To kick this off, here are some examples of the Savants* and the Normal Person* thinking patterns and interpretations that makes them feel pushed into a box:

the Savants* want to evolve. They want to achieve things, be great, be admired, and be loved for the great things that they are and can do. “I admire you” to them, feels “I love you”. They want to be accepted into a group by merit, not by mercy and work for always earning the right to call themselves a member of that group. They hold themselves responsible for their own mistakes: If I wrong you, I will leave. They will rarely, if ever, ask for a second chance. They will rarely only need one or want one. “One chance is all I need. One chance is all anyone deserves.” First, I will become great, and ask if I am good enough to be accepted by you, by your standards. Then, I will work to remain that great and aim to never let you down – not once.

the Normal Person* want to survive. They want to know they are safe, that they are being taken care of, and that they are loved despite their flaws, weaknesses, and failures. They want to be accepted into a group and know they will never be thrown out of it. They hold the group or their partner responsible for their own mistakes: If I wrong you, it is because you didn’t give me clear instructions! “I always deserve a second chance, everyone does.” (There’s never a third chance because the slate is always wiped clean after the first mistake is recorded. ALL relationships are virtually unbreakable, and there is never a mistake big enough to warrant a full break up, apart from risking the physical safety of the persons involved.) First, I will ask for acceptance. Then, I will work towards becoming what you want from me.

That is where we begin unravelling this mess that is involved in EVERYTHING that we do socially and as a society.

the Normal Person* – safety (commitment), the Savants* – deep intellectual connection

Now, because the Normal Person* seek safety from other people, they do not put any value on greatness, philosophy, high values, talent, intelligence or such things, that are sort of extra or a luxury in terms of survival, they want practical, tried and tested, safe solutions to ensure further safety for all. “Safety” is the most beautiful world in their language. Their ultimate form of love is something along the lines of “I will take care of you, and you don’t have to prove to be anything special for me to do this! You won’t be alone and you won’t die alone, I promise! It doesn’t matter if you are not the kind of a person I am looking for, I will teach you to be what I want you to be, if you are uncertain!”

To a Savants*, this is an ultimate insult and also the most uninspiring proposition they could possibly hear. To them, survival is not an issue, even if they would completely agree that basic survival of the individual should be guaranteed by a civilized society, but they are not worried about the lack of it nearly as much as the Normal Person*. They do not worry about death or loneliness, they don’t care if they will ever speak to another human being in their lives, as long as they are working towards something that they find value in. They do not care about money as a means to survive apart from the bare minimum, but they still may become unfathomably wealthy, for the fun of it, and for the challenge of it, but never as a fundamental necessity. Finances, business, and work, to them, is a game they play; a sport, something to do for fun. They take personal risks because their life is a game. (This can have bad side effects because they rarely notice how much other people worry about their survival. Check out this post about investment banking from the Normal Person*/the Savants* thinking modes.)

Therefore, their love relationships are based on companionship, equality, similar goals, mutual understanding, respect, and admiration. Money never becomes a part of it unless they marry the Normal Person* who makes money a part of it. (Money can play a part in sexual context, but it is NEVER about the love itself to a Savants*.) The ultimate form of love, to a Savants*, is thus: “I admire everything that you are, I love everything that you do, you are the embodiment of perfection that I have seen, I respect you, I adore you, I devote my life in your service; I am yours, you are free to have me or to reject me, and I will always love you even if you rejected me.” Abandonment, to the Normal Person*, kills their love for that person, for they violated the first rule: We will always stay together. That is the only reason the Normal Person* create relationships; for the safety, to KNOW FOR SURE, that someone will stay with them forever. To the Normal Person*, this is not about the personality of the other person, this is about a commitment. If a person leaves them, they prove to the Normal Person* they had NO VALUE to begin with, because your only value is whether you stay with them or not, nothing else matters about you. Being left doesn’t affect the love of the Savants*, and they are completely open to the possibility of being left or leaving another person, should the partnership, in any way, harm or endanger the happiness of the other person. They believe solitude is always the safer option to a bad partnership, the exact opposite to the Normal Person*, who think sticking together is always better than being alone.

