brian.glanz's Journal: My Wife Was/Is an IT Geek

Just a quick jot, for anyone querying /. for 'wife', 'IT', and 'Geek' 8)

My wonderful wife worked in IT during college, when she double majored in Math and Econ. I met her at Lavalife, and if you yearn for a Girl Geek who has a clue what you're all about, I suggest you do likewise. (I am a software developer.)

Having logs of chats, threads, and mails throughout the initial months we were not geospacially together did several things for us: 1) It let us explore each other's thoughts and personalities more honestly and more deeply than we probably would have in-person. If you've read about or tried meeting someone online, you've heard that before. 2) Having a digital trail also kept us honest and 3) better informed. There are plenty of ways to hide online, but what you do or say online "with" another person is hard to misrepresent at a later time as it is sufficiently corroborated. People will interpret things differently of course, but on what was said, when, where you agree -- and it's much easier to remember important info / moments / dates when you can look them up ;)

As for being better informed -- I think it helps to see the evidence of your relationship clearly in the data. You can see duration, intensity, context, etc. of a relationship online in ways that maybe you'd lose sight of meeting someone offline.

By all means, when it's time and/or when you can, meet offline. But if you want to meet a She Geek, _find_ her online. She will appreciate all the geeky ways you can spend time together. If she doesn't, then it's certainly worth reconsidering her. Frankly, you can be a lot more honest about your chances for long term happiness if you're not completely out of your mind just from looking at her. You'll have a photo or two (or 100) to look at; I'm not saying this should be black box dating.

Whether you are compatible intellectually will be put to a better test, something I'm told will matter a lot more in the future. We've been married just a short time; for now, this is just one entry with some fairly obvious advice, and I don't mean to sound like I know all about marriage. As for finding the one you'll (occasionally) log off for though, I can advise you to look no further than your screen.

I believe most Geeks to be of above-average integrity anyway, or to descend into cynicism: maybe we can more easily see the karma coming around when we're tempted, or perhaps this has something to do with our increased ability to keep tabs on each other :)

BG