Are the "rules" different if DH is a "genius"?

[EquityDarling]

name change for this one...

I have been together for 8 years (married for 6) to a DH who is generally acknowledged (although not by himself) to be a "genius". With a few details changed to avoid outing but convey the essence, he is a renowned artist (in a very specialist field), a widely published faculty member at a top university and a leading campaigner on a particular political/social issue who is often interviewed in the press/asked to give evidence to select committees etc. His intelligence and talent was obvious from an early age, making him something of a freak child, which his lower middle class aspirational parents did not deal with well - they were embarrassed by his "weirdness" and constantly put him down so that he is utterly lacking in self-confidence and can have trust issues and react in a very hostile manner to anything he perceives as criticism. He has an incredibly strong sense of justice and fairness, hence the campaigning work in an area which is often difficult, unpopular and makes him lots of enemies.

I am definitively NOT any kind of genius, just an averagely bright professional from a happy, stable family.

DH and I in many ways have a really fantastic relationship - he is so fascinating, massively enthusiastic, really interested in my views on everything and flatteringly attracted to me sexually. But when he goes through a period of extended stress, which is happening at the moment, due to various issues of principle related to university politics and the wider issue on which he campaigns, he can be very difficult to live with. I have no problem with the things which are upsetting him - he is quite justified to think they are shockingly hypocritical and corrupt and I share his concern about them - but his anger and upset has simply taken over our lives to a degree which is really driving me down. He has immense energy, hardly sleeps and wants/needs to talk about what is bad and wrong and how down it is making him, around the clock. I feel as though the only place I can get any peace is at work.

We have had some counselling (both joint and separate) and I have found that my best coping mechanism is an approach called "radical acceptance", whereby I have to let him talk it out without trying to 'solve' the problem, accept that if we go out with friends he will often spend the evening staring angrily at his phone, posting furiously on various specialist discussion boards, or ranting about how awful something is until it fills up the whole of the space. The same happens if we go to see my family or if he and I go away for the weekend. Basically I accept what I can't change and draw a few agreed boundaries where I can, for example he no longer calls me at work for long rants and has mostly stopped waking me up in the middle of the night to tell me things. I (sort of) knew this was what I was getting into when I married him and I know he genuinely cannot help it, but I am beginning to doubt my ability to see this through in the long term, particularly since the issues currently enraging him aren't going to go away.

I do not believe this is emotional abuse as it is not calculating or manipulative, he is simply overtaken by the strength of his emotions and finds it very hard to self-sooth, but I am wondering whether I am letting my own needs slide to a degree which is damaging. Please be gentle lovely Mumsnetters but advice would be appreciated...

On the contrary. The dancer, for example, must always have control, and needs to work to achieve spontaneity within strict technical structures. I imagine playing Bach or Mozart requires the same delicate balance of very precise technique and freedom or flow

God, this has really thrown me back to one of my past relationships. He was a poet. So all of the above, except with no money.

I think some really helpful things have been said above, particularly about the way that couples work very much as a dyad, and so his being creative means that you aren't/won't/don't have to. You might be happy with this, or you might not, but having split up with Poet I found myself writing a lot. In my case, I think I ended up with him partly so that I could avoid doing the difficult thing of writing and creating myself.

And just as a couple of posters have suggested upthread, I am now married to a lovely calm funny man who does his own thing and supports my writing too.

Different disciplines - if the toil is intellectual/academic it's heady stuff when breakthrough looks tantalising close.

sorry, back days later

BPD is borderline personality disorder. The only treatment seems to be long term counselling.

Playing Bach is exacting because it's a challenge to hold back the passion. Perhaps that is what this is about: managing passion.

Women's hour podcast had interesting interview with a biographer of clementine Churchill, some of the issues on this thread were discussed, v interesting.

I have to admit, op, that your H has become the Incredibles self-made superhero (mixed with fireball baby) in my mind's eye

OP I know I could never live with this but I can see that you have your reasons and on many levels it works for you, so not going to say LTB.

