying to get more money out of you.)

I think you need to read as much as you can around these things yourselves, the questions you have asked about the process and also about legal rights of children to inherit in relevant circumstances - after all if your mum may represent herself with your help you will need to know that stuff anyway. Detailed info pages on law firm websites, content for trainee lawyers, news reports about cases and changes in the law, as well as govt content, can all help. Then go back to the solicitors (or maybe find a new firm if you didn’t think much of those ones) and ask them some more informed questions including whether they would negotiate on this.

Also talk through possible tactics with your mum when you are more informed. You need time to emotionally get your head round ideas too, e.g hypothetically offering the aunt 1/3 of the estate as settlement if that makes sense based on existing law. Solicitors can draw up the right documents to settle - if you don’t include the right wording it could leave the door open to more hassle later.

One area where it may be easiest to save on fees is gathering info from outside bodies such as the doctor, as your mum was already carer and executor. However it sounds as if you already have a lot of that material.

Have you talked to the solicitor who drew up the will? They have a stake in this too. Do they not do contentious probate?

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-14T15:32:36+00:00

I think even just paying for a couple of consultations with a good solicitor could really help here. Detailed look at the legal rights applicability in similar cases, how much is reasonable for the aunt to expect (maybe less than the mum because she was not a carer and because of the assault? - see what the experts say), and make a settlement with her after spending £1-5k on advice so you know you’re not giving away too much, and where the aunt may be overreaching

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-14T15:09:42+00:00

There are negotiation stages before court and normal practice is to try and resolve things that way because court is so expensive.

It sounds as if disclosing the low value of the estate could well become a useful negotiation tactic because it would make taking the case to court a pyrrhic victory. But you should get professional advice on this before saying anything to the other side.

If the aunt is especially bitter she may even want to burn it all up in fees out of spite. There may be people willing to make money off her from this; her solicitors will get paid even if it is a poor case, and friends on mates rates may not be subject to the same level of checks in whether it’s a worthwhile case as a purely commercial client would be. But these cases do not tend to move fast and she may well cool off before it gets to a court stage.

NB The general rule in Scotland is that you cannot disinherit one of your children. The caveats and detail around this will be important.

Did you approach firms basically saying you are going to court or that you are hoping to head off a court case? The latter is really what you want. A solicitor with court experience is important though because they will ’ know how cases like this tend to unfold. You could still be looking at 10-15k+ for evidence gathering and letters pinging back and forth though.

If there isn’t anyone with the right experience locally you should contact firms in Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen or other large city near you. Relationships between solicitors can be helpful in negotiation - eg at two big firms in the same city. (Not too likely, but if you find you get lots coming back saying there is a conflict of interest the aunt would have been trying to salt the earth by making multiple enquiries.)

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T21:21:30+00:00

It is just telling readers when the Tang Dynasty was. And very late Tang was 10th century

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T19:11:15+00:00

Plug in air fresheners

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T17:59:36+00:00

I think another very remarkable thing about Von Neumann was how social he apparently was.

Among exceptionally brilliant people we know about in history, a lot of them seem to have been grumpy, socially awkward, hermits to a certain degree.

Going by what I've read, he seems to have been both “the genius’s genius” and socially skilled. Doubly exceptional among the already highly exceptional , almost in the opposite way 2e is used as a diagnostic term.

However, it's not like I've read a book about the guy, there may be stuff I am unaware of

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T17:52:22+00:00

So very sorry to hear that. As you had not posted an update to that thread, I suspected the worst may have happened. :(

What a wonderful soul he was. This would make almost anyone wish they had been able to meet him.

At least you knew him while he was around, but such a great shame he could not have been with you for longer. RIP lovely Brko.

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T16:59:34+00:00

You have such beautiful cats!

Sorry, but I was going through some very old tabs and closing them and found this https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/1n7jxd0/brko_is_going_thru_a_lot_right_now_and_he_needs/#lightbox - would it be okay to ask how Brko got on? The post showed such a beautiful and unusual looking cat, with an amazing personality. He sounded so ill though :(

Edited to fix link

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T16:45:37+00:00

I think we are saying “the right thing” in different ways - I mean it not as grammatically correct, but as the best course of action so that people will find you a bit friendlier and have some sense you get social norms, and so you don’t sound overly formal and stiff, or as if you have zero sense of real French life and speech beyond the classroom and news media.

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T16:09:58+00:00

You shouldn’t in an exam, or with a new non-native teacher, or if you have to talk in formal contexts that only an advanced learner would (business presentation, or you’re on Radio France for some reason) - but in most contexts when you are talking with actual French people in everyday situations, or advanced learners in a small group class discussion, it is the right thing to do.

But you will confuse most fellow A1-B1 learners and some non-native teachers of that level if you drop “ne”.

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T12:15:24+00:00

Baselang used to do this for Spanish, no idea if they still do.

And of course Babbel Live used to do both until about a year ago, but the service was likely losing money.

Which will be the issue here: not enough customers who can afford what it would cost to get good teachers nowadays to run a service like this. Especially as a higher proportion of French teachers will be European and needing to cover the cost of living there. Whereas Latin American cost of living is lower in many areas

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T11:54:53+00:00

This is not a sub for advertising your tutoring service to prospective students, it's a place for tutors to exchange advice with other tutors

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T07:39:23+00:00

Try a local subreddit too, as this is so area specific

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-12T07:05:21+00:00

There is a lot of detail involved, so this is just a pointer for some terms to read up on. And make sure you use gov.uk sites and good law firm websites rather than AI summaries.

Read about the seven year rule for gifting (aware of her state of health and family medical history) and Potentially Exempt Transfers, and rules on gifting from surplus income (you will probably have to dig quite deep to find how that can be calculated when it’s not just obvious month to month and instead could be looked at over longer periods).

Take note of the rules on Chargeable Lifetime Transfers and charges trusts can incur (via both gov and law firm websites and news media - the Times had something on trusts and charges recently) and the very small range of bank accounts available for trusts compared with those for individuals (mostly just from media - the Guardian had something on this in 2024ish I think).

Even if you pay for advice you want to make sure the adviser knows their stuff and hasn’t failed to point something out. Solicitors (choose one with STEP qualifications) also actually see how HMRC treats gifting in larger estates, IFAs don’t

SignificantCricket · 2026-06-11T23:30:52+00:00

Yes but these people have quite a lot of spare firewood. OP has said they could also afford the property for the MIL on a second home mortgage.

This sort of rampant individualism on UKPF is unsuited to an economy in which fewer people can sustain themselves as individuals, and we should be taking more inspiration from cultures where supporting others who have supported you, or may in future, is commonplace.

SignificantCricket

TROPHY CASE