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...

I saw that film about Stephen Hawking last night. It was so relevant to this thread! Even if you'd taken the physical disabilities out of it, Jane was still in service to his work: echoing, reflecting and interpreting for him.

It's much more fun to be the female genuis and super earner than some mere power behind the throne.

the statistically slightly higher percentage of males with IQs at the very highest (and, of course, lowest) end of the spectrum

According to tests devised by men based on a model of intelligence defined by men.

In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that, up to the age of 14, there is no difference between the IQs of boys and girls, ie their inborn intelligence is exactly the same. What changes at that point is debatable, but I would argue for girls it's the age when the impact of sexism and sexualisation kicks in, and the 4000 years of conditioning that tells women it's much more important to be attractive, to be liked, and to be fucked, than it is to be clever.

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.

Why can't an intelligent woman get interesting friends and conversations on her own merits? Why does she have to fuck a genius for it?

It has never in my life occurred to be that the route to interesting friends is through a man.

Being married to money and status is essentially dependent.

It's much more fun to be the female genuis and super earner than some mere power behind the throne

Well, lotuslight I suspect you disagree with the way I "super earn" but I enjoy being very very clever and at the top of my field. And being a kind, nice person.

I hope the OP finds her way to her version of her genius, and steps out of the handmaiden role. It sounds exhausting and as if it doesn't make her happy. Just by posting here, she's started to think a bit differently.

I don't know how you "super earn" Up. Whatever means the sooner women own 99% of the world's wealth rather than 1% the better. Far too many of them play second fiddle to men and it has to stop.

In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that, up to the age of 14, there is no difference between the IQs of boys and girls, ie their inborn intelligence is exactly the same. What changes at that point is debatable

And the fact that for 4000 years or so, it's been assumed that women are not just less intelligent than men, but not capable of being intelligent in the same way as men are.

In the 1950s, the Ivy League universities had to raise the SAT achievement level for women, because they were outperforming male candidates for entry to those places of cultural & social capital learning. Ditto for Grammar schools here -- there are still fewer places for girls, so they have to outperform boys even to start at the same starting line.

There's NEVER been a level playing field, and there still isn't.

Nowadays I thought girls did better than boys at GCSE and 60% or 70% of university students in the UK are female and women under 30 earn more than men. It's when women make stupid decisions to work part time or not at all that they mess up their lives and those of their children.

the Ivy League universities had to raise the SAT achievement level for women, because they were outperforming male candidates for entry to those places of cultural & social capital learning. Ditto for Grammar schools here -- there are still fewer places for girls, so they have to outperform boys even to start at the same starting line

women are hobbled by men the instant they show any signs of pulling ahead

There's NEVER been a level playing field, and there still isn't

image what it would be like if there truly were a level playing field!

Is that true, Up? The entry bar is higher for girls than boys? if so.

Apparently because there were fewer places for girls: fewer girls' schools, and not so many co-educational grammars.

It may have improved.

But it does cause me to snort when we get the "masculine panic" sorts of public debates. "Oh dear, boys are so marginalised now" sort of crap.

Twinklestein Of course they can, and it's a much more satisfactory route to it for a wide variety of reasons. Hence my point about printing presses. Sorry if that wasn't clear (it wasn't).

No worries, I knew what you meant. My reply came out much more po-faced than was intended.

My DH is a bit like yours but he's not a genius or especially creative!He is intense and sensitive and finds it hard to tolerate feeling anxious. He was definitely underparented.

For example we are having a bit of a stressful time with DCs and he has a tendency to rant on. I say something like, "I know you're worried. So am I but I'm tired and I can't talk about this any more today."
He said, "but we need to talk so we can solve this."
I say "you are talking at me to try to make yourself feel better and I'm stressed too."

He has a tendency to be noisy when he can't sleep - sighing and thrashing about. I let him know that it's not fair to disturb me as I lie still when I can't sleep to avoid disturbing him.

He's a great dad and caring, funny, successful. But I expect him to care for me as I do for him.

Acceptance based ideas emphasise being more 'present' and finding joy in the most ordinary of things - fresh air on your face, a walk, a cup of tea. It's ok to do ordinary things and to be ordinary, even if only for some of the time. Otherwise what happens when you don't get the job, the research contract, win the race?

Only you can decide OP how you want your relationship and life to be but your needs are every bit as important as his. If you've both neglected you for a while then it will be a struggle to change it but you will both be better off for it. Good luck!

