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