Title got your eye? Well, two pieces of research, ahem, underly it.
This article points out altruism as a marital advantage. Contra this, a truly stunning number of people (-: no, they’re not all blokes :-) see the most fundamental part of marriage as being the mattrial (or elsewhere, regarded as safer if it’s private) oscillations; while this aspect does have a definite and important role to play, this study (linked from the above article too) reinforces the other by carefully and scientifically determining from their subjects that love is by and large a far more powerful motivator than the odd excitable ex— I mean, er, conclusive oscillation session, implying it to remain thoroughly so even with the imaginable [by me, anyway, sans emesis] leather/air/flavoured/etc aids and such.
Since many geekoid acts are at some level altrusitic and since many geeks like to — tongue-in-cheek at last — carefully l\bstick down every detail in a situation, the results for Mr and Mrs Geekish (or even a one-half-geekoid marriage-type situation) are looking quite... well... “attractive” is probably the most appropriate Anglic word to use, and a relatively safe one as well.
Now, I know that this is an imperfect Universe, but within it I tend to accept the good parts as they become available and dodge the nasties likewise (one notable failure a couple of months ago, which has in fact remarkably avoided being the total disaster I would expect, hurrah!) — this part’s looking quite beneficial now, despite me having already surfed far more goodness than such a non-attractive event foreshadowed. I’ll (a little rashly, I guess) take it as a kind of continuation of those unreasonable goodlets and watch carefully.
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While it was not quite a total disaster, it missed by precious little.
While it has been a slight and important underbid on the totally extensive damage that I would expect from the descriptions and shocking MRI scans (that is, I live and am gradually recovering some functionality) it has already been quite a long distance from the breeze-through that many people interpret those words to mean.
I was in a coma for about a month, within a whisker of DOA in two different ways, awake-ish in hospitals for another month afterwards, plus much exercise, tablets, injections, tubes, gadgets and repair work, plus much effort from many people (skilled, plus friends and relatives, for a part example), plus so much more medical and hospital detail than I can hope to even remember (which loss is itself a symptom of a major whack on the head) to type here, plus bad hits in work and financial terms, and the toll goes on and on.
Still very thankful to have not hit a few of the predicted kinds of damage full tilt and head on, you understand — that is a miracle in itself — just entirely uncomfortable with the idea of anyone being fool enough to underestimate the damage (and the remains) badly enough to take a likely-lethal and/or high-pain risk along the same lines themselves. Taking such a risk would be stupid, painful and suicidal one way or another. Avoid it!
In general, I hope you never have to do this — but sitting through the careful, detailed, polite descriptions of why one should carefully wear a stack-hat from now on is a fairly motivating way (inspiring but not in the sense of gladness) to understand why cranioplasty (sticking the skull back together-ish afterwards) is so very important. And pain-reducing. And horror-story-avoiding. And so on.