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'.