Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is.
Speaker 2: Recorded on Kristen Lakson, and she goes, hey, you know
Speaker 2: that thing where we were just trying to fix our marriage.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, yeah, basically the last eight years
Speaker 2: of course, what's up. She's like, well, I don't want
Speaker 2: to do that anymore. I'm out. I can't do this
Speaker 2: marriage thing with you anymore. And I was like holding
Speaker 2: my underwear. I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: what do you mean you're You're out from Mama Mia.
Speaker 3: This is no filter and I'm mea Friedman. Before David
Speaker 3: and Kristen Finch were married and they were just dating,
Speaker 3: she found some photos on his camera that were really well,
Speaker 3: they were really weird, not sex weird and not cheating weird.
Speaker 3: This wasn't one of those situations where you accidentally find
Speaker 3: incriminating evidence of infidelity. It was not that these weren't
Speaker 3: dick pics, but they were photos of David taken by David,
Speaker 3: and I guess you could call them selfies, but they
Speaker 3: are not the kind of selfies that you imagine.
Speaker 1: When you hear that word.
Speaker 3: The photos that Kristin found of her boyfriend were in
Speaker 3: different situations, like normal situations, watching TV or driving his car,
Speaker 3: even sitting on the toilet, very everyday things, and he'd
Speaker 3: taken photos of himself while he was doing them. So yeah,
Speaker 3: not the usual kind of photos that a guy or
Speaker 3: anyone really would take.
Speaker 1: Because why would you. So of course.
Speaker 3: Kristin asked him about it, and David told her that
Speaker 3: he wanted to understand how he looked to other people
Speaker 3: when he was doing normal stuff. And they laughed about
Speaker 3: it together, and even though David couldn't explain why he
Speaker 3: did it, Kristin just kind of dismissed it as a
Speaker 3: little quirk. I mean, she knew that David had a
Speaker 3: bunch of quirks things that he did that seemed, you know.
Speaker 1: A little odd.
Speaker 3: A few years later, though, after they were married and
Speaker 3: had kids and David hit a really rough patch in
Speaker 3: their relationship and it sparked a discovery about David that
Speaker 3: would change everything. This discovery even led to him writing
Speaker 3: a book about How to Be a Perfect Husband, which
Speaker 3: became a New York Times bestseller. And this part's quite funny.
Speaker 3: His determination to be a perfect husband is what ultimately
Speaker 3: made his wife call time on their marriage. This is
Speaker 3: a story with a lot of surprises in it, mostly
Speaker 3: for David and also for you when.
Speaker 1: You hear it. So the best place to start is at.
Speaker 3: The beginning, when David was just a kid trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how to be in the world. So let's
Speaker 3: dive in with the very delightful David Finch.
Speaker 1: Tell me where you grew up, David.
Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. It's
Speaker 2: about sixty miles northwest of Chicago, pretty close to the
Speaker 2: Wisconsin border, and it was fantastic.
Speaker 1: What kind of kid were you?
Speaker 2: First of all, I know that I was a very,
Speaker 2: very happy, to a large extent chill kid, and I
Speaker 2: would say quirky too. There were moments where, like my
Speaker 2: parents were having a dinner party just with a bunch
Speaker 2: of friends, and I would scoot along on the floor
Speaker 2: of our house on my hands in my knees with
Speaker 2: my forehead against the carpet, and I loved the brushing
Speaker 2: sensation of the carpet against my forehead. It was like
Speaker 2: very calming. It kind of transported me into this utopian
Speaker 2: like state of mind. Even when I was real young,
Speaker 2: you know, and I was like, this feels great. So
Speaker 2: I did it all the time. My parents were awesome.
Speaker 2: They were just like, Oh, that's just Dave. Don't mind him.
Speaker 2: He's fine.
Speaker 3: He's just vacuuming the floor with his face, not a problem.
Speaker 3: Did you have friends, David, Like, did you socialize easily?
Speaker 3: Or did other kids think that you're a bit weird?
Speaker 2: These are great questions. I love these. Okay, So after
Speaker 2: we'll say third grade or fourth grade or so, I
Speaker 2: always had a very small and unchanging friend group, and
Speaker 2: those same people are still my closest friends today. But
Speaker 2: for the most part, I was not likely to be
Speaker 2: the kid who was invited to we'll say, just a party, like,
Speaker 2: Oh we're doing a big party Friday night, everybody come over.
Speaker 2: My number was not on that list. So I would
Speaker 2: find out that everybody got together, did fun things whatever.
Speaker 2: Looking back, that was it was really okay with me.
Speaker 2: I always felt this notion of like, what am I
Speaker 2: missing out on? Why am I not being invited to
Speaker 2: participate in these sorts of things. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: if you had asked me put yourself in that environment,
Speaker 2: in that party, in that situation, hanging out with you know,
Speaker 2: people on a Friday night, would you want to be
Speaker 2: doing that? The answer would be no, I'd rather be
Speaker 2: at home, you know, practicing my sax phone, drawing pictures
Speaker 2: or whatever. I always had a core group of friends.
Speaker 2: I was lucky in that way because I think I
Speaker 2: was regarded as sort of the funny kid, the comedian
Speaker 2: of the group or the school. I don't know, looking back,
Speaker 2: if I was funny or if I was just willing
Speaker 2: to be more obnoxious than the other kids were willing
Speaker 2: to be, and so they thought that was funny.
Speaker 3: But well, you in on the jike, Well, were you
Speaker 3: sort of bewildered about You'd say something that you didn't
Speaker 3: think was funny and everyone would go, oh, Dave, you're
Speaker 3: it's so funny when you were like, I wasn't trying
Speaker 3: to be funny, or you would you actually push on
Speaker 3: that button deliberately.