An Savant* vs. The Normal Person* partners will never make both partners happy

In a relationship between a Savants* and the Normal Person*, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to make both of these people happy at the same time, because their mode of love is completely opposite to each other. Other person’s love is the other person’s insult, and for as long as they are happy, they are still under the illusion the other person feels the same way about the other. An Savant* hates people who love them for the money and safety they offer, and the Normal Person* cannot love for any other reason or in any other way. What is telling, I had an argument with my the Normal Person* thinking mother. I accused her for not ever having loved me, not ever having liked me, and that sort. She replied, and I kid you not, the Savants*, THIS is what she said to me: “Well we have always loved you more than your brother!” What she meant was that they had always given me more money than to my brother who is completely self-reliant financially speaking. For a Savants*, that one sentence contained an insult on top of an insult, and it was intended as reassurance that everything is fine. For the Normal Person*, love is what you do for another person, not what you feel for them.

the Normal Person* and the Savants* also collaborate differently. This can be seen in household chores and everything they do together. A Normal Person* always wants to emphasise the unity. WE are doing this. An Savant* wants to emphasise the individual: I am doing this WITH YOU. You COULD choose not to do this with me, but we CHOSE to do this together, and that is wonderful. A Normal Person* doesn’t feel that choice: We are a couple, therefore, we do things together, and if we are NOT doing things together, we fail to be a good couple and that sucks.

Also, to the Normal Person*, doing ANYTHING is always a social event, not a chore. If the dishes need to be made, the Normal Person* wants the dishes to be made together as a couple or a family, even if they were much faster and easier done by one individual. If the Normal Person* asks a Savants* to do something, the assumption is, by default (unless they’ve learned not to expect it) to do something TOGETHER. “Can you drill a hole for me?” means, “Can you drill a hole for me while I watch and make comments so you don’t have to do it alone.” A Normal Person* always wants to include everyone in every task and every moment in their lives, and if something cannot directly be DONE together, they want to be TALKING ABOUT DOING IT:

A new the Normal Person* mother passes the baby over to the new happy father. She instructs him to “Hold the head properly.” She didn’t notice whether he did or did not hold the head properly, but he feels the redundant instruction as a direct criticism to how he is holding the baby’s head. An Savant* mother would have never said that, not in a million years, because she doesn’t think her husband is an idiot. Now, a Savants* doesn’t make remarks like that unless something is seriously wrong. (He might overlook this remark simply because “we’re both new at this”, but when similar remarks about handling the baby keep on coming months on, this is certainly how he will be feeling:) “What am I doing wrong? What am I missing here? I cannot do anything right!” To the Normal Person*, this conversation isn’t about whether or not the Savants* is doing something wrong or right, it is just them making a conversation about what the Savants* is doing. It should mean nothing more than birds singing in a tree.

When a Savants* feels continually criticised by the Savants* social remarks of what they are doing, the Savants* starts thinking themselves incredibly stupid, because they can’t find flaw in what they are doing, and they can’t seem to be able to make improvements that would satisfy the Normal Person* and shut them up, because the remarks keep on coming. The Savants* takes each one of them to heart while the Normal Person* doesn’t mean half of them, if any, as an actual instruction, they simply need to keep talking, in order to tell the other that they are there for them if they are needed… No matter what.

Suggestions and criticism

the Normal Person* do not criticise others. Ever. Not in reality. The Savants* criticise each other and themselves ALL THE TIME, but never out loud unless asked to, or unless it is absolutely vital to say something to prevent a pending disaster. (So instructing a Savants* thinking dad on how to hold the baby, to them sounds like: “IF YOU DO NOT HOLD THAT BABY RIGHT, YOU’RE GOING TO KILL HER, YOU FIRST GRADE MORON AND A USELESS DAD!”) They also HATE criticism for this reason because it means they didn’t notice something VITALLY IMPORTANT that they should have noticed, and that can make them feel very uncomfortable; they could  have killed someone without realising, and that can make them very insecure: “if I didn’t notice THAT, WHAT ELSE am I missing?! I thought I was smart, and she keeps instructing me on how to hold the head – that’s basic shit!!” Now… When they ask for critique, they do actually want it. They feel overwhelmed by a task and they want someone to watch their back on how they are doing. They don’t often ask for criticism, but when they do ask for it, they want it. They might be uncertain about stuff that doesn’t matter to them much, such as what color shirt to choose, and because stuff like this SEEMS to be important to the Normal Person* (it is not, it’s simply conversation) they often ask for input in choosing shirts and the like, just to make sure they are dressed properly. (The chances are that any the Normal Person*, male or female, will give terrible suggestions, confusing a Savants* male even further.)

If a Savants* female gives you her opinion about what to wear, She Means It. She also is certain she knows how you should dress better than you do, because fashion is important to her personally – more so than to you, and she doesn’t take that for given because you’re a male and she’s a female, a Savants* female might be clueless about fashion, and she would then, tell you to choose your own shirt because she hasn’t got a freaking clue. If she has got an opinion, she knows exactly what, for what occasion, and for what reason you should choose a certain shirt, and why she should wear a certain dress. The Normal Person* female won’t have a clue. To the Normal Person*, this is a social thing, and she doesn’t even know why it should matter, so she picks whatever, and thinks it doesn’t matter. As a Savants* dress maker, I shudder at the sight of watching my countrymen and women parade their fashion choices on the Independence Day ball as guests to the Finnish president, completely clueless about the etiquette and what they SHOULD HAVE chosen… But didn’t because they thought this was merely a social event. You can clearly see the Normal Person* female and a Savants* female when they walk into an important event such as this. Shocking.

