My name is Matt and I married a mathematician. Yeah, you may not be sure why it is that I am telling you this or why you should care, but let me tell you, my life is...well...complex. Please, at any point, do not doubt my happiness or my love for my wife. I love my wife. I would do anything for her. I have followed her through moves, personal and physical difficulties, educational crises, hysterical academic polemics, collegial arguments about snack time, debate of the function of departmental mother figures, hobbies of the obsessive and compulsive type, power stuggles (both actual and perceived), linguistic shortcomings and failures, familial discord, a commute that would bring a tear to a trucker's eye, epic disagreements with religious affiliates, idiomatic and metaphoric ignorance, and I have not even touched the issues that actually involve some form of mathematics. I have followed her through this and more, and I say to you, do not judge the things that I say. I love her. I love her more than life itself.
I do not say the things I say here in order to give you a foul impression of who she is. I do not say the things I say here to justify the things that I do. I love my wife for the things that she does. The quirks that bless/plague us are not necessarily more frequent than those of a regular marriage, they are just of a different type than those experienced by (I might think) many of you. I tell stories of her to people who have yet to meet her and they often judge me harsh. After they get to know both of us they see my anecdotes as my worship of her and my coping mechanism. These people, without fail, begin to collect their own stories with similar motivations.
My wife is exceptional. She is exceptional in mathematics and is working on her Ph. D. at a major university in the United States. Let it be said for the math people out there reading this (and others for that matter), I claim no actual useful knowledge of math, nor do I have evidence of her genius or lack thereof. If I did, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I am at the mercy of the people who surround her to base this judgement. My wife is also exceptional in her interaction with the rest of the world. As I explain this people often volunteer the paraphrasis, "Oh, she's an eccentric!" That doesn't really cover it. Eccentric has the implication of odd and impersonal. Although she occasionally comes off as odd to people, it is not the predominant impression; She is nothing if not personable. Also, she showers regularly, she doesn't collect her nail clippings in jars, doesn't randomly show up to peoples houses to spend the night and then wake them at 2AM by banging on pots and pans so that they will come and talk to her, and she most certainly has the ability to have normal, healthy relationships. Does she have eccentricities? Yes. Is she an eccentric? No. She is a mathematician.
Not all mathematicians are like her. The distribution of mean, nice, likable, and unlikable people amongst mathematicians is the same as any other group of people. Many are viewed as "normal." When I say mathematicians, please don't accuse me of stereotyping. These are some of my favorite people in the world. They stood up at my wedding (on both sides), they have helped me move, they have been shoulders for me to cry on, and they have been the fuel to our celebrations. The only (possible) slight I confess to is the belief that mathematicians, more often than in other groups, react to the world outside of their own in a curious manner. With the forthcoming posts, my goal is to explore these curiosities for the sake of the rest of the world (and hopefully for some humor). I do not plan to only speak of my wife either (hence the blog name). I will, in general terms, discuss other mathematicians and common habits and quirks as well, e.g. go to a restaurant with a mathematician and have them do the math to split the check and figure out the tip (No really, do it. You'll be amazed.).
If you have a mathematician or mathematically minded person in your life (I'm looking at you CS spouses), I believe you will understand and enjoy this blog, If you don't, this is really for you. People of my wife's ilk are the people that have given us many of the things that shape our lives. Without these people the technological revolution would not have happened. You should know what they're like and not just shrug them off as "eccentric."
So, I invite you to the world into which I married. Come and see what a guy who bid farewell to math after algebra 2 in high school does surrounded by those whose drunken challenges are "Who can integrate secant cubed first with a dry erase marker on the patio door?!" (q.v. background)
PS The vagueness in respect to my wife's name and our location are intentional. If you know who we are, by all means, pass along the blog, but we wish (and I know this seems silly being written on a public blog) for some privacy pertaining to our identities for professional reasons for both of us.
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