Speaker 2: I'm laughing because that actually happens more now that I'm
Speaker 2: an adult. I'm not in on the joke. When I
Speaker 2: was a kid, I had a little more credibility. No,
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, it was half and half
Speaker 2: half the time. I would architects sort of a funny
Speaker 2: situation or a funny line on things, I would present
Speaker 2: it or I would share it with people, they would
Speaker 2: agree it was funny. And whether that was you know,
Speaker 2: just in a conversation like real time, or if the
Speaker 2: assignment for the classroom was we're making posters about, you know,
Speaker 2: recycling or something, then I would draw the most ridiculous
Speaker 2: poster and I know people would laugh at that. Right
Speaker 2: then there are other times when I clearly was not
Speaker 2: trying to make anybody laugh, and I was just sharing
Speaker 2: my actual lived experience and people thought it was hilarious.
Speaker 2: And so sometimes I felt othered. We'll say, to use
Speaker 2: that fake verb.
Speaker 3: We didn't have that word back then, but now you
Speaker 3: can see that's how you felt. Tell me about dating,
Speaker 3: because that can be difficult for anyone to navigate. But
Speaker 3: when you have a different view on the world, how
Speaker 3: was it for you?
Speaker 2: Dating was always a really interesting proposition for me because
Speaker 2: it's said often you know of people who are on
Speaker 2: the spectrum that do they really engage with people on
Speaker 2: an emotional level? Do they really understand, you know, the
Speaker 2: sort of the social dynamics, And you know, for the
Speaker 2: most part, there are challenges with that and maybe certain
Speaker 2: limitations if you want to call them limitations or differences
Speaker 2: if you want to call them differences. But for me,
Speaker 2: dating was an interesting proposition because there was always somebody
Speaker 2: that I was like, Oh, well, she's cute, she's funny.
Speaker 2: I like her personality, you know, And so there's always
Speaker 2: somebody I was interested in for one reason or another.
Speaker 2: But when it came time, like basically in high school,
Speaker 2: is really when I first started to maybe have girlfriends.
Speaker 2: So I do really well when I have a model
Speaker 2: in my head for how something is supposed to be done,
Speaker 2: and I can kind of work that model. But until
Speaker 2: I have that model, I don't always do well with
Speaker 2: improvisation in such a way that the improvisation is tolerable
Speaker 2: to others. I can improvise my way through anything, but
Speaker 2: the key socially is to do it in an agreeable,
Speaker 2: socially nice manner. Right, So, like, what I knew about dating,
Speaker 2: especially when I was younger, is anything that I would
Speaker 2: have seen in TV shows, cartoons, and movies.
Speaker 1: So that's what you were emulating. That was the model
Speaker 1: you were working.
Speaker 2: I was emulating that, which is dangerous when you're emulating
Speaker 2: Peppi Lapu and you're like all this this amorous like ooh,
Speaker 2: you know you're so beautiful now yeah nowadays, Yeah, i'd
Speaker 2: be thrown in jail. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the improvising. Give me an example of
Speaker 3: a situation where you improvised, but because you didn't have
Speaker 3: a model, it didn't land.
Speaker 2: God, that's such a good question, because I always referred
Speaker 2: back to models all this levity and joking for the
Speaker 2: last couple of minutes. The moment of biggest import for
Speaker 2: me personally in terms of not having a mod and
Speaker 2: feeling completely fish out of water about it, was when
Speaker 2: my best friend Kristin, who is now my wife, lost
Speaker 2: somebody very very important to her. She lost her fiance
Speaker 2: and I don't want to get ahead of the story,
Speaker 2: but she lost her fiance, Mike, in a car accident
Speaker 2: when we were in our early twenties, and Mike was
Speaker 2: somebody that I had grown up with in school as
Speaker 2: well and along with Kristin. I remember I was always
Speaker 2: Kristin's funny, dorky friend as we were just discussing. But
Speaker 2: when Mike died, I did not know how to show
Speaker 2: up for a friend who was grieving. I knew how
Speaker 2: to show up for a friend who was happy or annoyed,
Speaker 2: a little bit sad, you know, all these different emotional states,
Speaker 2: but truly grieving and not feeling like yourself anymore, and
Speaker 2: not being able to process the enormity of what just
Speaker 2: happened in your life, the tragedy of it. I felt
Speaker 2: like a terrible friend because there was a period for
Speaker 2: about a year and a half where I just I
Speaker 2: had no idea how to show up for Kristin, And
Speaker 2: normally I was somebody who always knew how to show
Speaker 2: up for her, how to get a laugh out of her.
Speaker 3: You know, that's interesting that you say that, David, because
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone would have known how to show
Speaker 3: up for Kristin in that situation. I wouldn't, at age
Speaker 3: fifty two as I am now, with all the social
Speaker 3: awareness and insight that I have, and I'm not neurodivers
Speaker 3: in the same way that you are, I wouldn't know
Speaker 3: what to do in that moment. Like I've got a
Speaker 3: friend whose father just died and she's devastated. I don't
Speaker 3: know how to show up for her in the right way.
Speaker 3: So just must have been an incredibly tough thing, you know,
Speaker 3: neurodiversity aside, How did you navigate it with her.
