I’ve read a few essays recently on so-called “mixed marriages” between a science fiction devotee and a completely disinterested woman (yes, in both articles it is the woman who wants nothing to do with the extreme geekiness that is an interest in science fiction). A part of me wishes that I were in the position to write an essay from the other perspective, as a woman who loves science fiction to the complete mystification of her much suffering yet doting husband.
And then I realize how unpleasant that sounds, and feel extreme gratitude for how it actually turned out: I married someone with even geekier interests than my own.
My husband introduced me to Connie Willis, but I was the one who completely fell in love with Passage. I introduced him to Lois Bujold’s Miles stories, but he’s the one who’s read them over and over and over. He let me know that if I skipped the third Dune book, the series gets better again after that, and I bought him Eclipse 3 for Christmas. This makes it sound very equal, but let me add that he also introduced me to: Kornbluth, Blish, Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Asimov’s robot stories, and science fiction short stories in general. So you can see how I’d feel that I got the better end of this deal.
It gets even better though. I’m a science fiction writer; he has a PhD in physics, and he works at the cutting edge of computer science. So if I ever have a question about pretty much any science but biology, he can either answer it straight away or figure it out for me fairly quickly. Not to mention that he is my first first reader and can catch any scientific idiocies I commit before anyone else gets a chance to see them. The fact that he’s a veritable fount of information about geopolitics, ancient history, religion and religious history, and government and law doesn’t hurt either.
On our one-year wedding anniversary, I wanted to attend my first Worldcon in Montreal more than anything. Instead of complaining, he was thrilled because he’d always wanted to attend a Worldcon himself (when a boy, he saw it advertised on the back of Asimov’s).
Our evenings together often consist of a few hours of conversation about writing, books, current events, or some scientific discovery he’s read about. Then we’ll sit together on the couch and read, and maybe when we get tired, we might watch, say, a Buffy episode (although recently it’s been Firefly). Then we talk some more, and follow that by him reading me to sleep (right now we’re reading Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden and Other Stories, which is perfect bedtime reading).
I won’t go as far to say that our geeky shared interests form the foundation of our marriage, but it is awfully convenient to have a husband who is also the best friend who will watch the original Star Wars trilogy with me again, or talk about how to maximize the RPG experience, or write a fantasy LARP for me and all my friends on my birthday. He’s even interested in my music geek tendencies and allows himself to be dragged to (gasp!) musical theater performances and preached to about the potential of musical theater as an art form. (His favorite musical is A Little Night Music, by Stephen Sondheim, a choice with which I cannot complain, and which, I flatter myself, shows the care I’ve taken with his education.)
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think my choice to marry a geek is the only valid one. But I also sincerely appreciate that we can display the Lego Millennium Falcon in our family room, play the Battlestar Galactica board game on our dining room table, and worry about bookshelf space together. And most of all, I’m grateful to have a husband who not only tolerates my interests but shares them and understands exactly why spaceships, robots, and explorations of humanity’s possible futures are so amazingly cool.
[...] Gratitude Upon Marrying a Fellow Geek [...]
I just need to say that, from said husband’s perspective, I feel even more blessed. While shared geekery may not be the foundation of the entire marriage, being able to share the things we care about the most is a pretty damned good start.
I think that what a lot of it really comes down to is that we understand the things which are important to each other. Having been in “mixed” relationships before — and knowing that you have as well — that’s a big difference. It makes it possible to share goals and interests far more closely.
Being married to a fellow geek is pretty awesome.