Please take this survey and send it to women who love geeks. It’s lots of fun, really easy and fast. And your stories will help me to tell the world how amazing it is to love a geek.
And if you answer all the questions, you get a free book!!!!
Here’s the link:
So the markets just took a nose dive, and I trepedatiously peeked at my Vanguard accounts. About two months ago I dropped a big chunk of my severance pay into stocks and now, I think, surely I’ve lost most of it, and I’ll have to cut short my not-get-a-job plans.
Well, here’s the thing. In June, when I told Paul I was putting money into stocks, he was, as ever, urging caution. ”Don’t put money you’ll need this year into the market,” he said. But I did what I intended to do, which is risk a portion of my money on the chance that it will earn big return. BUT I did hear his cautious voice in my head as I picked which funds to invest in.
I looked at the high yield high risks funds and I thought what would Paul do (WWPD)? Would he go for the biggest gain or the safest bet? And I tempered my instincts, and went for funds that were right down the middle. Moderate amount of return. Moderate amount of risk.
So today, when I checked to see the damage, I was pleasantly surprised to see that while the markets in general lost 10%, I only lost 2.5% on my June investments.
So I beat the market! (I know, everything can change in a split second) But it just goes to show the power of seeking balance in life and love.
There’s a lot more to say about geeks and money. All those wild trips to Vegas that you didn’t take might just end up translating into a cozy house by the beach when you retire. More research on this topic is required!
So, here I am thinking all day long about my analytical friends, the geeks. What makes them different than me and my people? What makes them tick?
What is behind a geek’s need for verifiable truth, unassailable logic, and hyper-literal language use? It hits me that these are fairly reasonable responses to an unsafe world. I relate to this because I know what it’s like to live in an unsafe world.
Unsafe
By unsafe I don’t mean that there’s someone waiting to jump out from behind a bush and accost me. That’s not the kind of unsafe that really haunts me underneath it all. One way of feeling unsafe is that at any moment I could be abandoned by the side of the road, excised from the communities I live in, forgotten, ostracized and alone.
Another way of feeling unsafe can come from the sense that the world is chaotic and random. There’s a panic that comes from the suspicion that there really is no order and at any moment everything could crack into tiny pieces. Understanding the rules and order and structure of things is the only thing between me and oblivion.
Differences
I am more subject to the fear of being alone. It leads me to strive to create connectedness.
My geek boyfirend is more afraid of being out of control in a chaotic universe. This leads him to strive to create certainty.
I want to share feelings and experiences and create a comfoting sense of resonance
My boyfriend wants to be correct, accurate and right.
I’m way more willing to estimate and be approximately right if it means I’ll form a connection, because connection makes me feel safe.
He needs things to be specific and accurate, because certainty makes him feel safe.
Having this insight makes me more patient, because I realize while we may not be in the same boat, we’re floating on the same scary waters.
And then there’s the assholes
I think there’s another way to feel safe – to strive to have control over situations and people – and this appoach tends to be used by assholes. I don’t want you to date those guys and I don’t want you to be that way. Perhaps you didn’t know, but a big reason I’m writing a book about loving geeks is because I don’t want the assholes to win, and I want women like me to stop thinking that asshole behavior is sexy.
Geeks, in their peculiar specificity, are way sexier.
Geeks don’t want to change who you are, they just want to be able to make sense of you. That’s where my book and this blog comes in. I’m going to help you help them make sense of you … and when that happens, the gates of heaven will open and you will know true love.
Early this morning after I pushed Paul to resonate with me about how awesome it to snuggle close and warm all night long, I was reminded that he is the best boyfriend ever.
I was hoping he would say something like “That was lovely night, my darling” or “I feel so close to you” or some such fantasy thing - but all he as saying when I asked, “Did you have a good night?” was “U
mm-hm”.
And when I probed further he said, “I preferred the snuggling in the morning to being entwined in the middle of the night.”
Unsatisfied, I continued to try to draw something warm and toasty out of him “… so wasn’t it a little bit special? Can you tell me what it meant to you? I just want to be able to share the same meaning…”
And as I’m trying this or that tactic to get the connection I want, I’m realizing,
1. He’ doesn’t want to give me the warm fuzzy
2. This is the kind of stuff men hate about women
3. But I can’t let it go because I’m hormonal and I want what I want
So as it becomes increasingly clear that he either can’t or won’t resonate warmth and closeness with me, I fling myself over an opposite pillow and allow all my bones to melt like something in a hot car, staring dejectedly away from him into the colorless middle distance.
Now, at this point, what other boyfriend would not have just gotten dressed and left an academy award on the bureau on his way out?
But Paul stays and gently responds to my exaggerated posture of despair. ”I can see that what you wanted was resonance and all I was giving you analysis. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to upset you.”
Now, at this point, what girlfriend would not have thanked her lucky stars, kissed him fondly and sent him on his way?
