Tell me about dating/being married to an engineer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m the child of an engineer and married the child of an engineer, and work with a ton of engineers. I can’t provide perspective on a relationship with one but can share my experience of being in families with them:

My late dad: very hands-on engineering discipline. He excelled at working out practical problems around the house and doing repairs and improvements. Very tidy about his work, kept his tools and supplies organized but not in an uptight way, and could make or fix anything. Our go-to person for anything from school projects to Halloween costumes. He actually hemmed all of my dress clothes for work until he died when I was in my early 40s.

My FIL: engineering discipline that was much more about planning and then visiting the site. Definitely neurodiverse. Completely absent at home but bossy and stubborn when he did decide to participate. When my DH was growing up, FIL deliberately stayed at the office until bedtime. When he retired, FIL disappeared into a corner with an iPad. Anything that wasn’t his job was not something he could put energy into, particularly children and feelings. He moves houses when things start to fall into disrepair and it isn’t unusual to see “repairs” make of things like a piece of junk mail cardstock and masking tape. I think his brain can really just handle the parts of engineering that happened on a screen or on paper and literally no other aspects of life. It had a big and negative impact on my DH and his siblings. DH is neurodivergent but it too me ages to figure that out, and that is a challenge.

TLDR: all engineers are different, beware of neurodivergence and hyper focus.

Your FIL is not an engineer and probably just liked telling other people what to do. He also sounds like an a-hole if that's the outcome of being 'neurodiverse'.

He is absolutely a retired engineer, but ok. Perhaps you’ve heard of “structural engineering”? No?

[Anonymous]

They are just regular ppl. Been married to one, dated a few and am a DD to one

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing one right now and it's getting more serious, but at heart I'm a creative. Can this work? Curious what you like about your engineer partner, what drives you crazy, and what is just simply different.

My DH is an electrical engineer he is very creative. Being an engineer does not mean someone is not creative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing one right now and it's getting more serious, but at heart I'm a creative. Can this work? Curious what you like about your engineer partner, what drives you crazy, and what is just simply different.

My DH is an electrical engineer he is very creative. Being an engineer does not mean someone is not creative.

Agreed. I’m the one with a dad and FIL who were both engineers. My dad is really creative, but not in the musical theater/collage kind of way. More like, build a really cool toy for the grandkids from scratch way, or figure out how to irrigate the planters without installing an automatic sprinkler system kind of way.

I think it’s more of a personality trait than something related to the profession. I work with engineers and a lot of them are so rote about how they do things that they couldn’t creative their way out of a cardboard box.

[Anonymous]

My Dad was a chemical engineer and he and his engineer friends are “kooky”. He married a teacher so definitely an opposite and it kind of worked. He is also a rigid a@hole too so there is that. He did not concern himself with the home life unless it suited him. He later became an attorney for oil and gas companies and that only compounded his traits. Good luck! His friends are all similar and most opted to not have kids.

[Anonymous]

I’m a female engineer married to a male engineer. One of my grandfathers was an engineer, so was my FIL. We’re all totally different. And some of us are very creative. If I’d had parents who were willing to help pay for college I probably would have studied fine arts. But l had to support myself from the age of 18 and engineering has been a great career.

[Anonymous]

He’s smart, has always had stable employment, likes fixing things, so works well for marriage. Also it’s great now that we have a child taking advanced math so DH can help with the homework. Cons are he is mostly interested in tech things and not artistic things but that’s just individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He’s smart, has always had stable employment, likes fixing things, so works well for marriage. Also it’s great now that we have a child taking advanced math so DH can help with the homework. Cons are he is mostly interested in tech things and not artistic things but that’s just individual.

I am an electrical engineer. Yes, I can be quite difficult because I don't see things the way most people do. Like most engineers I have met, I like a good argument. I will even take an opposing view just to have a better discussion of any potential issues. DW really hates that since I should "always be supportive," but I want to understand things not react. As for art, I admire the effort and skill, I just don't understand the motivation. I will say that civil engineering work can be elegant, but is often pedestrian due to budget limitations. I feel sorry for the guy that is forced to build an ugly bridge that will be around for 50 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing one right now and it's getting more serious, but at heart I'm a creative. Can this work? Curious what you like about your engineer partner, what drives you crazy, and what is just simply different.

Yet again, an amazingly stupid post on dcum. Who is posting this crap?

Tell us about yourself op. I'm sure it will be amazing.

[Anonymous]

DH is an engineer. Cons: irregular hours, face covered with soot when he comes home. Incessant harmonica playing. Pros: free rides in the cab, “what happens in the cab stays in the cab,” little bumps to get you through the night. Those striped overalls — let’s just say they go on and off real fast. Gets my engine going, if you know what I mean.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a creative, I'm a lawyer and my husband is an electrical engineer. We're both pretty logical people. I'm more extroverted than he is but we both enjoy socializing with friends (and frankly neither of us enjoys big parties where we don't know people well). He is quieter but very funny - everyone loves him once they get to know him. He's very affectionate but mostly in private or with his words (he can actually be sappy sometimes). I'd be fine with more PDA but don't really care.

What I like about him is that he's steady, reliable, smart, funny, handsome (which has nothing to do with being an engineer!), organized, loving, punctual, and can fix anything. I wouldn't say this drives me crazy but maybe one thing I'd change is that he can have a hard time understanding feelings if they don't make sense to him, whereas I will just say well that's how they said they feel so it doesn't matter if it makes sense to me. For the people he loves, he cares more about how we feel than whether it makes sense to him, but not as much for others. What's different is probably that I'm better at empathizing and slightly more outgoing, although he just planned all this weekend's activities, which included having friends over for games and movies yesterday while the weather sucked and no good football was on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing one right now and it's getting more serious, but at heart I'm a creative. Can this work? Curious what you like about your engineer partner, what drives you crazy, and what is just simply different.

Can you say more about what this means? Do you need to share your creativity with your partner? My one friend is super artistic/creative but her husband isn't (he's not an engineer but in a related field and he works with a lot of them). She has other creatives that she uses as her outlets, it's just not something they do together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH is an engineer. Cons: irregular hours, face covered with soot when he comes home. Incessant harmonica playing. Pros: free rides in the cab, “what happens in the cab stays in the cab,” little bumps to get you through the night. Those striped overalls — let’s just say they go on and off real fast. Gets my engine going, if you know what I mean.

This is the best post I've seen on here in a long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH is an engineer. Cons: irregular hours, face covered with soot when he comes home. Incessant harmonica playing. Pros: free rides in the cab, “what happens in the cab stays in the cab,” little bumps to get you through the night. Those striped overalls — let’s just say they go on and off real fast. Gets my engine going, if you know what I mean.

Steam power forever! Diesel never!

[Anonymous]

I’m an engineer and I think my wife has the best husband.