I do think you need to revisit the 'radical acceptance' thing, though. I think you should go totally zero tolerance on him waking you up to rant - that is just immensely selfish and twatty behaviour, esp if you work. Sleep deprivation is torture.

I would also suggest that expecting your friends and family to radically accept having the tits bored off them while he rants on is not really fair. He's not being a tortured genius in that instance - he's being rude and inconsiderate. He could control that if he wanted to.

That sounds harsh and it's not meant to. You sound so nice, and bright, and switched on, you deserve an easier time of it.

crazyhead that was a very interesting post thankyou.
I remember strongly from my years with XH how I had to be the level one who kept stability while XH had highs and lows and needed helping through them both. My needs were always second to his as the Brilliant One. But very early on we had sat in a car talking about how we saw our lives as equals sharing the workload of family life and childrearing together. At that time our careers were equal and if anything I was more successful than him. Some years later I realised I had been tricked or had voluntarily given up that ideal to relive my parents marriage with DM as the supportive doormat to DFs Great Career. I felt like I had been squashed out of shape into something everybody else wanted me to be. If I had stayed in my marriage I would have needed to redefine my space and my role drastically against huge opposition. Can you do that OP?

minkGrundy - there's no doubt that medication does affect my work. It affects my memory, which is horrible when I'm writing as words have always just sprung forth but now I can't quite pin down the right one. That said, it affects my work positively too by stabilising me. There's a hypomanic sweetspot where the ideas flow and the leaps are made, but too far high or too far low and my mind gets into a state where work is either non-productive or just impossible.

I had an academic scientist boyfriend in my 20s who was, if not genius, certainly a first-class degree mind. Also had the lower middle class aspirational parents who didn't understand why he'd given up a 'real' job to go back to uni.

Now, I'm no genius but I'm fairly bright and I have a knack for remembering facts which doesn't have much use in daily life but was always useful on a pub quiz team - and we used to go to a pub quiz most weeks. But if my boyfriend felt I'd 'showed off' my knowledge too much or been too proud of knowing some obscure fact, he'd tell me off for it afterwards - and yet because he was the 'genius' one, he was allowed to show off his own knowledge and get into rants and arguments with people, with no consequences.

It was just me with my harmless general knowledge skills who was the arrogant show-off one, apparently.

That's a bit of a silly petty example compared to what the OP has to handle, but the constant putting down of my skills and knowledge compared to his was humiliating. I totally fell for the myth of being the humble loyal wife doormat of an Eccentric Genius, and totally lost sight of who 'me' was.

UptheChimney has it absolutely right.

The old truism '90% perspiration 10% inspiration' is apt here.

To speak from my own experience: I've always been surrounded with writers, artists, classical musicians. My mother's a classical musician and musicologist, she also happened to be a talented visual artist but chose music over art. I started two instruments when I was 3. I did the whole prodigy thing and it was expected, given that I had the requisite technical ability and emotional artistry, that I would go to a specialist music school and become performer.

However I had different ideas: I simply didn't find it that interesting. I'm more interested in visual arts and literature. I love listening to classical music, but I have no interest in the musical theory and structure. Most particularly, I found practicing tedious.

90% of mastering an instrument is physical technique, and the only way is, as Chimney says: practice, practice, practice. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Self-control. Discipline. Focus. You have to love your instrument. It suits quite solitary type people who are happy to spend 8 hours a day on their own, practicing.

I'm not quite sure what kind of artist the OP's DH is - whether the reference to beta blockers and performance is literal or by way of an analogy. But the emphasis on technique and discipline applies to any art. The behaviour patterns the OP describes are not characteristic of artists in general ime, or anything inherent in artistic ability. Rather, they're a handicap to be overcome.

Some contemporary and historical artists have famously struggled with various kinds of mental health disorders, addictions etc just as the rest of the population. That's where I think he is.

Could he be bipolar?

I think one way to look at the medication issue is the problem is not that he is creative or that he is academic. The problem is he rants.
His ranting does not change or in any way affect the things he rants about.
His ranting does affect people around him.
His ranting is also not productive.while he is in rant mode he is not working.