But I had to pick at him some more. ”It doesn’t matter what you intended,” I said. “Do you realize that you are undermining your apology by talking about what your intent was? As if somehow you aren’t responsible because you didn’t mean it?”
We then proceded to have a discussion about the role of intent in an apology. He said that he used intent to evaluate how much offense he should take. I said that I consider intent as well, but it doesn’t undo the damage. It doesn’t erase the impact. If you really want someone to know you are sorry, you will say you are sorry and leave it at that.
(Please note, during this discussion, I realize that, while I’m essentially right, I’m pushing it, and I think that at any moment I’m going to exasperate him into leaving.)
He’s says there’s a big difference between an act that intended harm (I’m going to get there late on purpose), caused harm through neglect (I lost track of time), or the harm was cause outside of anyone’s control (traffic was unexpectedly bad).
I agreed that intent has bearing on how offended we might get, but still, intent doesn’t mitigate damage. If I wanted to start a meeting on time and you are 20 minutes late, regardless of your intent, it’s still 20 lost minutes. The apology is primarily about regret for the damages.
Now, any other boyfriend would have argued his point until we were screaming at eachother and slamming doors.
But Paul, the best boyfriend ever, said, “Hmmm. I’ll have to consider this.”
(Please note, this is the best outcome a girl could hope for. We don’t really care all that much whether we’re right or not, we care more about whether we are connected or not. [Look for a long luscious blog post about this soon] And his willingness to consider my point of view feels like a big DING DING DING on the connection meter.)
Now, any other boyfriend would have gone off about his business and never brought it up again.
But a couple hours later he calls and thanks me for being so helpful.
(Please note, he THANKED me for being HELPFUL)
He said that he had done something or other that he needed to make right about some logistics with his ex-wife. He said he apologized to her without editorializing about his intent, and she seemed moved and pleased.
So, now, don’t I have me the best boyfriend ever? And doesn’t his ex-wife have a great ex-husband?
And, really, it’s me who is saying she is sorry, by writing the post. Sorry that I can be so pushy and nit picky and nitty gritty, parsing every little interaction.
Yet again, I am amazed and humbled that I’m so lucky that I get to love a geek.
A study of facial attractiveness is finding that women in wealthier and healthier the nations tend to prefer men with slightly more feminine features.
A Wall Street Journal article article describes the findings. But what is most fun to do is go to the straight to the facial attractiveness study and take the experiment. They show you two photos of the same person, with one that has been digitally altered to make it more “feminine”. The only problem is that the digital altering that allegedly makes women more feminine actually makes the face seem happier.
The eyebrows were raise and the eyes were wider open in the feminized photo, while the unfeminized photo looked dull or angry in comparison. I mean, who wouldn’t more attracted to a happier person?
Apparently women in developing countries prefer the tough guys. Perhaps this says more about they type of work required of men in developing countries. Ladies want men to bring home the bacon in tough, demanding jobs or uncertain environments – so they might see a low grade anger as a propensity for fight instead of flight. And a dull impervious face would indicated a stability in the face of the real physical and existential challenges in an unstable economies.
In our cushy lives, where getting along socially is more and more important, the happier faces might actually seem more stable to us.
I’m curious about what you think.
If there were a teeter totter reperesenting the geek/non-geek continuum, my dad is way down on the non-geek side. He is a man of sensation. A real earth-man. Eats-with-fingers, smearing butter in a three foot radius all around him. In the garden, getting dirty, growing things inexpertly but with great enthusisasm. Jumping into the Maine-mountainside-pond in the god-awful month of May, squealing like a girl in the freezing water.
His insightful observations about life are sound, but not well-reasoned. They are experienced and organic and common sense.
As a yankee-no-spender, his austerity is really hedonism when you scratch the surface, since he can take such enormous pleasure in the littlest of sensations. Warm socks. Peanuts. Dirt. Bees in the hive out back. His lovely (little) wife.
He conserves optimum temperature, but not in a terribly calculated way. If you open the shades when its sunny and close them when it’s dark, the house stays cozy. If you warm your empty cup in the steam of the brewing coffee, when you pour your coffee in it, it will stay warmer. Never, never open the windows if it’s hotter outside than in.
He is kind, in a very unquestioned, common sense way. Because it feels good to treat people well. It feels good to do service, share the garden’s bounty, carry the heavy package. It’s joyful.
I wish I could be more like my dad. But I fear I’m burdened with my mother’s over-thinking to really get all there is to be gotten from sitting in a sunny spot in a warm house on a winters day. My dad gets it, and I think he’s amazing. I love you dad.
Here’s a story from an interview I just did. This woman, let’s call her Linda, has been happily married to her geek husband for more than 30 years.
