Why Intelligent People Are So Lonely

Lukas Schwekendiek
4 min readDec 17, 2020

Part of the deal of being intelligent is that you usually know more than most.

Intelligent people often know more about their own beliefs, they dictate their own logic and have a better grasp on their life, at least most of the time.

Most of the time they reason their problems away or get to a pretty accurate actionable step sooner than others.

All of this makes it very difficult to do the one thing they need to do to be less lonely: Trust others.

Due to their large self-reliance they have grown up to believe that they are the best person to help themselves, which is proven every time they interact with someone less intelligent than them. Intelligent people were often smart enough to make it through their life on their own thus far and every time they have trusted people, they were met with disappointment.

The other people did not solve their problem when they entrusted them with it, nor did they help as accurately or quickly as they think they could have done themselves.

When their friends and family gave them advice it was something they’ve heard before, and some of the things they say just did not make any sense at all, most likely because they already thought a couple steps further ahead themselves.

But, most of all, it’s just that other people are so slow.

Trusting others would involve slowing down, thinking less and dumbing ones own, overcomplicated, problems down to even be able to get a take on them. And even when one does this, the response is usually generic enough to understand the other person didn’t care or get it at all.

Because of all of this it becomes very difficult to put their faith in other people when they do have problems, as there is seemingly nothing they gain from it and only loose time.

Intelligent people do not share their innermost fears because they cannot believe in others to really help them out, as they often do not feel that others can relate to them.

Whereas most people of average intelligence are able to relate to others far better and learn the value of companionship and learn that it is okay to rely on the support of others, because they cannot do everything on their own…

Lukas Schwekendiek

Life Coach, Speaker, Writer. Published on TIME, Inc & Huffington Post.