Speaker 2: What ended up happening was after a year and a
Speaker 2: half of Kristin and me not really connecting, not really
Speaker 2: seeing each other at all, but not even calling each
Speaker 2: other on the phone. This was before texting. Prior to that,
Speaker 2: we would see each other pretty regularly and do fun things,
Speaker 2: hang out, do social things, talk, write letters to each other,
Speaker 2: mail and back and forth. But after Mike Dad, she
Speaker 2: really shut down, like her whole self just kind of
Speaker 2: went away for a little while. I had reached out
Speaker 2: a few times, just leaving messages on the answering machine
Speaker 2: and just saying, hey, I'm here, you know, just if
Speaker 2: you ever want to get together, let me know. No
Speaker 2: phone calls back, and that didn't bother me because I
Speaker 2: wasn't expecting one. So after about a year and a half,
Speaker 2: she and I ended up living in the same town,
Speaker 2: across the street from each other. She called me one
Speaker 2: late afternoon, it was actually around dinner time, and she said,
Speaker 2: I would love to go get a cup of coffee.
Speaker 2: Are you around. I was like, oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would love to get a cup of coffee with you.
Speaker 2: Now that was a lie. People say like, oh, you
Speaker 2: got aspergers. You can't tell lies. No, I can lie.
Speaker 2: And that was a bit. That was a big, big,
Speaker 2: white phony lie because at the time I hated coffee.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have touched it otherwise. But it was Kristen.
Speaker 2: It was like this really close best friend of mine
Speaker 2: resurfacing after a year and a half. So I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love coffee. I can't get enough of it. So
Speaker 2: I put on my coat and I stood there at
Speaker 2: the the door and she came over to pick me up.
Speaker 2: We went got coffee that night, and it was a
Speaker 2: really interesting evening because I'm much better at banter and
Speaker 2: small talk and just sort of social pleasantry conversation. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're sitting next to somebody on a
Speaker 2: four hour flight and they start yapping at you, and
Speaker 2: I can carry that conversation finally at age forty seven.
Speaker 2: But I had at that time in my life just
Speaker 2: no ability for gab and small talk. So with Kristen,
Speaker 2: we sat down with our coffees. By the way, I
Speaker 2: had no idea what even to order. It was a
Speaker 2: Starbucks coffee place, and so she ordered this white chocolate
Speaker 2: mocha and I listened very closely to how she ordered,
Speaker 2: and I was like that sounds good. I would also
Speaker 2: like a white chocolate mocha, and just following her lead,
Speaker 2: so we both sat down with our white chocolate mochas.
Speaker 1: Sounds delicious.
Speaker 2: It was delicious. I got to say it made me
Speaker 2: a coffee drinker, or maybe it was her company that
Speaker 2: made me a coffee drinker. But I just launched right
Speaker 2: into I haven't seen you in forever, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: And she'd be like, you know, the first couple questions
Speaker 2: I asked you was just like, ah, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: not awesome, but doing okay, putting on the brave face
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and I could see the brave face act,
Speaker 2: and so I just kind of cut to the chase
Speaker 2: and said, I don't know if there's an answer for this,
Speaker 2: but like, what would you say you regret the most
Speaker 2: having lost Mike but not being able to say goodbye
Speaker 2: to him because it was so abrupt, Like what is
Speaker 2: the biggest thing that you've been dealing with over the
Speaker 2: last year and a half. Yeah, nobody had asked her
Speaker 2: questions like this, And it might sound insensitive, terrible, borderline cruel,
Speaker 2: or barbaric to ask those sorts of questions, but I
Speaker 2: just started asking her one after another of these these
Speaker 2: heavy hitting, like sixty minutes, you know, investigative journalism type questions.
Speaker 1: How did it turn into love?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm an endlessly lovable person.
Speaker 3: Clearly, I'm already in love with you, dard book, Can
Speaker 3: I say, and it's only been twenty minutes, if.
Speaker 2: If only we weren't literally twenty four hours separated exactly.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting question too, because, by the way, I
Speaker 2: love how your listeners are going to be listening to
Speaker 2: this episode and they're going to be like, can you
Speaker 2: just answer one of her fucking questions without this whole
Speaker 2: thirty minute preamble. There was always a love with Kristin
Speaker 2: and me. We knew each other way back when we
Speaker 2: were in preschool. She has known me. Out of all
Speaker 2: the people that I've consciously known in my life, she's
Speaker 2: one of the people who's known me the longest. And
Speaker 2: now she's very aware of people and what's going on
Speaker 2: around her, so she would have noticed me and maybe
Speaker 2: compartmentalized me as like, Okay, that's the funny weird kid.
Speaker 2: Got it cool. Then when we were in high school,
Speaker 2: it really turned we became really I would say, good friends.
Speaker 2: In high school, we had the same line on things.
Speaker 2: We had a very similar sense of humor.
Speaker 3: After the short break, how David got himself out of
Speaker 3: the friend zone with Kristin and embarked on marriage and
Speaker 3: fatherhood and also what he discovered about himself in the
Speaker 3: process that he never expected.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have a crush on her? Or it
Speaker 1: was platonic for you?
Speaker 2: It was platonic by circumstance. Then when Mike died, it
Speaker 2: was when Kristen and Mike were both in grad school.
Speaker 2: I had just graduated from undergrad and had started working already.
Speaker 2: After Mike died, it was a year and a half.
Speaker 2: Then Kristin and I started hanging out and started getting coffee,
Speaker 2: and she was still my very beautiful friend. But it
Speaker 2: wasn't like that high school mania of.
Speaker 1: Desire and lost in home minds.
Speaker 2: Yes, hormonesia, and that doesn't help. It had very well
Speaker 2: calmed down to just like, Wow, look at how beautiful
Speaker 2: my friend is, and I love being here with her talking.
