by David Finch
Chapter 4
Just listen.
Kristen and I were sitting out on our patio, enjoying a midsummer evening with a glass of wine and a cozy little fire. The leaves of our young maple trees whispered faintly overhead and broke up the bright moonlight, which glistened off our patio furniture and cast shadows from the tall wooden swing set in the corner of our lawn. While warming her toes near the fire, Kristen told me that she’d heard about a research study that was meant to determine how early in life humans can exhibit empathy.
“Apparently the researchers gathered all these infants together to see how they’d react when they heard the sound of a baby crying, and they found that if one infant cried, then most of the other infants would cry in response,” she said.
I was mesmerized by the glowing embers beneath the flames in our fire pit, which made the surrounding brick come alive in a delicate, jittery light. “And?”
“Well, they think it’s proof that humans can empathize when they’re just a few weeks old. Isn’t that amazing?”
I said that it was, and then I made the story about me. “I wonder if I would have cried.”
We unanimously agreed that if another baby had cried, then I most certainly would have cried, too, but only because the little son of a bitch would have interrupted my sleep. What can I say? I’m just not as empathic as, well, most of the world’s population. Not that it’s my fault, of course.
First of all—let’s face it—I’m a guy. That’s strike one. To make matters worse, I’m a guy with Asperger syndrome. If empathy were currency, men with Asperger syndrome would starve. The fact that I’m also a husband basically means that if you ever want to get your feelings noticed, you pretty much have to grab me by the cheeks and say very slowly: “I. Need. You. To. Listen. To. Me.” Even then, I might misinterpret your point: Woo hoo! She’s hitting me up for sex!
With our communication skills on the mend, Kristen and I had begun talking more frequently about empathy, and more specifically my apparent deficiency in it. The topic was bound to come up; reduced empathic ability was a frustrating reality of my disorder, and by extension, our marriage. I understood that one of the major bullet points in any list of symptoms associated with autism spectrum conditions was a problematic deficiency in empathy in relation to neurotypicals. But in the first few months after my diagnosis, I wasn’t certain that I had that particular symptom. I feel stuff, I thought.
Kristen thought differently. She was painfully aware of my deficit, having been something of a victim of my apparent insensitivity (read: cluelessness) for years. With my diagnosis, she gained a new perspective that allowed her to see that I may have been clinically self-centered, outrageously self-centered, but not willfully self-centered. She tried sharing this perspective with me, explaining that I hadn’t been programmed for empathic ability and never would be. “And that’s fine,” she’d add. Is it? I’d wonder. Sounds like empathy is a pretty big deal, actually.
She began taking time to explain why certain social situations were challenging for me. Things like engaging with people in socially appropriate ways: “I think your brother really wanted to see you the other night, Dave. It’s not your fault, but you missed the cues.” This after my brother had offered—out of the blue—to buy me dinner one evening, and although we almost never go out together, I’d declined, saying, “I do love free food. But it’s Butter Noodles Saturday, so I’m going to pass.” My response had seemed perfectly acceptable to me, but to Kristen and my brother it was clear that I hadn’t interpreted his emotional intent: to spend time together.
As empathy became the focus of Kristen’s and my discussions, I became increasingly confused about whether or not I could empathize, and if so, how well. I couldn’t begin to imagine how a person might quantify a deficit in empathy. A deficit in teeth or eyebrows would be pretty easy to assess, but what constitutes a lack of empathy?
“What if I give a shit, but just barely?” I once asked Kristen. “Would that count? What if I can determine what someone else is feeling, but I can’t actually feel it myself? Or what if I could sense your sadness but never offered you any comfort? In that case, would empathy even matter? How much is ‘I’m sorry’ going to buy you, really? If I’m willing to be compassionate on demand, could that count for something?”
Kristen waited until I finished, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Empathy is like talent, Dave. We’re born with some amount of it, so we all function at different levels. Also, it’s not a matter of ‘I’m better’ or ‘you’re worse.’ We’re just different.”
Still, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. I understood that empathy was a vital resource for successful social interactions, that it prevented one person from offending another and even drew people together, allowing them to bond in ways that are exclusive to the human experience. I felt like I was missing out on part of that experience. And looking back, I was. Engaging the social world without empathy is like going to the mall without any money or pants on; it can be done, but you’re bound to have problems.
I didn’t want to think of myself as being devoid of feeling, so I initially rejected the idea that I lacked empathy. I thought of my reactions to situations captured in films, television, and literature. I could recognize when a character offended someone important, for instance, and I would become anxious the moment he or she realized it. I understood what it meant whenever the medical director softened his eyes in a dramatic tough-love speech. I had shed tears during Folgers coffee commercials. (I didn’t bother to consider the fact that had the actor in the Folgers commercial pulled me aside after the shoot and told me he had only one day left to live, I would have immediately asked him if he knew how many days I had left.)
I thought of my favorite childhood teddy bear. How I had discovered him one afternoon lying facedown on my bedroom floor and had clutched him to my chest and cried apologetically because I thought he seemed lonely. But then I thought of the countless times I’d seen my classmates burst into tears in the classroom or on the playground, and I realized that in those moments I always reacted the same way I did when I watched them take a bite out of a sandwich. So, does the teddy bear count? I wondered.
