Sorry for the long read:
So a little back story, I’ve got a girlfriend that I’ve been with for 5 years now and she’s got a great personality and driven, but she’s got a quirk and it’s one that I immediately noticed when first dating. It was bad in the beginning but slowly improving as she’s lived with me. As lightly as I can put it, she seriously lacks the street smarts I guess you could put it. I think it comes from being raised by her bad mom who had her in teenage years and never really taught my gf how to do things? I’m not one to say that there is one way to do things but there is in my opinion a general approach.
Example 1, she’s the type of girl that set the thermostat to 90 degrees because she was cold one day basically letting the damn thing heat the house all day, and when confronted about it, didn’t think anything was wrong. Keep in mind the house smelt like something had been burning when I got home and she didn’t notice
Example 2, she washed the rotating glass dish that goes in the microwave and put it back upside down so it no longer rotated. I was out of town for a week and she went that whole week thinking it was broken and didn’t use it.
Example 3, she got a heating blanket for herself and after about a month she started telling me that the thing just turns off or doesn’t work half the time. Well one night I decided to cuddle up with her in the blanket and noticed it wasn’t warm and she agreed and said it was one of those days it wasn’t working. Come to find out, she didn’t plug it in!!!!
Example 4, the other day she took a shower, got into her pajamas and fluffy blue socks and decided she wanted to start working out at 10: 30pm. But it wasn’t like a real workout, it was some pull ups and she some how seemed to stain the carpet with her socks from her feet rubbing the floor as she did the pull-ups. When I asked what she was doing, she said she wanted to tone up so she’s been doing 5-10 pull-ups each night. It was overall odd
Example 5, she thought the fire alarms were powered by solar panels or a wind turbine on our roof. (We don’t have anything like this)
These are just some examples I can think of off the top of my head.. I’m not gonna lie it can be really frustrating and hard to rely on her intelligence as a partner. The crazy part is this girl is a straight A student in college but would not be able to figure out why a door handle won’t rotate (maybe because it’s locked) to save her life.
A Little of this makes me wonder if I’m overreacting to this…
I also wonder if I’m alone or do others struggle with this
Is there anything I can try to do as a partner to improve this?
I wouldn’t call this street smarts, but she does seem to lack common sense. There’s a learning curve for everyone when it comes to life skills / functioning independently, but I think most of us fill in the gaps with a little common sense. Your girlfriend doesn’t seem to do this, though, so I’m sure you’re in for some (more) interesting situations.
Honestly, I wouldn’t stress it too much. All you can do is educate her as these things come up. You may want to have a preemptive conversation about potential safety risks (like not knowing that smoke alarms have batteries that need to be changed), and things with financial repercussions (like the thermostat ordeal). Good luck dude ?
I don’t have any advice but reading through this made me laugh. Hope you figure something out OP.
In the 5 years that you two have been together, have there been any improvements in her ability to use common sense? Has she learned anything from past instances of ditzy-ness?
My brother dated a girl like this in high school. Got good grades but my god was she dumb when it came to just about anything else. They broke up eventually but not because of her intelligence, he had accepted that part of her.
We had a roommate who was subject to a nearly non-existent but abusive mother. She would do things like this. She was also on the spectrum though so we couldn’t place where her behaviors were coming from. In your gf’s case, it could be because she wasn’t taught how to do things as you mentioned. Do your best to be patient with her. It can be infuriating, but it’s not her fault.