New guy with a question about Mensa

  • Thread starter QuickSilver30
  • Start date
In summary, the conversation is about someone seeking information about Mensa and discussing their personal experiences with PDD-NOS and their partner who is a member of Mensa. They are looking for advice on how to communicate effectively with their partner and navigate their different ways of thinking.
  • #1
QuickSilver30
Okay, this is going to be a long *** thread and I am sorry if anything is missspelled, english isn't my first language.
I was looking for information about mensa and gotten at a thread on these forums .. some mensa members or ex members rather came here so i hope i gain some answers i can do something with.

I'l write down the problem in a few, not really problem but well .. it is on my mind and I am already happy when i written it down really.. i mainly have questions and it all feels very gazey so please don't start a discussion with me, that's not what I am here for.

I bet most know pdd nos. I have that, i concentrate badly, i take things exactly how its being told to me, and added with that my IQ is pretty low.
Just to say i know my weaker points and i learned to life with them. I learned how to react on people saying what i do wrong because that's what i heard alot, i was slower and still am slower with everything i do. So i learned to life and learn from what people say to me, good or bad.

I do believe that depending on how fast you learn, how you are and how you act, depends on how you will think on a older age.
I learned to accept bad news .. i heard it a lot so now it is almost as if i also want to hear what went wrong so i can improve myself.

Now I am explaining a bit further how i came at mensa, but i try to learn about it and understand it.
I understand that members of mensa are to my feelings the opisite of the minus points of pdd nos. More concetration, learn faster, and so on.
So also from what i read and my own personal feelings with it .. it isn't suprising how some mensa members i know react a bit different with negative reactions so to say, because either they don't hear it often or just aint used to it.
It isn't ment as a attack but i just try to learn about mensa.. and if i read about it i read quite often that members with a higher IQ think differently and have more problems with reacting to negative feelings, that's okay to me.

Now the thing is .. i learned in my life to react to negative feelings. To open my mouth and basicly ask what went wrong .. to ask how to do it better and really i might speak openly about it now.. i hate having to do that, but that's my problem.
Since 4 months i got a girlfriend, to me, the opisite.. she has mensa. She told me she thinks differently and also shown that in some discussions a few times but she crops up a lot so i just didnt really knew what to do with it, and just let it be.

Basicly, I've learned to speak my mind, to say what bothers me, to tell what are my difficulitys and to talk about it with who i am to talk about improving it, i can call it my handicap. Now a lot might will tell me it aint but to me it always will feel that way that my way of behaving and doing things depends on how good the person I am with helps me with it, i can do things on my own just fine but in the end i often need anothers help, sucks.
While my girlfriend.. lifed with not knowing how to react to negative feelings or what to do with them. Or when she gets something in her mind .. a feeling either good or bad, it feels a lot more stronger because from what i understand if you can think easier, it stays in your mind easier and sticks with you longer (while for me, its in and out, with most of my feelings).
So you can guess that bumps alot. I speak my mind and she doesn't knows how to go around with it. Neither can i really easily talk with her about it because what i say she often sees as something personal.

So i though id be clever to talk with members of mensa about it, well not directly about it but i wanted to ask some questions .. soon i started about pdd nos. About questions towards mensa.. i gotten into a discussion. I got told members of mensa like discussions and well.. i don't like groups to much or pointing it out, but i can't avoid that, i seriously got shown members of mensa love discussions so i shouldn't ask my questions just by them.

So i ask it here.
You understand the problem in my head is that in my mind .. i need correction, i need to get told if it goes right or how to change it because i learn from others their words, from others their examples.. while my partner learns from reading and being on her own and sees things quickly as personal attacks, and then the fighting begins.
I do want to talk with her about it but it aint that easy.

I don't want to say people with pdd nos are all the same, or members of mensa are all the same .. but some things i do believe are minus and stronger points in thise "groups" to call it like that .. and well .. maybe you guys could give some tips or anything because my head if full with it and i don't really know how to go around with it anymore.

Either way .. big relieve, my story is out X_x.
Help would be apreciated and please move it to the correct section if this isn't the place, just this is the place where i saw the mensa thread i found trough google earlier today.