I also tried to convince myself that my compassion for (and understanding of) cattle counted as empathy. Growing up, we raised red Angus cattle and showed them every summer at the Illinois state and county fairs, and at my dad’s comical, almost maniacal insistence, I spent a lot of time around the herd. “We’re not going to half-ass this,” he’d say whenever I complained. “Now get out there and brush your steer. And when you’re done with that, you can wash him and brush him again.” His point was that if you’re going to do something, then you need to do it right. He also knew that an animal’s trust is garnered over time, so I learned how to interact with our cattle, hour by hour, as the summers unfolded. Amid dusty beams of sunlight streaming in through the cracks and knotholes in the siding of the barn, I’d watch them watching me while they ate—staring with awe into the masticating faces of unimpressed cattle was an activity I found easy to focus on. Then the summer would end, and I’d be forced to sell my steer at the annual livestock auction.
I’ve attended funerals for loved ones where the greatest discomfort I experienced came from the suit I had to wear. But each summer, after loading my steer onto the slaughter truck, I’d suffer crying jags that would pop up randomly for days. I’d lie awake nights, thinking about him—his huge, calm, trusting eyes; his ears falling forward, relaxed; the sound of his breathing; how he just ate and looked around, totally comfortable in my presence. There was never a question in my mind as to how my steer felt in those moments I spent with him: We have a weird relationship here, but it works. Can you do something about these flies?
I was no expert, but to me these examples constituted some empathic ability, which made things rather confusing for me. Worse, nobody could agree on what empathy amounted to. Kristen had her definition, which differed from the one in the dictionary, which con
tradicted my friends’ theories. And of course, none of those definitions could please the millions of contrarian bloggers I found when I searched for the term online—faceless people with names like CaptainHamwhistle who stay up nights rethinking their avatars and who themselves couldn’t define the concept yet insisted that any mainstream definition was not to be trusted.
With no clear definition of empathy, and no way of quantifying how much of it I had or didn’t have, I resorted to actual research to get to the bottom of things. I sequestered myself in Kristen’s office one evening while she was watching a movie—some tearjerker I had no business getting myself involved in. Beaches, I think it was. My first Internet search included the keywords empathy, Asperger, and syndrome, and the results were rather useless—confusing wiki threads, links to videos of purportedly clairvoyant house cats, that sort of thing. Then I added the word measuring to my search parameters, and within minutes I had all the answers I needed.
There were many results to choose from, but I started with an article titled “The Empathy Quotient: An Investigation of Adults with Asperger Syndrome,” which had been written by Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. (Leave it to renowned experts and leading researchers to really know what they’re talking about. No offense, CaptainHamwhistle.)
In the article, Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright spelled out in no uncertain terms—and I’m paraphrasing here—that my wife had been right all along. I do in fact have a measurable deficiency in empathic ability. My Empathy Quotient? Using Baron-Cohen’s method, I earned a meager fifteen points out of a possible eighty. That’s 19 percent. Talk about just barely giving a shit. The study’s control group—neurotypicals—averaged in the forties. (Interestingly, a second study revealed that among the general population, women scored significantly higher than men. A point that will come as no surprise to women.)
According to Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, empathy is “the drive or ability to attribute mental states to another person/animal, and entails an appropriate affective response in the observer to the other person’s mental state.” Hmm. I called up the stairs to Kristen, asking her what affective meant.
“Affective what?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Just affective.”
“Relating to an emotional state,” she called.
Oh. Okay, this makes sense. I wrote the definition down in my notebook. So this is what I’m lacking!
Baron-Cohen’s first article inspired me to read more. In all the subsequent searches I made sure to include his name, and by the end of the evening I had a stack of clinical papers on the subject. I had empirical data rather than conjecture, which meant that I finally had answers.
What I gleaned from all this research is that empathy is the result of numerous cognitive and affective processes, all firing away behind the scenes somewhere in our brains. Cognitive processes allow us to understand the mental state of another person—his or her emotions, desires, beliefs, intentions, et cetera—which in turn helps us to understand and even predict the person’s actions or behaviors. They allow us to step outside of our own experience in order to take on and understand other people’s perspectives—something that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do. The affective component of empathy is more related to our emotional responses to the mental states that we observe in other people. This component allows us to feel some appropriate and non-egocentric emotional response to another person’s emotions—something else that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do.
Empathy involves both processes, and while they operate independently of one another, there is some overlap. A graphical representation of empathy might involve a Venn diagram—two circles, one for the affective component and one for the cognitive, slightly overlapping, with me standing well outside of both circles talking incessantly about the weather during a funeral.
In people with Asperger syndrome and other autism spectrum conditions, these mechanisms of understanding are much less reliable and productive than in neurotypicals. Those of us living within the parameters of an autism spectrum condition simply can’t engage the empathic processes that allow for social reasoning and emotional awareness. Furthermore, we have difficulty separating ourselves from our own perspectives (the word autism comes from the Greek word autos, meaning “self”), so we can’t easily understand or even access the perspectives and feelings of others.
