In my search for a soul mate, I'm giving up smart.

Which is a radical departure, since I've sought out smart men all my dating life. This wasn't so much a conscious decision as a gravitational pull that intellectual types have over me. I've dated so many Harvard grads I could have done exit polling. While others longed to live amid the lights and action of New York, Paris, and Rome, for me it was the dream of D.C. that kept wafting through my mind. Ahh, the possibilities...eggheads on every corner!

While it may seem counterintuitive for someone like me to give up smart, 'that's what it just might take, ironically enough, for me to return to trusting my intuition in my dating life.

I realized recently that my dating decisions have long been influenced by my head, not my heart. A 'man's appeal, at least initially, came more from his resume than his character--let alone our compatibility. So as much as I hate to admit it, I would be attracted to a man in direct proportion to the cachet of his degree. Now I wasn't strictly about brains, though that was integral to the equation. For example, I was involved with a Rhodes Scholar, but what really made me swoon was his charitable work, that he headed up a nonprofit center as a Harvard undergrad. (Note: This guy aside, I have learned that one's involvement with nonprofit work does not render that person free of unsavory traits, including sanctimony.)

It took a recent short-lived affair with another bright bulb to show me why I might be off track. He had great insight into politics, excelled in Latin -- but in an SAT way, not a romantic way. Yet, he was on a seventh-grade emotional reading level -- the whole he-pulls-away-once-she-shows-interest routine, coupled with a maddening inability to discuss anything complex or emotional. Anyway, it was his comment about intellectuals that snapped me into my realization. I had complained that a hoity-toity colleague was rather brusque, to which he remarked: "You know, most intellectuals are not sweet."

Now, there is no reason why intellect cannot come joined with compassion. But whether by nature or nurture, in my experience, my latest ex is right. Why? Because smarts very often beget arrogance.

In any case, relationships are about emotional agility, not intellectual acumen. It's your heart at work here, with the occasional brain check. So intelligence, like looks, is something of a red herring, and is therefore banished to the lower rungs of my relationships checklist.

This is easier said than done. When you've been weaned in a society in which brilliance is the holy grail, it's not so easy to reverse your sensibilities. It starts in preschool these days, with parents jockeying for space for their own Baby Einsteins at the kindergarten most likely to lead them to Yale.

High school is probably the greatest culprit. During the impressionable adolescent years, kids are organized into classes based on the strength of their intellects. That means the kids in honors classes are practically segregated from the hoi palloi. This may ensure that students get the most challenging education for their skill levels, but it also sends a strong social signal as teens primarily associate with their intellectual equals at the time they often begin dating. Adding to that matrix is the looming presence of what comes next --college. Students struggle to juggle violin practice alongside test prep tutoring as they vie for acceptance at a highly ranked college to help them meet other high achievers and allegedly live the good life.

If, like me, you happen to be Jewish, the pressure is even greater. Intelligence is a cultural virtue in our community. And learning, which has its root in the vigorous and argumentative tradition of Torah study, is paramount.

So it makes sense that I would seek out an intellectual as my life partner. (After all, I became one myself.) It's just that with the benefit of a few years behind me, I now realize that it's all a bit overrated. In life and in love, it's the e.q. (emotional quotient), stupid.

The relationships that count, the relationships that last, are the ones based on compassion, compromise, and communication. They are the values we learn over and over again in our religious teachings. Ever hear Jesus or Moses preach about intelligence? Heck, no. Our brains are simply pathways to help us understand, balance, and pursue our needs and deeds. The values that lay at the root of American society, of freedom and respect for mankind, derive from these basic moral and religious principles. And we would do well to remember the blueprint for rectitude and fulfillment found in our various religious traditions.

Yet self-centeredness, which we see so often in those smug with the sophomoric sense of intellectual superiority, can hijack, to quote our 16th president Abraham Lincoln, the "better angels of our nature."

So while I won't turn away a potential mate if he is smart, I will probably proceed with caution. But more to the point, I'll look closely and quickly for the qualities inspired by basic religious teachings like loving, kindness, respect, and humility. And perhaps a new spin on the issue at hand -- wisdom.

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