Speaker 2: But apparently that first night was so deeply therapeutic for
Speaker 2: her with all my terrible Barbara Walter's questions that then
Speaker 2: it was hey, let's do this again next week. So
Speaker 2: it was coffee every every week, right, every Tuesday. Then
Speaker 2: it was coffee every few days, then it was coffee
Speaker 2: and dinner every few days. Then it was dinner every day,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden we just knew, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, that was months and months of just sort
Speaker 2: of surprising discovery that I had already you know, tapped
Speaker 2: out and was like, you know, we're not a thing,
Speaker 2: or we wouldn't be, so I wasn't even thinking in
Speaker 2: those terms. And then when we were spending so much
Speaker 2: time together, we both were just like, this feels really right.
Speaker 1: How old were you guys then.
Speaker 2: Early twenties, twenty three, twenty four.
Speaker 3: And you talk about being on your best behavior in
Speaker 3: that early phase when you were dating, what were you masking? Like?
Speaker 3: What kinds of things were you not showing her when
Speaker 3: you're in your best behavior?
Speaker 2: The masking thing is really interesting. If you would say,
Speaker 2: like to a twenty three year old man, single guy,
Speaker 2: what does it mean to be on your best behavior
Speaker 2: on a date, they might say things like, keep your
Speaker 2: hands to yourself, don't be leering at your date, don't
Speaker 2: suggestive rude, disgusting.
Speaker 1: Comments, don't drink too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't drink too much right, don't get into bar fights.
Speaker 2: Maybe unless she's into that sort of thing, and you
Speaker 2: might win some favor with Kristin being on my best behavior,
Speaker 2: was anything that she wanted to do socially, I would
Speaker 2: just say yes to Blindly. Inside, I might not want
Speaker 2: to go to the Big Taste of Chicago Festival, which
Speaker 2: is this huge, hot Fourth of July festival. It's sticky,
Speaker 2: there's food vendors. It's a nightmare. Frankly, there's shirtless guys
Speaker 2: with upside down visors spilling beer on you, and it's like, ah,
Speaker 2: it's like my worst nightmare. But Kristin, being a very
Speaker 2: social person, she loved the Taste of Chicago Festival. So
Speaker 2: the very first year that we were dating, she was like,
Speaker 2: want to go to the fourth with me? I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: there truly is nothing now would rather do more than
Speaker 2: stand there?
Speaker 1: Well, that'd be coffee.
Speaker 3: That the only thing that would make me happy is
Speaker 3: if I could have coffee at this festival.
Speaker 2: Totally yeah, with two cups of coffee in each hand,
Speaker 2: Like oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm my happy place.
Speaker 2: Let's go. Let's go talk to some college age men.
Speaker 2: This will be fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'd never advocated for those sorts of things that
Speaker 2: truly I would have preferred. I was just all in on. Listen,
Speaker 2: you're dating your best friend.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: If you screw this up, you've lost a girlfriend and
Speaker 2: your best friend. So high stakes, high steaks, don't screw
Speaker 2: it up. It's sort of like every day that we
Speaker 2: were dating, it was like I was showing up to
Speaker 2: reinterview for that same job every morning. So you know,
Speaker 2: when you go into an interview with someone, you're like, Hi,
Speaker 2: very great, oh man, traffic was a breeze. You know,
Speaker 2: positive energy.
Speaker 1: Got here early. I'm always oie.
Speaker 3: You wrote that when you slipped from your best behavior,
Speaker 3: You wrote, she seemed to find my eccentricity and endearing.
Speaker 3: I remember her laughter upon discovering dozens of pictures I
Speaker 3: had taken of myself to see what I might look
Speaker 3: like to other people at any given moment, Me watching TV,
Speaker 3: me about to sneeze, me on the toilet, looking pensive.
Speaker 1: Why did you take these photos?
Speaker 3: Day?
Speaker 2: Right around my twenties, it really started to occur to
Speaker 2: me because I was working in an office then, and
Speaker 2: it was starting to occur to me. I knew what
Speaker 2: everybody else looked like, and I was studying their mannerisms,
Speaker 2: but I don't know how I'm coming off to other people.
Speaker 2: Part of what was fueling this or driving this was
Speaker 2: I would have people come and stop by my cubicle
Speaker 2: at work a couple of times a week and just
Speaker 2: be like or even in the middle of a meeting,
Speaker 2: like in a conference room somewhere, somebody would kind of
Speaker 2: pull me aside and be like, are you okay? Everything okay? Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: everything's fine. Why do you ask? Like you look so
Speaker 2: angry right now, Like you look like you want to
Speaker 2: kill someone. And it turns out you've heard of resting
Speaker 2: bitch face. Yeah, so I've got resting psycho face apparently.
Speaker 2: So the thing was I had this digital camera, so
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is cool, you know, and
Speaker 2: I could review it in real time. I must have
Speaker 2: left the camera on the kitchen counter or something. That's
Speaker 2: how my memory places on the kitchen counter. Kristen grabbed
Speaker 2: it and she was like, oh, what are these and
Speaker 2: she just started flipping through them and it was no
Speaker 2: photos of our pet, it was no photos of our house.
Speaker 2: It was just a million pictures of me making different
Speaker 2: facial expressions.
Speaker 3: And this is before selfies, the selfies wasn't even a word, right,
Speaker 3: so that must have been really interesting for her, right,
Speaker 3: And how did she react?
Speaker 2: She laughed. She laughed so hard and for so long.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just in the moment. Days later, anytime she
Speaker 2: thought of it, she would just start like deep belly
Speaker 2: laughing that would come from deep inside her soul would
Speaker 2: just like erupt for she just thought it was great.