Very interesting! I just learnt that you have to be extraordinarily elderly or a ghost to know about the personality of dead authors/scientists. Silly me I thought that biographies/anecdotes by their contemporaries (peers or kids if any or students) would be a good enough mirror of who they were as people. But I am not a genius so I would not have got it without the help of some here.
Did I correctly read that some PPs are doubting about the talents and skills of KB and they even assume (presume?) some males behind her cult status? Are not the posters here - who hijacked the thread from OP- women who fight to have more women horn their talents and skills?
In my invalid opinion KB digs in some extraordinarily old and extremely diversified cultural wells and maybe this why she is highly regarded by the few extraordinarily elderly people who still walk on this planet- I am a living proof that not all of them are male.
Anyway I think I am a bit too old to follow the highly intelligent and genial posts- so good luck all of you geniuses, I am quitting your genial hijacked thread!

Same.

MaMa, I read the KB part of the conversation as not questioning her talent, but how she got so famous/revered without resorting to majoring on her sexuality as female performers usually have to do. I think the implication is that the (still mostly male) music biz has approved her as 'music for ladies' for whatever reason, so she's successful, but pigeon-holed.

You don't have to be a genius to reject dodgy anecdata and unscientific rationalisations for getting women to put up with shitty behaviour in the name of hanging on to a relationship.

anecdata

Brilliant! Thank you for that wonderful term.

To the poster who asked about beta blockers.. my tuppenceworth..

I've played with beta blockers and without and it made no difference whatsoever, either positively or negatively. But then I never really suffered much with performance anxiety.

Some musicians who do struggle with nerves, say they find them helpful. However, I'm not sure how much that is placebo tbh.

Beta blockers are essentially heart drugs. Very simplistically - they block the action of adrenaline, slowing your heart rate and lowering your blood pressure. The dose that performers use is low compared to that of people taking it for high blood pressure or arrhythmias for example.

They work on a physical level only and I think performance anxiety is as much a mental and emotional issue as a physical one. They may help with physical manifestations of nerves - shaky hands, sweaty palms, muscle locks - but they don't address the mental and emotional aspects. If nerves are negatively impacting your performance then you need to tackle it at a much more fundamental level than what's going on physically.

As to the whole question of whether they impact expressivity in a performance - ie result in loss of emotional intensity - personally I think it's twaddle, but I can only go on my own experience. I certainly don't believe you can 'hear' it in a performance. If someone performs under-par there could be a multitude of reasons why. There's a lot of neurosis around performance and I think the hand-wringing over beta blockers is part of that...

There's a lot of neurosis around performance

That's why the theatre is one of the most superstitious workplaces around ...

Thanks twinkle! I'm not a classical musician nor do I know anything about it but the field I'm in has some use of them for a similat purpose and you'd be laughed out of town for saying you could 'pick' when someone was on them- so wondered what a musician thought. I really wouldn't have thought anyone could 'tell'. Unless of course the playing was usually shot by nerves and suddenly wasn't!

Another example of a revered female musician (among people who really like music and/or are, you know, getting on a bit) is Patti Smith.
Also (at the risk of TOTAL derail) I was at a folk festival this weekend and a lot of the performers people were talking about with reverence and delight and respect were female - and they were being talked about in terms of their musicianship, not their tits.

Though something which occurred to me on the topic of the 'tortured' type of badly-behaved individual: men get away with it if they are percieved - or declare themselves often enough - as special geniuses. Women get away with horrible behaviour, on the whole, if they're pretty enough. I know she was a fictional character, but the archetype of that IMO is Betty Blue. Beautiful and 'mental' women are treated a lot more indulgently by men than a fat, plain woman who displays obvious distress/irrational anger/deep pain.

(I appreciate that mental illness is illness and that people who are in profound psychological distress can behave in ways which are upsetting to others BTW).

SGB I was also put in mind of the broken, needy, demanding variety of woman who can screw up others with excessive demands. It doesn't go with genius in women. It goes with needing power. I guess men on the whole have (some) power anyway so that's not their motivation.

And yes I think you can use sexual attractiveness to play this tune but only for so long whereas the genius can carry on doing it forever and potentially only get worse if his genius also leads to career success, more power, less need to conform.

On another, more cheering note, I read that in 1981 when the London Marathon started, fewer than 5pc of runners were women. Today it's closer to 40 pc. Women barely existed in public life then and the idea that they would take on a major challenge for themselves was unheard of."Heroic" exploits were for men. That's really changing and your comment about the folk festival is along the same lines. A generation of women doing stuff for themselves means things are changing.

Not entirely sure that women 'barely existed in public' by 1981, Preminstrel (are you under 40? I'm 50 so was in my teens then.) The Prime Minister was a woman and there were other well-known women politicians like Shirley Williams as well as famous women athletes eg Virginia Wade, Chris Evert, Fatima Whitbread...
I do think things are steadily improving, even though it sometimes feels llike two steps forward and one back. though...