I guess there is a gap in your heart which needs to be bridged with your social life. Advanced research can be seen as a type of work, all the scientists are kind of isolated with the regular groups of people. But they can still have their social life to enjoy food, art and something else outside the work.
On the other hand, my doubt came from the fact that you have a wife who is more intelligent than you. If you did, you would never feel lonely. No matter what you do in this world, you have companion who can really understand your value is. You should not feel lonely and you would not feel it so weird when you see the majority of people cannot understand you. If you wish to get rid of the social isolation, there are always ways to enjoy other types of pleasure life brings to you. I still think you are too narrow on a certain spot over the entire spectrum of life.
At any moment when I see any small achievement I get, I feel so fulfilled, especially when some people may understand my work. That's enough.
I think you are right. When I think on my wife, the loneliness goes away, but it's tempting to fall back into old thinking patterns and habits, no? Sometimes bad feelings you've carried around for a long time are comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.
Another angle to see the loneliness is from a long historic point of view. We are all lonely on the way to be born. See the story here: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html by Andy Weir. So try to forget about it or ignore the feeling and find every piece of joy in your daily life.
But to answer the spirit of your question. It depends.
What's the cognitive task I'm gifted at? Did I do that task? Why should I feel shameful for doing that?
If I'm good at rational reasoning, is doing the act of reasoning bad?
If I'm good at advanced physics, is doing physics bad?
If I'm good at painting, or music, or solving rubik's cubes, or biology or psychology, is the act of doing those things I'm good at something I should be bothered about?
There's a significant social stigma about being smarter than everybody else in the room. They're elevated on a weird kind of pedestal both to celebrate, but also to make sure they don't get in too close of contact with the normal folks. It's not fun. Most really smart folks just want to contribute and be useful and use their gifts. Just like tall people tend to play basketball or musically gifted people want to play music.
We don't really celebrate demonstrations of intelligence. It's weird and bizarre and worthy of study and research, but not use. The really really intelligent folks find themselves locked away solving other people's problems for them, rather than being engaged.
> Do you do anything productive to take advantage of your high IQ? I didn't see it yet.
If I'm good at a cognitive task, is there something useful I can do with it?
A criticism that I think is rightfully levied on people like Marilyn Vos Savant is that she doesn't use her gifts for anything particularly useful. Solving other people's brain teasers every week is pretty low on the accomplishment scale.
I try to put what I can do to good use, but outside of the startup sphere I've worked on some very hard, very vexing World problems and been successful in some cases, less successful in others. A byproduct of that work is some cool and elegant technology and approaches that I try to share with others, some of which has had some pretty big impacts on the world which I'm very proud of. It hasn't made me FU rich, but that's never been what I was aiming for. I live very comfortably.
I've also, quite literally, been the guy locked away in a room to solve a hard problem. It's not fun, and it brings up those deep feelings of social isolation. I'm not a person, I'm a functional black box nobody knows quite how to deal with.
But, something I really enjoy, figuring out how to take the advanced work and make it usable by regular folks is a pretty engaging and pretty striking challenge.