to ask if you have any idea what your DP does at work?

[MrsSeymourButts]

God knows what mine gets up to all day. I have asked on occasion - I really have - but I get the urge to start smashing the crockery by the time he finishes the first sentence. I think it might involve a sophisticated way of counting toilet rolls.

AIBU to start making things up (weasel trainer, Beyonce's body double, etc.) if anyone asks me again what he does?

To anyone who thinks this is a thread about 'my dh earns more than yours' and 'I'm just a little woman'

My dh earns much less than yours and I'm better educated, qualified and paid than him.

But I'd swap my attitude for his any day - he loves his job and is one of the happiest people I've ever met

I do. He talks at length about it from time to time. He's a test engineer so he gets to tell people that stuff they have made doesn't work and where they went wrong....right up his street that one!

I'm a teacher so he thinks I just hand out sheets and get children to colour in all day.

When my oldest daughter was three she was asked by a doctor what mummy and daddy did...She told her

Daddy goes out and brings home bits of paper for me to draw on and Mummy wipes the plates....

mmhh...partially true....

I'm not a silly woman (though I am quite little) and my partner would readily concede I am pretty damn bright.

However, I prefer to focus my intelligence on my own job. I don't particularly want to be his backup and support mechanism. And, like I say, if I was that interested in it, I'd be doing it.

Geek i giggled with your dd's response :)

I have a vague understanding of his specific role, but to be honest, whenever I ask him about his day, he starts using lots of acronyms and technical terms and I zone out very quickly.

He knows a lot about my employer (public sector) and the specific project I work on, but I don't think he realizes what I actually do on a day to day level and I think he would actually be quite surprised at my heavy workload and the levels of pressure and responsibility I have to deal with. But then this is maybe partly my doing - I don't like to think about or talk about work when I'm not in the office. It's bloody stressful, so I like to leave it at the door as much as possible.

Oh I am sure I could figure DH's job out if I had to, I just can't be arsed.

If you asked him what I do he would mutter something about labs and holes in the ground and the importance of boots I am sure.

We don't talk about work much.

I've seen my husband do it when he worked from home once (now unemployed) and I still don't understand. It seemed to involve moving numbers around on a screen...

Yes. DH and I work in the same small section of a large organisation, with inter-related roles, and we are currently both working on the same project (or at least, we were before I went on mat leave, he has been informally covering my role while i've been off, and i'm going back in 3 weeks). My job is change management and his is service development. We get paid roughly equal amounts now, although I'm still slightly ahead, and I am very marginally senior to him and get to boss him around . I like working with him. I like watching him in action in meetings cutting through the waffle, or helping the work force get to grips with new technology. He's hard-working and well-respected and knows his stuff. Also, we bitch about work all the way home most nights and the gossip is great!

Of course I do. Not sure what what we'd talk about if we didn't talk about our working days. Although we have different specialties (programming/business management and mental health nursing/CBT therapy) we understand each others areas enough to discuss problems and offer advice.

I do know what he does, but if I told you I would have to kill you

The answer I give to non-geeks is "he keeps the Internet working" - works on net security software. I understand some of the detail and exactly how annoying colleagues X and Y are, and general bureaucracy of the organisation. Sometimes they want him to write reports and he tries to convince me to do it or at least go back to working for his company. (no way!)

I'm now a civil servant which he understands at the level of Yes, Minister (just call me Bernard), but when I was a scientist it was very much just figuring out whether he should offer congratulations or sympathy when I rabbited on about a Western blot/PCR analysis/TUNEL stain working or not working. Very similar to my Welsh housemate - I'd understand her chatting on the phone "welsh welsh welsh fucking PCR welsh welsh argh welsh DNA welsh welsh bloody primers welsh welsh"!

DH makes sure the show goes on.. His role is very specialised and now he does more forward planning on events then the actual making a show happen. I generally understand what he does, I get bored and zone out when he talks about rigging and load bearing.. I enjoy his tales of celebrities and how he gets to tell exceptionally famous people to fuck off..

He tells everyone I sell bees.. It's a very small part of my job and I do a lot more then that but in his mind that's all I do all day..