Engineer plus non engineer wife

[nctnico]

I've watched a few of my friends get married, only to end up divorced a few years later. Their wife for some reason assumed they would magically transform into a different person once they were married and that didn't happen of course. I've seen people marry in attempt to fix a broken relationship and worse, have a kid to try to fix a broken marriage and that *never* works.

I completely agree. Getting married doesn't change a thing except for a big hole in your wallet for the party (which I managed to avoid spending money on ). IMHO a good marriage is about doing things together you both like to do and doing everything else seperate. And be pragmatic to solve things which lead to fights! We found out neither me and my wife wash dishes so the first thing we got was a dishwasher.

[xrunner]

Taking notes ...

(never been married  )

[james_s]

Yeesh, the amount of money some people spend on the party is absurd. I mean ok if you're wealthy and can afford to blow $40K on a one day party then go right ahead, and please do invite me, but for the average middle class couple that's just absurd. The wedding is *one* day, it doesn't need to be the happiest most wonderful day of your life, it's only one event kicking off what is hopefully a long string of happy events. What worse way for a young couple to start out than with several tens of thousands of dollars in debt that will stick around long after the hangover passes. The best weddings I've ever been to were simple backyard gatherings with good food, plentiful beer and a handful of good company.

[VK3DRB]

We are a good team. I would hate to marry a female electronics engineer - it would be boring to be honest. And from those I have known over the years - no thanks, they are not my type.

That's actually a really good point. I have enough trouble not filling the house with "treasures" to play with or scrounge for interesting parts. If not for my other half helping to balance things out and insisting that my projects not overflow all over the house I worry that I might wind up on one of those hoarder TV shows some day.

After sending throwing out a total of ELEVEN 7 foot x 4 foot trailer loads of electronic stuff to the rubbish dump, I vowed never to hoard again. Unless the device is rare or expensive, "If In Doubt, Chuck It Out". Of course that does not include the wife or those 600V capacitors that are hard to come by these days. Real estate costs money.

I suggest trying the Japanese 5S system with your stuff. A lot of work to get going, but a bliss to live by, especially in the electronics room. The wife will appreciate the "new you" but more to the point there is nothing worse than having to buy something from the hardware store when you know you already have it - somewhere. Another advantage is projects are done a lot quicker because looking for stuff is not an issue. And it is refreshing to enter your house or electronics room in a reset state where all registers are initialised and the instruction pointer is at 0 and the only interrupts you have to service are from your wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)

[Mattjd]

maybe im naive and inexperienced, I am only 24 years old... but shouldn't each person in the relationship have their own interest and hobbies and be able to do stuff on their own. I.e. you two shouldn't have to be able to share every free moment together. Seems dangerous to be like that. What if your partner is your ONLY friend and they suddenly die, now you're alone. You should have friends other than the partner that you share hobbies with.

Just my 2 cents.

[mc172]

I think it's important to distinguish between it being simply a hobby and something else. Which is it?
I think of a hobby as being a way to pass the time when the TV is broken (that'd be nice, what a waste of bandwidth TV is!) or it's raining and you're stuck with somebody else's children, or something.
For me, engineering as a whole is a way of life. My goal in life is to understand more than I know currently, hence why I'm here on this forum, hence why I watch Dave's videos, etc. This, as opposed to building something with a rough understanding of the bingo bullshit terms suffice to get by to achieve a larger goal. What I mean by this is, say, building a low voltage cutoff circuit for something battery powered, for example, where the understanding of how the circuit works can be glossed over as long as it works when implemented. I'd consider this to be more on the "hobby" end of the scale.

If engineering (whatever the discipline) is a way of life, it can become a bit more difficult for your partner to understand what makes you tick and why it does so, if they ever get it at all. They probably won't unless they're interested themselves. In all honesty, I got extremely lucky, however it did take time for my other half to at least half understand the "what". She almost definitely doesn't understand why it makes me tick, but she knows the order of magnitude of the numbers in the equation, if that makes sense. She thankfully understands that it doesn't take a prescribed amount of hours per week, nor a pre-arranged day or days, i.e. every Tuesday. If I want to go and work on something on Wednesday night until 3AM, she's fine with it. I also understand (this was a learning curve for me) that I can't be a complete knob, take the piss and do it every day claiming that I need to do it or else I'd become a more horrible person. That's where your end of the bargain comes in.

I have found that they also need quite an admirable level of patience as you tend to fall into the trap of not holding back when people ask how something works - you can't help it, you want to tell people how it works and accurately. They're not prepared for it and just switch off, or assume that you're trying to make them feel stupid.

[D3f1ant]

If your wife is artistic type, get her in to PCB layout. I consider a nice board layout a work of art.

My wife was as non technical as they get, but she works full time in the business now and loves it. A bit of encouragement and prospects of earning way more than she did in an office was all it took. She now does all my low volume assembly work and runs the pnp machine and cnc router.
She cncing some front panels at the moment, while I sitting in the sun having beer