A few years ago, she was getting all dolled up to go out. She’s a very beautiful woman who must have looked stunning. Let’s imagine her in a little black dress, perhaps a halter that shows off her figure and buff arms. She’s got her shiny jewelry on. Strappy heels. Her makeup is somewhat more dramatic, in keeping with the upcoming evening, a local awards ceremony.
She considers herself in the mirror, and she feels pretty. That lovely feeling we women have when everything about us is aligned.
On the other side of the room her husband is putting on his tie. She looks at him and considers all the times that she felt pretty and he didn’t notice. She didn’t expect him to really, because he has never been showy about how he feels about her.
He lets her know he loves her in other ways. He makes her coffee every morning, pours it, turns on the tv to the exact channel, and gets a quilt for her to cuddle up in, sip her coffee and gradually start her day. When she mentions a movie she likes, a few days later a package will show up containing box set of all the movies ever done by that director.
But on this night she wondered. She thought about the time she cut six inches off her hair and he didn’t mention it at all until she brought it up several days later. The the time she wore that new sundress after she had started doing yoga. She knew she looked amazing, but he didn’t notice. So tonight, standing there looking as good as she ever looked, sincerely wondering whether it mattered to him at all how she looked, and asked, “Do you even notice when I get all dressed up?”
He thought for a while before answering, as usual. He wasn’t looking for the words he thought she wanted to hear, like some regular guy would. As a geek who is deeply committed to telling the truth, he wanted to be accurate. So finally he said, “I notice when you are happy.”
And this answer made her feel deeply loved. Not for how she looks, but for who she really is.
And that, my friends, is the beauty of a being loved by a geek.
So I had a wonderful reading on Sunday. My good friends came from near and far (including on skype) and were brilliant and fearless in their feedback.
Of the many things they gave me was the opportunity to reconsider the language that I use when referring to geeks. Of course! it’s obvious that if I use the term “my geek” and “your
geek” it seems like I’m talking about pets. But what’s obvious to others isn’t always obvious to me, that’s why I love my friends.
It also got me thinking … am I perpetuating negative stereotyping? Or maybe I’m trying to perpetuate positive stereotyping (geeks are honest, geeks are loyal, geeks are good in bed).
And what right do I have to declare these things to be true?
For me to suggest that there is any real, true definition of a geek is as preposterous as claiming that there is one true way to be Irish. Or tall. Or athletic. So it’s important to emphasize that I am describing an observed type and what’s typical of that type. And I’m not claiming to describe what’s true about individuals who my have some or all of the character traits that match my concept of “geek”.
So as I go forward on this project, I just want to say, that I have no intention of being some all-knowing arbiter of who is a geek and what is a geek. Rather, I’m describing some character traits (logical, distanced from emotions, objective) that align other very positive character traits (honest, kind, competent, cautious experimenters), and I’m labeling them as “geek” to make it easy and catchy to talk about.
What do you think? Is ” geek” a positive or negative label? In your life, has it been a useful label?
How awesome is it when you invite eight friends over to take part in your first ever reading of your book about loving geeks and your geek boyfriend makes strawberry shortcake. He is proving the point that geeks are the best people on earth. At least Paul is the best boy friend ever.
I love Cesar Millan. I love him because he writes about energy and intuition and demonstrates the real world implications of these fuzzy ideas on living breathing responsive creatures. He definitely appeals to the non-geek in me. The side that says, to hell with science and measurable proof. Just train your intuition, build up your power, and go.
Last night I read something he wrote in “Be the Pack Leader” that I marked as really important. Cesar says:
I can’t stress enough that we have to learn how to practice the highest levels of patience with any fearful animal. You have to let the animal use her own initiative to come to you and get to know you — you absolutely cannot force your presence on the animal.
Now, I don’t mean to insult geeks by equating them with fearful animals, but there was something in this passage that made me think of the geeks that I have known and loved. While geeks may be somewhat more fear-based than non-geeks (explaining their obsession with risk management), I really think that most of us, geeks or non-geeks, are fearful animals when it comes to love. Because when it comes to love, it’s so easy to get hurt, of course we are afraid.
And what’s great about this passage is it talks about “patience” and “presence”. It’s very difficult, when one is totally psyched about someone to be patient and calm. It’s very hard to let one’s presence speak for itself. But this is a very wise way to begin a love relationship with a geek.
Softly.
Gently.
Patiently.
Yesterday, I had a moment when I was pretty strung-out with anxiety, and I was aiming a lot of my worry at Paul, and couldn’t get off the train of thought that he needed to give me more compliments, etc. After talking to a friend, I saw I had to ask for calm and patience. I got patience and calm. And in an instant everything looked different, and he didn’t look so wrong. And I felt patient and powerful instead of panicked and weak. I avoided doing damage to my relationship, and I had a good day.
And this morning, I got a little dose of sweetness, a little gift of a compliment from Paul. And having been calm and patient, I was open to it, and it warms my heart even still.