Speaker 2: She was like, what a weird guy that I'm dating.
Speaker 2: She loved it. She really loves people who are authentic.
Speaker 2: She loves people who are not, you know, mass produced
Speaker 2: humans that are kind of unique and quirky and strange.
Speaker 3: You also wrote, she loved the story of how I
Speaker 3: took an emergency leave from work to boil my glasses
Speaker 3: after they'd fallen from my shirt pocket in a minute
Speaker 3: room stall. She found it pitifully charming when I would
Speaker 3: stand alone at parties kind of dancing, or follow with
Speaker 3: her from room to room, unable to engage with anyone else.
Speaker 3: That's just how it goes with Aspergers. Of course, you
Speaker 3: didn't know that's what it was then, you were just quirky.
Speaker 3: But she had a clue because she worked as a
Speaker 3: speech pathologist who works with kids who are on the
Speaker 3: spectrum right exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's an interesting twist in all of this. So
Speaker 2: I mentioned she really loves and just prefers in life
Speaker 2: to be around quirky, unique individuals, and something that we
Speaker 2: find in a lot of folks on the spectrum, the
Speaker 2: autism spectrum certainly is this sort of quirkiness, and it's
Speaker 2: a quirkiness that comes from a very innocent place. It's
Speaker 2: not this wilful denial of social norms. It's just if
Speaker 2: those norms haven't been presented to me in a way
Speaker 2: that I've internalized and am willing to perpetuate and emulate.
Speaker 2: I don't have time for it, so we end up
Speaker 2: just acting the way we act. Her first professional love
Speaker 2: in life was autism. Right after grad school, she was
Speaker 2: working with kids with autism in the elementary school kind
Speaker 2: of age group. And that's also when we started dating,
Speaker 2: and she never quite lined up the two cards of
Speaker 2: like autism and Dave. Then she started working with kids
Speaker 2: with Asperger syndrome diagnoses, which is no longer technically a thing,
Speaker 2: but it really is a thing. A lot of us
Speaker 2: identify as having this particular quote unquote version or expression
Speaker 2: of autism. However, you want to put it. She started
Speaker 2: working with that population of kids, and then she started
Speaker 2: meeting the dads and the moms of those kids, and
Speaker 2: she was like, huh. And that's when she started to see, like, gee,
Speaker 2: Dave's rigid flexibility. It wasn't called masking, like we didn't
Speaker 2: have that word masking back then, but just the way
Speaker 2: that Dave sort of puts on different characters, like he
Speaker 2: wears personas, like other people wear outfits of clothing for
Speaker 2: any different circumstance socially, you know, the way that I
Speaker 2: would insist on sort of a routine. And there are
Speaker 2: very clearly defined parameters for what constitutes a breakfast. And
Speaker 2: if you haven't served me orange juice, we haven't had
Speaker 2: breakfast yet. I can't get my day started yet, so
Speaker 2: can you please get me some orange juice? All that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff. She really then started to piece together that,
Speaker 2: you know, gosh, Dave's very similar. I'm seeing a lot
Speaker 2: of things that are consistent with these children and adults
Speaker 2: with Asperger syndrome. And it's important to note here, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll get into it. It's important to note
Speaker 2: here that at that time we had been married five
Speaker 2: years and our marriage was not going well.
Speaker 3: After this break, how David finally gets the diagnosis that
Speaker 3: will change his life.
Speaker 1: We will get into that you were married, you had kids.
Speaker 1: Both of those.
Speaker 3: Things can be quite to his nonderstatement, but can really
Speaker 3: change the dynamics of a relationship and really be a
Speaker 3: lot of stress on a person.
Speaker 1: Particularly if the way your.
Speaker 3: Aspergers manifested was that rigidity and around routines. Well, that's
Speaker 3: one of the ways. What was marriage and fatherhood like
Speaker 3: for you in those early years in terms of the
Speaker 3: biggest struggles that were caused by your asperges?
Speaker 2: So importantly we can draw a thick, solid line right
Speaker 2: down the middle of what is a challenge because I
Speaker 2: had aspergers, and what is a challenge just because it's
Speaker 2: marriage and kids. So in some ways you almost have
Speaker 2: to look at them separately if you really want to
Speaker 2: get to the nuances of things. We'll start with marriage.
Speaker 2: For me, marriage was okay, we are living together now
Speaker 2: in the same house, and there's no shutdown period for me.
Speaker 2: So when we were dating and we were not living
Speaker 2: in the same house, we each had our own apartment.
Speaker 2: I could spend the day with her, being the greatest
Speaker 2: version of a boyfriend you've ever seen in your life,
Speaker 2: like the quintessential excellent boyfriend, high energy, you know, very positive,
Speaker 2: very willing to show up and do things, do that
Speaker 2: all day long and then say all right, good night,
Speaker 2: go back home to my apartment, and I could just recharge.
Speaker 1: Didn't have to be on your best behavior.
Speaker 2: You you didn't have to be on my best behavior.
Speaker 1: Which is what we now call masking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: You could do all you we'd stuff alone.
Speaker 2: I could take the mask off. And the mask was
Speaker 2: crucial because as far as I was concerned, the mask
Speaker 2: is what Kristen loved, not what was behind the mask.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I don't wanted to see what's
Speaker 2: behind the mask. You don't forget that. It's like the
Speaker 2: Phantom of the Opera, right, Like, don't take that off.
Speaker 2: Then when we were married, we were living together, there
Speaker 2: was no opportunity to take off the mask without really
Speaker 2: revealing what a troll I could be when you just
Speaker 2: leave me to be one, right.
