I don't know about the rest of the community but for me someone being in tech is, if not a disqualifier, something very close to it.
I have no real reason or justification! I guess maybe I'm just techy enough as is and prefer other qualities in a partner.
Our first five dates were awesome. So much agreement and joy and commonality. Instant connection and camaraderie.
Further on we realized we didn't bring enough to relationship. We didn't want the"gender I'm attracted version of myself". We each wanted somebody to bring new perspectives, challenge us in ways that work and nerdy friends don't, to talk about not work after work, or at least different work, etc. Ultimately even somebody to disagree with us.
After a few similar experiences, it's not that I ever actively avoided a software engineer partner, it's just that they never seemed to last long. Love of my life is English major with career in retail and home depot / Canadian tire store manager. She brings softer , more emotionally intelligent, people oriented side to our family. I'm the annoying pedantic literal obsessive nerdy one :-D. Works well!
Edit : All of my close developer friends are similarly married to arts major types. Interestingly, I now realize, great many of my acquaintance developer friends have nerdy or techu partners. Wonder what variables are at place but definitely to each their own!
on the other hand, most of my friends also do software stuff and we enjoy complaining to each other about work. I guess maybe the difference is you can say "not now" to a friend more easily than a partner.
FWIW, my experience:
- Key is to look at sum balance. Yes, absolutely, somebody else unwinding will increase your stress level; but IF unwinding reduces their stress level more than it increases yours (and vice verse when the tables are turned), it's a net win. And it goes beyond work rants; any intimate opening, sharing of concern or anxiety or even admitting past wrongs etc, will impose a burden on the listener. But if you believe or can work it out so that, e.g. "this increased my burden by +10 but reduced your burden by -70, so it's a good thing we did it", it'll help build mutual understanding and trust.
- Show empathy, don't try to solve. Cliche, stereotypical, but a person will tell you when they need active considered advice, as opposed to sympathy and ear. HARD for any of the IT problem solving personalities :)
- As a natural result of first two, you'll figure out who's had a worse day and gets priority; and you'll also figure out how to take some of their burden without becoming overwhelmed with it. Again, if their ask is sympathy not resolution, it's actually a lot less burden upon you than it may feel; or rather, us problem solvers impose burden on us that's not actually there :)
- More personal, but, FWIW... my spouse shared bad stories and rants about their work as a store manager, the drama of customers and supervisors and workers and people and policies etc, for 3 or 4 years. I listened patiently, tried to show support... didn't even realize how much I ingested & learned from it. When I transformed from sysadmin to people manager, after a year I realized that I've been implementing all the hard earned experience, lessons learned, approaches and thoughts she shared. One day, all my work problems were her problems of 3 years ago and it allowed me to succeed in that unforeseen (and somewhat unsought:P) transformation. So as we awkwardly say in my language, you never know what's good for what :)
Disagree here. If the other person is always or even is just mostly doing the unloading that's not fair and you just end up sacrificing yourself to the utility monster following this advice. This isn't to say don't ever be empathetic, but also don't let yourself be victim to an "empathy vampire"
It's unlikely a couple will be able to fully equalize this aspect depending on granularity of time slice: on any given day/week/month, one of you may be in better or trickier or happier or more stressful place at work, with friends, in general.
I agree that if through the entirety of relationship support is strictly one-way, that is explicitly not the way I want my relationship to work (though there are others who do seek a one-way relationship from both perspectives).
[not to mention, she can easily pay somebody to take care of house infra; whereas I cannot afford the full-time mentorship services of a socially aware and emotionally intelligent coach :P ]
So we still share loads of general interests as similarly geeky people, but one thing we don't do is we don't talk about work at home - outside of like office gossip and the like.
Want to know a great way to keep a relationship together? Never worry about money ever.
Is there no room in your utility function for mutual growth, sum being larger than the parts, etc?
I just think that a lot of couples have problems and disputes that would not exist if they had money to throw at the problem to make it go away. Like a lot of stressful problems in life, marriage or otherwise.
To steal a line from comedian Daniel Tosh: "Money doesn't buy happiness. Isn't that what people say? Money doesn't buy happiness? I dunno if that's true or not- I don't have any money. I'll tell you what I have learned. Poverty doesn't buy happiness. That I'm positive of."[0]
It's also important to me that my wife is not dependent on me. She makes enough money that if I were an asshole she could walk out the door and never once worry about how she'll get by. Which means she is in this relationship because she wants to be.
It’s great until someone stops making so much money, or you get kids and some of lifes harder issues (or mental illness) come up and the friction points aren’t something you can just spend your way out of anymore.
Then the money can get used as a weapon to maximize suffering, and yikes.
A colleague of mine dated a really hot girl from Tinder and I asked him if he told her that he's a software engineer.
- Not yet, came the answer :)
People still even assume that I must wear contacts, because I guess nerd == glasses, and they don't see glasses, ergo contacts? Like, nope… I just don't require those.
"I can't believe you work at BigTech!"
I don't think that's changed. +30yo is a different subject, though, most stereotypes are ironed out by then.
Just something about it turns my stomach. I hope its not some internalised misogyny, as I have no similar response to idea of a partner in any other high skilled job, such as physician, or barrister, or researcher, etc.