Why I Might Not Need to Marry a Professor

Everyone, from my parents to my roommates, tells me that I should be looking to date a professor, or "someone smart, like me." Even on this blog I've agonized over "settling" for someone non-academic, though I'm not sure I used those words.

Lately, though, I've been rethinking this stance.

I might prefer dating an academic (I haven't tried it since I dated a maths professor when I was an undergraduate) because he would have a much better understanding of the horrors I face every day. He would understand teaching, tenure, publishing, infighting, exhaustion, and twenty other minor imps with their torches under my feet. He would understand the words that I use. I don't speak "normal" anymore. I don't interface with average.

I can dream of marrying a professor and we can have a cozy little red brick aca-home with the giant library and original wood floors. I can fantasize about evenings in front of the telly, our mutual piles of grading scattered about us as we pick apart the latest script being played on the screen. I could absolutely use a brain just a little not like mine enough to nudge me in interesting directions, or give my latest work a readthrough.

I have been going on dates with ordinary men. I won't marry any of them because I don't think our minds match. Not for reasons of education, though a little of that wouldn't hurt any of them, but because they're all asleep.

Whether it's from self-absorption, doubt, fear, laziness, or complacency, so many of us just sleep. We throw around smalltalk while our brains glaze over behind our eyes. We think of the world in the same terms we imagined them fifteen years ago. We respond with anger when someone challenges our ideas, and we let our ears close. We retreat when we should advance, and charge headlong into the valley of death like the Light Brigade, whether because someone gave us bad orders that we didn't question, or because we don't have the latest intelligence.

I'm going to get to the point because I have to be up early tomorrow. I can't tell if my standards have dropped or risen. I'm not sure if I have lost or gained optimism. All I know is that I am not fussy about whether he likes Doctor Who, or ever would. Those men are already in love. I don't care how many college degrees he has. I am not even frightened of whether or not he reads (as long as he CAN, if he feels like it).

What I really want to find is a man who is awake. Real. Embodied. I want to find someone who thinks the things, and says the things without borrowing the words or thoughts from the last person they spoke to. I want a man who does not consult Zizek before every decision. A man who does not slip into the nearest cliche at the slightest sign of self-doubt. A man who does not instinctively crouch to protect himself at every new thought, because he knows himself already.

So maybe it'll be harder to find than a geeky Mormon interested in girls. Academese is not my primary Discourse. Neither is Geek. I no longer speak Prosaic. I refuse to learn a single word of Smalltalk. If I'm looking for a man who speaks my language, the chances are good that it won't be in words at all.