How do you handle someone who has about 40 IQ points on you?

It's not a competition. You shouldn't have to "handle" this brilliant person that you're with. If you have reasonable (Read: fair to all involved, good cost/benefit ratio, and non-destructive) wants or needs, you shouldn't have to run his gauntlet of rationalizations. You have a right to want reasonable things whether or not someone else agrees. If your arguments are about things of which this person has superior knowledge, then you be the smart one by not arguing about them. If you feel less smart because he points out flaws in your preconceived notions about things, lose them. Opening your mind will raise your intelligence considerably.

First, what is so important that you must "argue" with him? If he is frustrated at your lack of understanding, I'd think that is a sign of his lack of patience or that he is unable to explain it in simpler terms. As an intelligent person, sometimes one must consider the level of understanding the other party can comprehend, and modulate one's words or explanation to match that level. That takes skill many people simply don't have. So, what are these arguments about? Is he trying to explain nuclear physics to you and you just don't get it? Or is he explaining why you should fold towels this way to be more efficient when drying off or stacking them in the closet. The second example would be control or passive aggressive behavior and you need to avoid that situation. I speak from experience there. If it is the first, then he should understand why you don't get it and sometimes you have to simple stop. Just stop arguing. Understand I am giving extreme examples, but I think you get my point. It takes two to argue, when one stops the argument ends.

Mutual respect is the place to begin and end. Of course respect is a two way street, and even if your friend gets frustrated when you don't understand him, as long as he respects you then it is okay. There are multiple intelligences. It is also possible that someone with the high IQ does not have as high of a "social intelligence" as you do. So this person might not be able to understand other people and how they think and feel as well as you do. This might be a weakness on his part. Anyway, try to relate on topics of mutual interest and understanding, and try to respect one another despite the differing strengths and weaknesses.

Being smart doesn't exempt him from the rules of logic. It sounds like he is leaving out some of his premises in his rush to get to the conclusion. Perhaps those premises seem obvious because of his intelligence, but they are still not necessarily true. Even very intelligent people disagree, so there is always benefit in showing his working out. So in leaving his premises unspoken he is actually using incomplete logic, which is putting you at an unfair disadvantage.As an aside, I am married to someone extremely smart. I was always telling him to articulate his premises better. He pooh-poohed me until his PhD supervisor told him the same thing.