Speaker 1: So in your view, in my.
Speaker 2: View, right, So the insisting on you know, it's hamburg
Speaker 2: er Tuesday. Why are we trying to now make a
Speaker 2: taco Tuesday? We've always done hamburgers let's keep it with Hambergers, right,
Speaker 2: so that that sort of inflexibility, persistent and intense preoccupations
Speaker 2: with random, weird things. Those were the challenges in being
Speaker 2: married was how do I adequately continue to show up
Speaker 2: for Kristin when I have built this completely unsustainable masking
Speaker 2: initiative or this and finding now that that is not sustainable.
Speaker 2: And it's not like I was trying to trick Christin
Speaker 2: into thinking I was some great version of myself. It
Speaker 2: was more just that's what you do when the stakes
Speaker 2: are high, right, So that was marriage, And in a
Speaker 2: marriage there needs to be or in any relationship. You know,
Speaker 2: marriage is just a piece of paper in some ways,
Speaker 2: but in any worthy close relationship, I think the responsibility
Speaker 2: for both people in that relationship is to love the
Speaker 2: other person so freely that they're free to be themselves
Speaker 2: at whatever stage in life they're in, whatever they're into,
Speaker 2: and to celebrate that and to share moments together. In
Speaker 2: my case, my only goal after the end of a
Speaker 2: workday was preservation of sameness. And it was like Kristen
Speaker 2: didn't want to be married to an agenda around preservation
Speaker 2: of sameness. She wanted to be married to somebody who
Speaker 2: could go and do fun things out in the world
Speaker 2: without completely boiling over and having little man tantrums and
Speaker 2: pouting and all the things that I would do, stomp
Speaker 2: around and act mad for three days because my favorite
Speaker 2: TV show is canceled or something.
Speaker 3: And also withdrawing. You know you wrote in this essay
Speaker 3: for the New York Times. It wasn't working any of it.
Speaker 3: Our third year of marriage threatened to be our last.
Speaker 3: I'd become cynical and withdrawn, obsessive and preoccupied, dismissive and unhelpful.
Speaker 3: Ashamed by my seeming insanity, I withdrew until our life
Speaker 3: together became long car rides without conversations and laughter, silent
Speaker 3: evenings watching TV in the same room but feeling worlds apart,
Speaker 3: months without any real connect The circle breaker didn't come
Speaker 3: for another couple of years. Really, When one night Kristen
Speaker 3: asked you to come to her office after the kids
Speaker 3: were asleep, sounds like you're being someone to the principal's office.
Speaker 3: She wanted you to take an online test for Aspergers,
Speaker 3: but first she let you complete your eight thirty PM routine.
Speaker 1: What was that routine?
Speaker 2: At that time? The layout of our house was such
Speaker 2: that after the kids would be in bed. They were
Speaker 2: both like just single digits agely, like three and five
Speaker 2: or something. They were both very young. I would basically
Speaker 2: start in the kitchen and I would walk counterclockwise around
Speaker 2: the first floor of our house, and I would just
Speaker 2: go from room to room in a sequence and observe
Speaker 2: which lights were on. The lights that were on, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily shut them off. I would just want to
Speaker 2: know which ones are on. And sometimes I would kind
Speaker 2: of like stare into it, have a moment with a
Speaker 2: light bulb. Then I would stop at the front door
Speaker 2: where we had two windows, and I would look out
Speaker 2: the window and notice, like how I had to stand
Speaker 2: so that the neighbor's rooftops would come into perfect parallel
Speaker 2: alignment with each other. And you know, if you cock
Speaker 2: your head a certain way, it kind of creates an angle.
Speaker 2: So just getting that right, and when I could do
Speaker 2: it so that the rooftops all lined up perfectly, it
Speaker 2: would be this amazing relaxation, you know moment. It would
Speaker 2: be like similar to when I was a kid pushing
Speaker 2: myself along the floor with my head on the carpet.
Speaker 2: For some reason, my shoulders would relax. It would feel amazing.
Speaker 2: So then once I did that, I continue around, continue
Speaker 2: my loop, just see what's on the TV. If it's
Speaker 2: something loud and obnoxious, turn it off. If it's something good,
Speaker 2: keep it on. It was a way to essentially reset
Speaker 2: for my evening, which was to get the lay of
Speaker 2: the land. What's going on in the house. Are there
Speaker 2: any variables or factors that I want to address, like
Speaker 2: do I not feel like having a bright evening? Which
Speaker 2: lights would I turn off? Right? So it was like
Speaker 2: this very deliberate, but very essential to what we would
Speaker 2: call now my emotional regulation. It was very essential to
Speaker 2: that to getting me regulated for the rest of my night,
Speaker 2: because the rest of my night was now I have
Speaker 2: to really show up and try to be a good
Speaker 2: partner to Kristen. I needed that time and she knew that.
Speaker 1: So you did the test, You iced the test. If
Speaker 1: the objective of the test was to be.
Speaker 3: Diagnosed with aspects, how did you feel once you had
Speaker 3: a word for the quirkiness?
Speaker 2: That was Dave, It was so interesting. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that we were doing an Asperger's test. She did, obviously,
Speaker 2: but I thought it was some kind of magazine quiz,
Speaker 2: like a Cosmo quiz. You know what kind of celebrity
Speaker 2: pet would you be? Answered these ten questions. I just
Speaker 2: thought it was this, but then it ended up being
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty five questions or something crazy. But
Speaker 2: I scored so high on this thing for Asperger's. It
Speaker 2: was like, first of all, it was an online test
Speaker 2: something called like Asperger Quiz or aspe quiz or something,
Speaker 2: and it was all these qualifying questions and it was
Speaker 2: by no means a genuine or reliable diagnostic tool that
Speaker 2: diagnosticians would use. It was more like directionally accurate a
Speaker 2: weather vein.
