I think it depends on how long you've been together. If you're a professional, you should be able to explain the fundamentals quite easily to anyone, including your spouse. If you have a healthy relationship I think over a long enough time span you'll eventually pick it up just from active listening and asking questions to fill in the gaps when your significant other needs to vent their frustrations or share their excitements.
My wife's a professional geologist and we've been together about 8 years. I took a single introductory geology course in university but nowadays I've got a pretty solid understanding of the subject (I can hold my own conversationally with PhD geologists at her work events and such) and likewise, while my wife has never written a program or script once in her life, she understands quite a bit about the topic just by being married to me for so long now (she's often my rubber duck at home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging).
That said, we have a 1 year old child now. Careers aren't usually a topic that crops up around the house lately.
My wife's a professional geologist and we've been together about 8 years. I took a single introductory geology course in university but nowadays I've got a pretty solid understanding of the subject (I can hold my own conversationally with PhD geologists at her work events and such) and likewise, while my wife has never written a program or script once in her life, she understands quite a bit about the topic just by being married to me for so long now (she's often my rubber duck at home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging).
That said, we have a 1 year old child now. Careers aren't usually a topic that crops up around the house lately.