13 questions to ask before marrying a geek
The New York Times has published a list of 13 questions to ask before getting married, and the great news is that all 13 of them would make sense to your great-grandparents. I’m not disputing the value of a pre-marital conversation about money, exes or religion, but I can honestly say that in fifteen years of marriage, none of those issues have been nearly as important as the question of who gets the newest iPhone first.
Whether you’re a computer geek settling down with same, or bravely embarking on a mixed marriage between techie and non-techie, your relationship will benefit from a clear, up-front understanding about the role of technology in your newly shared lives. Here are the 13 questions to consider:
What is your guaranteed response time?
Just as businesses strive to offer a predictable response time when a customer emails, calls or opens a chat window, a good romantic partner offers guaranteed availability. Before you send your sweetie’s call to voicemail simply because you’re in the middle of a major presentation, make sure you’ve discussed how many times you can call back before your call will absolutely, positively get answered. Remember to establish guidelines for response times on text messages, emails, Slack messages, tweets, Facebook messages, Facebook wall posts, Instagram likes, Snapchats, and Vine posts, and you should be on safe ground for at least the first six months of your cohabitation.
Which operating system will we use?
If you’re settling down with someone who shares your ethnicity, religion and political values, you’ll be just fine if one of you is on Linux and the other is on Windows. But if you already have to bridge a cultural or spiritual chasm, trust me when I tell you that living in a multi-OS household is just one difference too many. Besides, think of the children: you’re going to have to decide which operating system to raise them on, and then the parent who uses that operating system is going to be stuck doing all the tech support.
Which passwords are we going to share?
All the security nerds are going to tell you to keep your passwords to yourself, and any therapist worth her salt would tell you that if you trust your partner, you don’t need to share passwords. Well, security and trust are all very well and good — until your partner goes on a trek to Nepal, and you realize that you’ve accidentally logged out of Netflix and can’t recover the password without access to your sweetie’s email. Talk about this stuff now, and you won’t find yourself hiring a sherpa to track your partner across the Himalayas just so you can watch the next episode of House of Cards.
Which screens will we allow in the bedroom?
Lots of people swear by the TV-free, phone-free bedroom, and every night when I fall asleep watching The Daily Show and playing Scrabble on my iPhone, I thank God that I’m not married to any of them. If you are one of these screen-free bedroom purists, let your beloved know before you move in together, so they can decide whether you are worth giving up Stephen Colbert and midnight Instagramming.
How big a follower gap can our relationship sustain?
If you don’t know what I mean by “follower gap”, you can safely disregard this question. But if you happen to know exactly how many Facebook, Twitter or Instagram followers you have, then you should definitely consider how you will feel if your partner ends up with three times as many — or has dramatically fewer. Just as some relationships thrive when one partner is the dominant bread winner, some relationships can thrive when one person gets all the Likes. Better to discuss your degrees of tolerance for social media asymmetry now, so you can decide whether you’re prepared to throttle your audience growth in the name of marital harmony.
Who gets the URL if we break up?
If your relationship turns out not to work, you can always find a new apartment, separate your book collections and set up a custody schedule for the children or dogs. But if you jointly register a domain name, the person who actually completes the domain registration will have control over your website in the event of a breakup, allowing “Terry and Jen’s Awesome Wedding” to be replaced by “Why Terry Is A No-Good Lying Cheater Who Will Give You V.D.” The obvious solution is to register any joint domain names with an account linked to an email address with two-factor authentication, using a burner phone as the authenticating phone number, and placing the phone in the custody of a lawyer who is bound by an agreement stating that the account password can only be changed when both of you are present.
Will we share cables?
Every year, thousands of marriages end in arguments over who took the charging cable to work and forgot to bring it home. If I were going to offer any advice to couples who are just starting out, it’s to color code all your cables and keep them separate, even if you’re planning to stay together…because it is just so annoying when your sweetie takes your phone, tablet, battery, computer or watch cable and insists it’s theirs. If you must share cables, wait at least six months into your relationship, and get each of your devices tested for viruses first.
Which tech superstore will we go to on date nights?
In a healthy relationship, couples rotate their dates among Best Buy, the Apple store, and their favorite local tech reseller. Your best bet is to make a date night tech shopping schedule before you make a long-term relationship commitment, but if you have overlooked this critical step in romantic planning, you can always achieve the same outcome by stealth. Just identify a perimeter for each of your favorite tech stores, and schedule 12 months of OpenTable reservations that neatly deliver you into the vicinity of a different retailer each week.
How often will we upgrade?
Nothing destabilizes a relationship faster than when one person has a newer computer, tablet, phone and fitness tracker than the their partner. So if you are the kind of person who upgrades all your devices every year, and you’re settling down with someone who’s more of an every-three-year upgrader, you are bound to experience both emotional and technical conflicts. Rather than trying to meet in the middle, which is just a recipe for frustration, explore alternative resolutions. Some options to consider: the cascading upgrade (where you pass on your previous device to your partner every time you upgrade), the alternating upgrade (where you take turns acquiring the latest device) or the compensated upgrade (when you get a new phone, your partner gets a new pair of shoes or a set of theater tickets).
Do virtual affairs count?
If you’re going to be all Marriage 1.0 and insist on monogamy, be sure to clarify what monogamy actually means. Is it cheating if I flirt anonymously in a chat room? What if I exchange vaguely naughty texts with a friend? Send dick pics to random strangers on Twitter? Use a VR headset to have immersive sex with an artificially intelligent partner? OK, so maybe that last one isn’t viable yet, but if you’re looking at a long-term relationship, you’d better think about where virtual sex is going to be in another ten or twenty years, because it is going to be awesome and you don’t want to miss out.
How will we share tech chores?
Forget the question of who does the dishes or looks after sick children: in this day and age, all of your friends will think you are an asshole if you and your partner don’t share the traditional domestic work on a roughly equal basis. It’s far more crucial to negotiate the division of tech labor: sourcing and negotiating with TV, Internet and telephone service providers; maintaining and troubleshooting your home wifi network; keeping all the household computers up-to-date; developing and maintaining your household tech documentation; and worst of all, conducting regular reviews and purges of deprecated technologies and cables. Get clear on how you’ll share these responsibilities up front, and you’ll never find yourself sleeping on the sofa because it was your job to make sure the wifi network had a backup power supply in case of blackouts.
Star Trek or Star Wars?
It’s ok if you settle down with someone who likes both, but if you’re one of those people who strongly believe that Star Trek is superior to Star Wars, you don’t want to shack up with someone who likes them both equally. And I’m not even going to talk about people who actually like Star Wars better than Star Trek, because those people deserve to die alone.