Thanks in advance.
 
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  • #2
What is your first language?
 
  • #3
Dutch.
 
  • #4
Where are you living now?
 
  • #5
Huh? What that has to do with my thread?
 
  • #6
What does mensa have to do with science? Do you have an interest in science?
 
  • #7
I don't understand what you need help with.
 
  • #8
General_Sax said:
I don't understand what you need help with.

I'd say the English language.

Aside from that, there's nothing I can make out in the above, just a lot of random descriptions of him speaking his mind or something like that.
 
  • #9
Lacy33 said:
What does mensa have to do with science? Do you have an interest in science?

More to the point, what does Mensa have to do with the OP? All I'm seeing is someone trying to blame some relationship problems they're having on an organisation. ish.
 
  • #10
i'm not quite sure i understand, but i think it may be a clash between a more artistic, emotionally-driven dependent person, versus the mate who is more scientifically-minded, independent, and emotionally-withdrawn or private.

no big deal, in my mind. as long as each is accepting of the other, they can complement each other.
 
  • #11
MENSA is little more than a group of people who like to play Scrabble a lot. There are introverts and blow-hards among their membership, just like here, and everywhere. I have no knowledge about "ppd nos" so I can't help you there, but if there is any difficulty you are having with your girlfriend, it has nothing to do with her membership in Mensa.

Any problem between two people is a problem between those two people.
 
  • #12
A close family member of mine has PDD-NOS. Part of his disorder seems to be that he is missing a "social appropriateness filter" between his brain and his mouth. Things frequently come out that are blunt, silly, and annoying. He doesn't quite get why he is annoying others, but he does his best to take feedback and construct and apply concrete rules to keep negative reactions from happening again. It is pretty much how you have described it.

I don't see why members of Mensa would be more irritated by this behavior than any other group of people. Just like any group, there are people who are very tolerant and people who are very intolerant. (I think Chi covered this already).
 
  • #13
Isnt really me blaming a relation problem on mensa. Whenever we get in a discussion, a heavy one. I constantly hear her talk about mensa, she thinks differently and she wish i could see how she thinks.
Not so weird then if a mensa member tells me that, that i think mensa members think differently in a way, i was unfamiliar with mensa before i met her.

On the internet i either need a IQ higher then 98% of everyone to be able to get in reach with mensa members to talk about it, which i doubt i'l ever be able to. Or i need to read about it.
When i read about it, i often hear that members of mensa feel different about socializing and often feel happy when they get in contact with other mensa members who think the same as they do.
Mostly because the way they grow up and most only hear they are able to become a member of mensa on a older age. Before that they had to grow up with people who didnt think the same as them. Not true? If everyone thought the same then why arnt we all members of mensa.

It isn't my goal to talk about my relation here, mainly i am interested in mensa and want to learn more about it.
I do believe members of mensa, some of them atleast or most, think differently .. the same as with pdd nos that's also a group made by other people and i also know i think differently then people who don't have pdd nos. It is normal to think differently depending on what your own standards and limits are.
As for most mensa members they know they don't really have limits because they learn quickly, so it wouldn't surprise me if it can be confusing in the head sometime.

Weird thing is .. if i read on dutch websites then i find the plus and minus sides of being a member of mensa, pdd nos, having adhd, asperge or anything like that.
Do i read on english websites then they mainly talk about the positive sides.

Everything comes with minus sides as well but i can't find a english example and i don't know how many dutch people are here, lol.

Lets change the subject then in a different question, or statement. I think people do think differently depending on where their placed .. sorry but i don't attack anyone i just know certain people are put into groups and sometimes that brings a lot of enlightment with it. I think it does atleast.
Like MiH said, i can find myself in that .. saying things without even thinking and irritating people without knowing why.
Also the concentration problems and difficulitys to learn on school.
(Taking myself as example and pdd nos or asperge to explain my point without attacking anyone but explaining where I am going at).
Ive grown up learning to think about what to say or not so but i know i socialize differently then i used to when i was young.
I know i can't learn quickly but i am creative because of that as well, one of from what i know, the plus sides of pdd nos. Creativity.
So my way of thinking .. its difficult to explain how you think but i know i am more someone thinking in shapes and colours and designs then actual words and situations, just because it works a bit more difficult for me.