This explains why I sat in bird poo in junior high school, to the profound amusement of popular kids. Had I access to the appropriate cognitive resources, I might have been able to recognize the motivations of the douchebags who had insisted that I sit with them, “in that spot, right there.” I thought they actually wanted me to join them, even though they couldn’t remember my name or keep themselves from laughing.
Reduced empathic ability also partially accounts for my gross misinterpretation of social exchanges. I wrongly estimate the intentions that underlie the interaction, and in so doing, I make a fool of myself. Kristen and I might meet a couple at a party, and if I feel any sort of connection with them, I’ll pull Kristen aside and start hounding her: “We need to become close friends with these people as soon as possible. Invite them over this weekend. They like us, it’s obvious. He mentioned they have a boat—that was an invitation for us to join them on it, right?”
“They were just talking to us the way people do at parties,” Kristen will say, looking at me skeptically. “I think they might be drunk.”
On the way home, we might argue about it. I will insist that Kristen just blew the friendship opportunity of a lifetime, and she will maintain her position that it’s creepy to tell strangers that you’d like to become close friends with them, adding, “And you should never say ‘as soon as possible.’”
Whenever I find myself sitting in bird poo or demanding close relationships from complete strangers, I can chalk it up to God-given faulty cognitive processes. To me, this is great news. I don’t have to be embarrassed anymore about my social cluelessness. I can’t be expected to predict the intentions of others and assume their perspectives any more than I can be expected to rebuild a carburetor or sit down at a piano to knock out a Rachmaninoff concerto; I wasn’t born with that particular talent.
The not-so-great news is that my affective (emotional) responses are also reduced, a phenomenon that severely undermines my abilities as a husband. Embarrassing myself at a cocktail party is one thing. Not being able to recognize when Kristen needs my support is something else entirely.
After Emily was born, Kristen struggled with postpartum depression. We didn’t recognize it at first. Something wasn’t right, she wasn’t herself, but we assumed that her moods and exhaustion were due only to the surprising demands of being a first-time mom.
Kristen had dreamed of having children since she was herself a child and had always thought that she would love motherhood as much as she would love her babies. “I know that being a mom will be demanding,” she told me once. “But I don’t think it will change me much. I’ll still have my life, and our baby will be part of it.” She envisioned long walks through the neighborhood with Emily. She envisioned herself mastering the endlessly repeating three-hour cycle of playing, feeding, sleeping, and diaper changing. Most of all, she envisioned a full parenting partnership, in which I’d help whenever I was home—morning, nighttime, and weekends. Of course, I didn’t know any of this until she told me, which she did after Emily was born.
At first, the newness of parenthood made it seem as though everything was going according to our expectations. We’ll be up all day and all night for a few weeks, but then we’ll hit our stride and our lives will go back to normal, plus one baby. Kristen took a few months off from work to focus all of her attention on Emily, knowing that it would be hard to juggle the contradicting demands of an infant and a career. She was determined to own motherhood. “We’re still in that tough transition,” Kristen would tell me, trying to console Emily at fo
ur A.M. “Pretty soon, we’ll find our routine. I hope.”
But things didn’t go as we had planned. There were complications with breast-feeding. Emily wasn’t gaining weight; she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t play. She was born in December, when it was far too cold to go for walks outdoors. While I was at work, Kristen would sit on the floor with Emily in the dark—all the lights off, all the shades closed—and cry. She’d think about her friends, all of whom had made motherhood look so easy with their own babies. “Mary had no problem breast-feeding,” she’d tell me. “Jenny said that these first few months had been her favorite. Why can’t I get the hang of this?” I didn’t have any answers, but still I offered solutions, none of which she wanted to hear: “Talk to a lactation consultant about the feeding issues.” “Establish a routine and stick to it.” Eventually, she stopped talking altogether.
While Kristen struggled, I watched from the sidelines, unaware that she needed help. I excused myself from the nighttime and morning responsibilities, as the interruptions to my daily schedule became too much for me to handle. We didn’t know this was because of a developmental disorder; I just looked incredibly selfish. I contributed, but not fully. I’d return from work, and Kristen would go upstairs to sleep for a few hours while I’d carry Emily from room to room, gently bouncing her as I walked, trying to keep her from crying. But eventually eleven o’clock would roll around and I’d go to bed, and Kristen would be awake the rest of the night with her. The next morning, I would wake up and leave for work, while Kristen stared down the barrel of another day alone.
To my surprise, I grew increasingly disappointed in her: She wanted to have children. Why is she miserable all the time? What’s her problem? I also resented what I had come to recognize as our failing marriage. I’d expected our marriage to be happy, fulfilling, overflowing with constant affection. My wife was supposed to be able to handle things like motherhood with aplomb. Kristen loved me, and she loved Emily, but that wasn’t enough for me. In my version of a happy marriage, my wife would also love the difficulties of being my wife and being a mom. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to earn the happiness, the fulfillment, the affection. Nor had it occurred to me that she might have her own perspective on marriage and motherhood.