Speaker 1: Maybe get this checked out by a professional.
Speaker 2: Totally like you might want to go see somebody for this.
Speaker 3: And you got the yeah, maybe head straight to a
Speaker 3: professional as soon as the sun comes up. Maybe rush
Speaker 3: drive now, can't you call?
Speaker 2: It's right when we click to calculate my score, just
Speaker 2: the emergency bells started ringing and psychologists were repelling down
Speaker 2: the side of my house in swat Here.
Speaker 1: Didn't feel good to have a word for it.
Speaker 2: It felt amazing. And the reason why is it can
Speaker 2: be a very different experience for everybody, and nobody's reaction
Speaker 2: to getting an autism spectrum diagnosis is the wrong reaction.
Speaker 2: It's always going to be the right reaction for them.
Speaker 2: For me, it felt like this big moment of relief.
Speaker 2: It actually felt like I was witnessing myself at a
Speaker 2: point of rebirth, or witnessing my own birth. It was, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's who I am. All of these questions, which were
Speaker 2: things like, do you find it vitally important to remain
Speaker 2: uninterrupted or undisturbed when you're focusing on interests that you're
Speaker 2: absorbed in? Do you require lengthy periods of time to recharge?
Speaker 2: Do you do better in social situations when you can
Speaker 2: script your responses to potential questions well in advance and
Speaker 2: rehearse them. All these things that I did that I
Speaker 2: knew none of my immediate friend group or my peers
Speaker 2: were really doing. And so when you're going through life
Speaker 2: in a way that is markedly different from the folks
Speaker 2: around you and sort of your cohort growing up, you
Speaker 2: start to feel like a broken toy or what somebody
Speaker 2: once described and I don't know who described it this way,
Speaker 2: and I would give them credit if I could remember.
Speaker 2: They describe it as being a failed version of normal.
Speaker 2: You feel like a failed version of normal.
Speaker 1: Ooh yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean. And then somebody hands you this
Speaker 2: moment where they essentially give you the user manual to
Speaker 2: your brain and they say, you're not a failed version
Speaker 2: of normal, You're a very successful version of Dave. You
Speaker 2: are exactly what you're supposed to be, and this is,
Speaker 2: by the way, how your brain works, and it's not
Speaker 2: supposed to be the same as everybody else's. For me,
Speaker 2: the moment was electric. For Kristen, it was the same
Speaker 2: exact way. I just remember her eyes were dancing like
Speaker 2: champagne with a with a megawatt flashlight shining into the glasses.
Speaker 2: She was so amped up about like, dude, this describes you,
Speaker 2: Like isn't this amazing? So she as somebody who just adored,
Speaker 2: loved and was a big fangirl of the autistic brain,
Speaker 2: she was electrified. She was like, this is amazing. So
Speaker 2: we both took this as fantastic news. What I then
Speaker 2: ended up doing, you know, she kissed me on the
Speaker 2: forehead and she went upstairs and she said, this explains
Speaker 2: so much. You know, all this stuff in our marriage
Speaker 2: that has been challenging and making me want to kick
Speaker 2: you in the teeth multiple times a day, all the
Speaker 2: things that are causing such challenge. She's like, I know
Speaker 2: now that it's not your fault. You're not willfully being
Speaker 2: this pain in the butt. This is really important For
Speaker 2: some reason, that gave her license to see me in
Speaker 2: a different light, to forgive me. She kissed me on
Speaker 2: the forehead, she said, I love you. She went upstairs
Speaker 2: and she slept better than she had slept in years.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Now I just found out I had a
Speaker 2: form of autism. So I was like blown away. I
Speaker 2: couldn't sleep. I was like what, So I started googling
Speaker 2: everything like that crisis. Probably the worst thing anybody can
Speaker 2: do is start googling autism spectrum conditions because there's so
Speaker 2: much misinformation, gloom and doom. You really have to be
Speaker 2: judicious about what information sources you are going to when
Speaker 2: you're trying to learn about autism and related conditions.
Speaker 3: Like googling anything anything that in totally it's interesting what
Speaker 3: you say about the manual, because you I then decided
Speaker 3: to write a book called The Journal of Best Practices,
Speaker 3: a memoir of marriage, Asperger Syndrome and one man's quest
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: A better husband. What was the book about and what
Speaker 1: was in it?
Speaker 2: The book, interestingly enough you can take autism aspurgers right
Speaker 2: out of it. Because in the end the book ended
Speaker 2: up selling very well because in the end people recognized
Speaker 2: in it that Chrisin and I are just a couple.
Speaker 2: We're working our way through our stuff. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, it's couple stuff. It's stuff that
Speaker 2: everybody deals with, just we might be dealing with some
Speaker 2: things to a comically high degree. That book was really
Speaker 2: truly the story behind all of the maxims that I
Speaker 2: started to write down these little personal rules for myself
Speaker 2: about how to be a better husband, how to be
Speaker 2: a more successful version of normal, we'll say, a more
Speaker 2: traditional looking kind of guy. And anytime Chrisin and I
Speaker 2: would get into an argument a debate, anytime I realized
Speaker 2: I had screwed something up and I could take lesson
Speaker 2: away from that, I would then write down the lesson learned,
Speaker 2: like don't take just what you need from the dryer,
Speaker 2: take all the clothes out and fold them, don't just
Speaker 2: pick through and find the right socks right, don't sneak
Speaker 2: up on her and scare her. These are good lessons
Speaker 2: to yes, like don't change the radio station when she's
Speaker 2: singing along. Just stuff like that. But then that's like,
Speaker 2: how to not be part of my expression is how
Speaker 2: to not be an asshole?
