.jpg)
There are a lot of engineers out there in the world, and so there are a number of us married to them. Based on conversations I’ve had with other spouses of engineers, I’ve learned it’s not just me: it can be a unique, strange, and funny experience living with an engineer.
The first thing you need to learn if you’re the husband or wife of an engineer is that your spouse will always think that their way of doing something, is the best way of doing it. The magic word is “efficient.” Learn it well, because you’ll be hearing it all the time, in contexts to which you’d normally think it just wouldn’t apply.
I can’t have dairy so I need to use dairy-free butters. I have a special kind I use for baking. For a while I couldn’t find sticks of butter in this brand, so I’d just have to buy it in a tub and scoop it into measuring cups. One day I was doing so and Jon came up behind me. He watched me work for a little while and then asked, “Why are you scooping the butter and putting it into a measuring cup? It’s inefficient!” This wasn’t just some honest question, the product of a mind perplexed by the concept of what I was doing: no, Jonathan was convinced there was a better way for me to bake than what I was currently doing, and he was determined that I follow his method. I chased him out of the kitchen.
If you live with an engineer, prepare to have all of your projects taken over. This has multiple dangers: they could be done differently than you want them to be, you don’t get to do your own project, or if you’re me, you find yourself becoming dangerously lazy. I’m not painting that wall fast or perfectly enough? Jon comes and does it for me. Oh, OK, sounds like a good excuse for me to go lie on the couch and watch something on Netflix.
As you can tell, most of the time I don’t find the prowling engineer, the one who paces around the house until he or she finds a project on which to zero in, break down, and complete with ruthless efficiency, that much of a burden. But I am touchy about one thing, and that’s my kitchen.
Jon’s most certainly allowed in it; if he wants to cook, fabulous, and he makes the best brownies. His engineering tendencies means that sometimes he’s better at certain recipes, ones that need to be followed with unerring precision; I ate at a Cajun restaurant and went through a blackened food phase once, but my attempts at it always came out more on the charred side. Jon’s blackened salmon with saffron rice was scrumptious.
But other times, oh, other times, he has to stay out of my way. If I turn away from the stove for too long, to get something out of a cabinet or to look at my recipe: suddenly he’s there, stirring away. Leave no task unfinished, or even presumably unattended, because then the wild engineer will appear out of no where, to “do it right.”
I’m exaggerating a bit for the sake of comedy. I love my engineer, and his ability to learn how to fix everything. Sometimes it can be irking, but that’s the reality of living with an engineer.
Related Articles:
Finding Your Identity in Your Marriage
*(The above image by imagerymajestic is from freedigitalphotos.net).