So, when the Normal Person* asks if a dress makes her look fat, the Savants* will answer honestly – unless he has seen enough public awareness posts on Facebook along to warn him from ever doing this! A Normal Person*, again, was simply making conversation. When the Normal Person* insists on taking out every piece of clothing they own and ask their partner to choose the one they like best, they don’t actually mean a word of it, this is all just a method of engaging you into a social event, and being friendly and accommodating. The Savants*, however, thinks: “Oh God she is insecure! Why can’t she just make up her mind? Why do I have to be a witness to this? Just pick a dress!” What is also telling, she is not after his input, really, this is just her being social, all the while the Savants*’s nerves are getting shot, and her mood worsens, because he can’t play along (“why does he have to be so mean about this?” To her, they are playing dress up.) “What am I supposed to get out of this?” would be the Savants* thinking question, that I will have to admit would stump me at this stage, as a Savants*. After a short ponder, I would have to say she thinks you will not feel lonely and left out while she is choosing a dress, and because this is a very feminine event, she feels you would feel left out if she didn’t include you to this event of choosing her dress. The same way, she would want you to keep asking her opinion for drilling holes when in fact she expects you to make up your own mind about it… Her insistence in giving you suggestions of new holes, however, probably would result in a very holy wall and a very angry (unholy) husband. (I think you’re supposed to just ignore her remarks. “That is funny, darling” is probably the best thing you could say in a situation like that.)

Mind you, a dress up game with a grown up woman, to a Savants* thinking husband in the 1930’s would have been charming; after all, women were supposed to be a little child-like, and the Savants* man would have thought: “oh isn’t she great pretending to be so sweet and innocent!” – social decorum!

the Savants* have complex social rules the Normal Person* have trouble following

The Normal Person* are always eager to please. They want to fit into a group and will do anything to be included. Now… The Savants*, they have a very complex set of rules that they use in order to choose their closests friends. They are well aware of their own complexities and how difficult it is to fill their needs, so they tend to lower their bar for the people they interact with a lot, but they simply can’t really consider these people their equal, and that makes them a little fake friends. They might like them a lot, and sort of…  Find them entertaining and cute, but they simply wouldn’t consider them real friends.

When the Normal Person* asks them how they should be in order to be the right way, the Savants* may TRY to enlighten the Normal Person* of the rules the Savants* lives by. (This will easily give them a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis, both thinker types can get it though, but this is where the Savants* will be misdiagnosed.) So, the Savants* starts educating the Normal Person* on how to reach the standard the Savants* has for a friend or a spouse or whatever. This can be done in the manner of “well if you insist” or as “well you want to know, don’t you?” The Normal Person* is eager to learn, because this is how they work: You have rules, I will fill them… But the Savants* rules are usually WAY TOO COMPLICATED for the Normal Person* to wrap their minds around them, so the Savants* is never really satisfied, and there’s always another rule, and another situation where the other rule no longer applies, and the trick is that most rules always comes as a scale of balance: This, but not too much, because if you over do it, then it becomes that, and that’s no longer good. The Normal Person* will feel tricked and baited, and she (or he) feels the rules keep CHANGING all the time, and that the Savants* is making them up as he goes.

In history, social decorum would be about these rules. The upper class would have the most complex of rules, and you simply had to know them or you would be considered common. (The test was failed.) The Savants* finds these types of rules fun. They dance around the social decorum, they flirt between the lines, they insult others without a direct word and only the ones who know the tightest of rules can follow this conversation. They can insult people out loud without that person even being aware that they’ve been mocked, and to a Savants* who is in their own element, this is absolute brilliant fun. Therefore… When someone is laughing nearby, they are always a little concerned they have made a social blunder and that they are the cause of the laughter nearby. (There is always a price to pay for every bit of fun, isn’t there? 🙂 )

Usually, when the Normal Person* asks for a Savants* to include them in their world or to explain to them how to be or what to do or whatever, the Savants* simply refuses to help or to try and explain. This is simply because what the Normal Person* is asking is actually too complicated to learn during one life time sometimes, but IF a Savants* does try and teach, they try it from the belief it wasn’t that difficult for me, why would it be difficult for you… But… It would be easier to memorize the first 300 000 digits of the pi than get inside the head of the average the Savants* without a ready apptitude of doing so.

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