IQ tests are not comprehensive. There is a certain type of intelligence they emphasize. I suppose it is necessary for culture to put a value on these abilities : logic, spatial aptitude, mathmatical equations, reason, analysis and reading comprehension, but the motives for it are not necessarily objective or completely viable. It would take a battery of tests, interviews, exposotion , observation and so much more than a multiple choice exam graded by a scan tron or pc program to devine one's actual intelligence and even then it would it woukd be subject to so many variables, its accuracy would be suspect. It amazes me how much faith have in the flimsey tests we use to determine our aptitudes, academic profiency, mental health status, college prepareness, occupational fortitude and compatibility with our mates. These questions are not aiways written well nor are the answers we have to choose from correctly distinguished as right or wrong. The limits of a multipke choice test are monumental . Most are really no more than formative assessments that lack the type of depth it takes to discern something as complex as a human being's intellectual standing. What test happy society has made is a lot of narrowly defined assumptions about what we know and what we should know as well as when we should know based on a human being's responses to what some small elite group decides is intelligent. The common core, ged and even college boards are being undone by the feds as Arne Duncan ( who looks dumb and says dumb things) bullies schools into accepted new standards and tests that have their way with maturation, hundreds of years of pedagogy, the canon and education . Why? Because tests are a two trillion dollar industrial complex and by imposing a cookiecutter approach to regluating knowledge and assuring accountability , there is a business like practicality that assure profits and use the illusion of objective data  to measure who is failing and who is not. The stats however betray a consistant trend: poor children flounder while affluent students make the grade. That is not actually the case as CCSS provokes protest from moms in the burbs who are appalked to see 70% failing and stressed out because the New standards are that bad. You cannot expect kindergarters to grasp 3rd grade standards but these morons do. I don't know if the DOE or education reforners have anythjng to do wuth IQ tests, but the exampkes I have made are offered as  evidence of how easily we accept certain things when they ought to be questioned. The Chinese kids who taje SAT practice tests from 6th grade on are not any smarter than their white peers or the black kid on the other sude of the tracks. They are disciplined, conditioned and practiced . They take tests well. Most ooor kids dont even get that there are tricks  they too can master , but most of them are sgarp enough to figure out the tests are a scam. IQ tests are not exactly a scam but they have people believing some jerk who boasts about his number is actually a genuis who renders the rest of us morons. He may get calculus, play with rubrucs cubes to unwind and win scholarships to Stanford but he is so dumb he cant keep his trap shut about his superior intellect. Sure youre impressed and even looking for ways to hold your own beside this arrogant test score, but ket us be frank, broadcastibg your mutant IQ is not socially astute or gracious. The 40 points he has on you may be very apparent in the lab or when youre playing chess ( though I suspect you can hold your own there) , but I wonder how great his analysis of Finnegan's Wake would be. Can he explain the emotional pul, of Van Gogh's yellow or explicate Mary Cassat's message in a meduim of colors and textures? Maybe . But onky if he read up on alk of it beforehand . I can roll on the foy, make my professor see something fresh and never read anything assigned because my intelkigence is like that. You recall any art or literary passages in the IQ tests youve taken? And if you do, how many had more than four choices as the correct one? There is no correcteesponse to a painting, a poem, a film, a play, a puppet show or ballet. Sure you can ask me about content and plot and characters but what value is there in quetioning who said what, where was speaker, wwhen was this painted, blahblhblah. All that does is prove you read it. Or the cliff notes. Doesnt insight about art and literature count for anything? And what  about political science, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, even science where theories collide and without new ideas, we'd be stagnant? Why is the chemist, the strategist, the business major and the engineer better or brighter than a sculptor, a poet, a preschool teacher or a comic? I dont think the guy is smarter than you are except in a few ways . That is what I am trying to say. That and that the IQ rest is flawed just like our buy into multipke choice tests which have no way to measure creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, empathy or communication skills. Not really easy tp dismiss the higher end these elements take in Bloom's Taxonomy yet we defer to the IQs of a few and doubt the wide array of human abilities, all of them necessary for sociery to function. It isnt doing thus very well and that may be because we are so unwilling to dollow Plato's simpke directive: question everything, Do not compete with the specter of data or feed bug IQ's bigger ego, he cannot begin to beat ypu af at keast one thing. Only upu kniw what this is. Maybe its hoops, cartooning, archery or fuxubg chevy engunes. These skills impress me and many others . Sure we are all intimidated by some geek who can exp,ain the theory of relativity, but he is not a genuis unless he can explain it in a way that most of us actually can understand  when ge is finished. Now there is true genuis.

A “problem” is not that this person is so much smarter than you.It is only that this person has either to much ego and can’t stand someone “less intelligent” (I use quotation marks on purpose, for I don’t find IQ the only measurement of actual intelligence), so he must always be right, or that you have a inferiority complex and YOU feel that you can’t ever be right.Why do I think that? - Well, my IQ is also a little over 40 point higher than my spouse’s, and I can learn lots of things from her, and sometimes, on some fields, I am a complete idiot towards her. So there is that.IQ only measures how fast can one combine two or more seemingly unconnected points into a logical solution. And that’s it. But yes, people who’s IQ has been measured higher than average can often be egocentric jerks because of it, even though it does not tell squat about that person’s personality, psychology or even complete intelligence for that matter.

You (and maybe he) should have a look at nonviolent communication by marshall rosenberg. It will raise the chances you will have arguments where both win, no matter what iq you, because you focus on what needs stand behind boths positions and find strategies to fulfill them for both.If he is a fighter to win on his own, he will lose at the end, if he is smart, he should know.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

My 2nd ex-wife was a mensa chick who graduated college at 17. Not one day of our relationship did she make me feel stupid or dumb. I think you need a new boyfriend.

Maybe the question is not how do you handle this "someone," but why you feel the need to win arguments with him. If you aren't getting along, it probably isn't because he has the legendary 40 IQ points. It's because you two aren't well suited. If my husband talked to me the way he talks to you, like you're an idiot child who can't possibly understand, we could never have lasted as long as we have. If he can't express himself so you can understand his meaning, maybe he isn't as smart as you think he is, or maybe he just enjoys keeping you in a state of intellectual humiliation. Whatever it is he has going on with you, if it isn't based on kindness and affection and respect, then winning an argument would be cold comfort.