Speaker 3: An asshole? Yeah, but you weren't being deliberately an asshole.
Speaker 3: You just literally had to learn these things. I want
Speaker 3: to know more. Tell me more of those rules that
Speaker 3: would seem so obvious but clearly helped many many men
Speaker 3: when you wrote them down.
Speaker 2: It did end up being nice breadcrumbs for other men
Speaker 2: to follow, I will admit and other partners. But some
Speaker 2: of the other ones were a little more we'll say,
Speaker 2: less playful. So the more playful ones were like don't
Speaker 2: change the radio station when she's singing along. But there
Speaker 2: are other really important ones like apologies don't count when
Speaker 2: you shout them, for instance, or listen within hathic mind
Speaker 2: like so I had to actually practice empathy. I remember
Speaker 2: one of them, probably the one that stands out so
Speaker 2: clearly in my mind. The most for whatever reason, is initiative,
Speaker 2: and the best practice was take initiative, but don't ask
Speaker 2: Kristin for a high five after you've taken initiative, right,
Speaker 2: So I had to tape that one to my mirror.
Speaker 2: So in our marriage, when the kids were real little,
Speaker 2: I thought my role as husband. The paradigm was I work,
Speaker 2: make the money, and then I come home from work.
Speaker 2: The rest of the day should be about me recovering
Speaker 2: from a workday and not having to do too much. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm not alone in that. Everybody wants that. Of course,
Speaker 2: it's the dream, and it's the selfish dream.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, Kristin I perceived her role as being anything related
Speaker 2: to the kids or general household upkeep. Kristin is like
Speaker 2: the first lines of defense on that, and if she
Speaker 2: needs help with any of it, she can pull me
Speaker 2: in and tell me specifically what she needs me to
Speaker 2: do if I have time to do that. Right. Like,
Speaker 2: That's how selfish and horrible I was at the time.
Speaker 2: I'm not like that anymore. I just want to say,
Speaker 2: but that was such a huge blind spot on my
Speaker 2: part that when I told Kristin, hey, listen, thank you
Speaker 2: for bringing to my attention that I'm on the spectrum.
Speaker 2: This is really helpful. I noticed that our marriage sucks.
Speaker 2: I can't help but think that to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: I kind of suck. So I want to learn how
Speaker 2: to not suck anymore. I want to do the things
Speaker 2: that would make me a better husband, a better partner.
Speaker 2: First of all, to her credit, she never said, oh good,
Speaker 2: I can capitalize in this and I can sort of
Speaker 2: custom make my own custom version of a man that
Speaker 2: I want to have.
Speaker 1: Build her own husband.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, build her. She looked at it and said, Dave,
Speaker 2: I appreciate what you're getting at here, but you need
Speaker 2: to understand you're not broken. Our marriage is broken. You
Speaker 2: don't need to be fixed or repaired or change our marriage.
Speaker 2: Our relationship fundamentally has broken down and needs to be repaired.
Speaker 2: We can do that together. We're not going to be
Speaker 2: fixing you or making you something you're not, but we
Speaker 2: have information now that we can build a context around
Speaker 2: the reality of who you are. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, but with this initiative thing, one of the very
Speaker 2: first things early on that she said was it is
Speaker 2: exhausting trying to stay a few steps ahead of you
Speaker 2: so that you don't have some emotional downward spiral and
Speaker 2: lose your mind because we didn't have the right kind
Speaker 2: of sandwiches for you know, the guests or whatever. That's exhausting,
Speaker 2: But it's also there is so much going on, just
Speaker 2: keeping the house going, keeping the kids fed, clean clothes whatever. That.
Speaker 2: She's like, I feel like you're just kind of standing
Speaker 2: on the sidelines watching me do it. And I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's what I feel like my role should be
Speaker 2: right now. I don't want to get in your way.
Speaker 2: And she immediately called bs on me. She's like, you
Speaker 2: don't care about getting in my way. You just don't
Speaker 2: want to get your hands dirty doing all this other shit.
Speaker 2: She was absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Which sounds like this stuff just of marriages, right, Like,
Speaker 3: that's an argument that my HU and I have in
Speaker 3: different ways all the time, and I think is just
Speaker 3: typical of most couples because it seems on paper you
Speaker 3: were working so hard, so diligently, you were making it
Speaker 3: such a project, your life's work. Almost literally, you wrote
Speaker 3: a best selling book on how to be a better husband.
Speaker 3: So tell me about the day you were in the
Speaker 3: bathroom and she came to you and said, I want
Speaker 3: to get unmarried.
Speaker 2: My gosh, yeah.
Speaker 3: Now if you like me any thinking, Wait, hasn't David
Speaker 3: been kind of killing it as a husband. Not a
Speaker 3: lot of men are willing to do so much work
Speaker 3: on themselves and with their partner. I mean, he literally
Speaker 3: wrote a book about how to be a better husband.
Speaker 3: So why did his wife want to unmarry him? It
Speaker 3: seems unreasonable and what does getting unmarried even mean? And
Speaker 3: obviously you know I'm going to ask him about sex
Speaker 3: because this is no filter, after all, and I have none.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. Unmarried the way.
Speaker 3: David describes it, it is incredibly appealing.
Speaker 1: There's a link in our show notes. Don't miss it.
Speaker 1: See you in part two.