So if his ranting could be reduced he would get on better with his loved ones and potentially get more done without losing anything as the rants serve no purpose.

So if the medication controlled his ranting it would in fact be fixing something that is not a part of his creativity but which actually gets in the way of it.

The behaviour patterns the OP describes are not characteristic of artists in general ime, or anything inherent in artistic ability. Rather, they're a handicap to be overcome

This. Indeed.

I am still really pondering this thread, and deeply disturbed that the acceptance of the male genius/female helpmeet model is STILL so widespread.

I think it has very little to do with individual psychologies or pathologies, and a whole lot more to do with misogynist social structures. Which socialise girls to see themselves in the future as "Muses" or helpmeets of genius men. We live in a culture which cuts off the tall poppy heads of girls & young women (eg marshmallowpies' post), yet allows men to get away with from the evidence of this thread breathtaking acts of arrogance and selfishness.

Yet the artists criticised for being "difficult" in this thread: you guessed it -- a woman, Virginia Woolf, who must be castigated for her treatment of servants (well, she didn't rape them as male employers of servants were wont to do).

And we all internalise this model of female helpmeet: I find TopoftheCLiff's post really sad in this respect.

All very depressing.

Excellent post, upthechimney.

Agree, upthechimney.

Absolutely UpTheChimney!

I totally agree Chimney, there's strong patriarchal social conditioning that's hard to shift, but I do think some women collude in this by persisting in seeing men as a shortcut to status - that applies as much to wags and groupies, wife-of-banker, as it does to sidekick-to-genius roles.

How many women on this thread have defined themselves as 'married to a genius' - a role that seems somehow to orient them. Either the bar for genius is set quite low, or there are an awful lot of them - or at least there are a lot of men who've convinced their wives they're geniuses... (and get carte blanche to behave how they like).

Meanwhile Germaine Greer does not 'stop talking', Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir were 'arrogant bitches'. Apparently one of the key requisites of womanhood is still to be nice and to be quiet.

Very thought provoking and insightful post there UTC.

It is depressing but I think women are bound to collude with the patriarchy since falling in line with the existing system is for many people their best chance for getting on in life.

Not suggesting we shouldn't challenge existing power structures, far from it but many people are just too pre occupied with day to day life to really examine whats going.

Those who break ranks tend to be sanctioned in on way or another and so the system perpetuates itself

Right. The advantages to being 'married to a genius' are real - access to interesting ideas, people, conversations that you wouldn't normally get, as the OP says (I hope that's not misrepresenting you OP). Not to mention the money and status that can come from being married to anyone successful.

And given that it is well documented that it is more difficult for women to rise to the top in creative fields (heh well in many fields) than men, it may well be a better strategy to marry into it than work at it, so the system is self-perpetuating.

I think, as a matter of principle, the OP should ltb and set up a private printing press dedicated to promulgating the works of mumsnet dissidents.

Not suggesting that the OP married her DP in order to infiltrate the arts establishment by the way. Just talking generally.

I have to say, in defence of our friends and acquaintances, people didn't universally tolerate my XPs 'rants' as being the mark of a genius - people did pull him up on it and some people grew to dislike him because of it. It was mainly him who thought it was acceptable.

On the other hand the OPs DH's behaviour does seem to come from a place of kindness and sincerity - it's just the way he does it is very hard on her.

1- I gave examples of women who behave a appallingly as the OP's H, because they are the exception in this kind of behavior- and not because they are the exception as geniuses.
2- The intended message of my last post: even though women are more verbally developed than men they do not tend to behave as OP's H because:
a- they are emotionally more developed than men (a fact proved by social studies- easily picked up by plain daily contacts with of kids at school)
b- the women on AS are neurologically wired differently from male on the AS spectrum
I added a reason c - there are fewer women on he AS than men- but a clever PP pointed out to me that it is wrong. (She also gave a better plausible explanation to the question: why women tend to behave better themselves even when they are geniuses?)
So my post has less to do with the genius bit- then with the behavior bit.