And yea i can talk just fine, also now. But that's when i go deeper into it. I mean on the first view. If that makes sense.

I think mensa also has plus and minos points. I have spoken to some mensa members and every member of mensa i have tried to talk with, i gotten in a discussion with by not even trying to and i had to start defending myself without even having anything to defend me with because i was asking a question.
As said in the thread i found here where someone asked if any mensa members were on this forum. Some mensa members said that a lot of the members know they are smart, that they know a lot and like to discuss about it .. that's also what the mensa sociality is for, so that mind liked people can discuss with each other.
Same as that you have pdd nos activitys btw, before i come out wrong.

Anyway, discuss if you want.. a forum is for discussing right? I would like to hear some opinions.
 
  • #14
I've been a member twice, once in college, and once shortly after graduation, about 20 years ago. Both times I left as I tend to be a fun-loving, down to Earth person, and I never felt I fit in with most of their members.

I have an ecclectic group of friends, ranging in IQs from about 80 to perhaps 160, if not beyond. Mine isn't that high, yet I used to get a kick out of spotting flaws in "Ask Marilyn" columns in Parade (sorry - you're good, but you're not perfect). http://www.wiskit.com/marilyn/marilyn.html" , but I am by no means perfect myself. I do, however, say "my bad!" when I'm shown I'm wrong. I wrote her several times over the years but she never once responded.

That's sort of the same attitude I encountered with most folks from Mensa. It's as if by virtue of belonging to the group many had mistakenly arrived at a fallacious belief in the inerrency of their ways. When it came to brain puzzles, most were better than I was, for sure. When it came to more esoteric things such as relationships or similarly more intuitive subjects, some of them didn't seem to have a clue!

So, I left for the company of those who did. :)
 
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  • #15
mugaliens said:
I've been a member twice, once in college, and once shortly after graduation, about 20 years ago. Both times I left as I tend to be a fun-loving, down to Earth person, and I never felt I fit in with most of their members.

I have an ecclectic group of friends, ranging in IQs from about 80 to perhaps 160, if not beyond. Mine isn't that high, yet I used to get a kick out of spotting flaws in "Ask Marilyn" columns in Parade (sorry - you're good, but you're not perfect). http://www.wiskit.com/marilyn/marilyn.html" , but I am by no means perfect myself. I do, however, say "my bad!" when I'm shown I'm wrong. I wrote her several times over the years but she never once responded.

That's sort of the same attitude I encountered with most folks from Mensa. It's as if by virtue of belonging to the group many had mistakenly arrived at a fallacious belief in the inerrency of their ways. When it came to brain puzzles, most were better than I was, for sure. When it came to more esoteric things such as relationships or similarly more intuitive subjects, some of them didn't seem to have a clue!

So, I left for the company of those who did. :)

Sorry but i have to ask you if you would mind to explain the words esoteric and intiutive because i don't understand those .. thanks for your reply btw ^^.
 
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  • #16
I was a member of Mensa for a few months because I wanted to meet new people, but I never quite fit in. I was about 19, and the second-youngest person I met was something like 40.

I didn't find anything to keep my interest.
 

What is Mensa and what does it stand for?

Mensa is a global organization for individuals with high IQ scores. It stands for "Mensa International" and was founded in 1946.

How do I join Mensa?

To join Mensa, you must first take a supervised IQ test and score in the top 2% of the population. You can then submit your scores and an application to the nearest Mensa chapter.

What are the benefits of joining Mensa?

There are a few benefits to joining Mensa, including access to social events and special interest groups, networking opportunities, and the chance to connect with like-minded individuals. Some people also join for the prestige and recognition of being a part of a highly intelligent group.

Can anyone join Mensa?

Yes, anyone can join Mensa as long as they meet the IQ requirements and are willing to pay the membership fees. There are no other restrictions based on age, gender, nationality, etc.

What is the average IQ score of a Mensa member?

The average IQ score of a Mensa member is around 130, which falls in the top 2% of the population. However, there is no specific IQ score required for membership as long as it falls within the top 2%.

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