What It's Really Like Being Married To An Overly Creative Mind

Have you ever come home to find out that your partner has decided to design and build an entire, very elaborate, treehouse in the short time you were out getting your hair done?

This has happened to me.

I’ve also come home to find that my husband was randomly learning how to play the ukulele, or he had just put a bid on an ancient VW van that he wanted to convert into a camping machine (despite knowing nothing about cars).

Once, I had to stop him from making paint for the kids out of some spiky red plants they found on a hike. I researched the plant, and it turned out that it would cause hallucinations if accidentally ingested. That sure would have made for an interesting Saturday afternoon for all of us.

I have a difficult time keeping up with my husband’s creative mind. He constantly needs new and fascinating projects to keep him occupied and happy. From cutting down trees and building furniture out of wood, to brining his own corned beef, to reconfiguring bikes, to making a coat rack out of doorknobs and sheet metal, he wants to do it all. He has taught himself photography, how to change the brakes in our car, and how to make art out of anything including, I guess, poisonous plants. The list goes on and on and…on.

One day he wants to learn to make his own skis, the next he’s planning on becoming an expert on meditation or the fine art of making enchiladas.

I need a nap just watching him.

Most days, I would love to channel his enthusiasm into my own brain. I literally have never been as excited about anything as he was when he decreased the sound level on our dishwasher by 10 decibels using some old wool sweaters. And yes, he measured the decibels. (Please don’t ask.) I would love to have just an occasional hit off of whatever his brain is producing. But some days, I would like him to just chill the hell out.

His curiosity about everything is incredible, and occasionally exhausting. Try going on a road trip with the guy. He wants to know about every old building — and what are they making there, and what kind of geologic formation is that? And I don’t know the answer to any of the questions, ever. He can’t go to the movie theater because it’s torture for him to sit still for that long. I love sitting, for as long as the people in my family will let me.

Of course, having a creative brain leaves you absolutely no time for doing mundane things like putting laundry away or remembering the location for literally anything in your life. He’s said that he doesn’t believe in putting anything in drawers, because if something goes into a drawer, he forgets that it exists. He has to “see” all of his stuff. The only problem is that it’s kind of my religion to organize things away where we don’t ever have to “see” them. It also makes me the only one who knows where stuff is, which is also unfortunate.

We’ve been together for a very long time, so we’ve mostly figured out how to balance his creative energy with my neurotic tendencies. Mostly. He keeps himself busy creating, and I keep myself busy putting all of his stuff away where he can’t find it. We’ve accepted our mutual quirks, which is basically all marriage is.

One thing is for sure, I won’t ever be bored in this life with him, not while there are songs to sing and art to make and random skills to be learned. So if you are also married to a highly creative human, I get you. And does somebody maybe want to go to the movies with me? We’ll just sit there and do nothing else, and it will be perfect.

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