The Journal of Best Practices

by David Finch

  Spring finally arrived, and Kristen started taking Emily out for walks. The sunshine illuminated something important for her—it wasn’t normal to sit in the dark and cry all day. She brought this up one afternoon while we were out for a walk together with Emily. “That’s all I do,” she said. “I sing to her, I play with her, and I cry. I never feel like getting dressed, I never feel like doing anything. Ever.” We walked a few blocks in silence before I said that it seemed she hadn’t been herself in months. Sobbing, she admitted that she felt the same way. We had been living with her symptoms but had misidentified their source. It was not unlike the discovery that I was an undiagnosed Aspie.

  Kristen eventually sought treatment and started taking medication for her depression, and she bounced back almost immediately. It was a relief to see her come back so quickly. It was a relief to see her come back, period. She felt better, but her medication couldn’t alleviate her resentment toward me for not displaying even a shred of empathy during that period of loneliness. I showed compassion at times, and I showed concern. But neither of those are empathy.

  “You got your life back the moment you returned to work,” she often told me. “This is so hard for me, and you just don’t get that.”

  I would respond the only way I knew how—egocentrically and analytically: “My job pays for everything and gives us health insurance. I have to work, Kristen. Never mind that I hate my job, and that it makes me miserable, and then I come home to total anguish. My life’s hard, too.”

  Responses like that did a lot of damage, as did my subsequent attempts at guidance: “So, if this is all too much for you, then let’s figure something out. Let’s schedule our days so we can be sure you’re getting a break when you need one.”

  She tried (God, how she tried) to explain that she wasn’t looking for solutions. She wasn’t looking for sob stories about my job. All she was looking for was this: “Mmm-hmm. I totally hear you.” That’s all.

  “Emily wouldn’t sleep today? Mmm-hmm. I totally hear you. That must have been rough.”

  “You’re mad because I got to go golfing with customers today and we had sushi for lunch? Mmm-hmm. I totally see your point. It’s not fair that I get to do those things and you don’t.”

  “You need a few minutes to yourself when I get home? Mmm-hmm. I get it. You must be exhausted.”

  It should have been that simple. She didn’t need me to fix anything for her (but when she did, she knew how to ask). She didn’t need me to coddle her. She just needed me to listen and appreciate her situation. But you couldn’t tell me that back then. Not without a few hours of analytical follow-up discussion.

  Everything changed when we discovered that I have Asperger syndrome. My diagnosis gave Kristen a new perspective on things. Finding it too painful to concede that her husband wasn’t willing to put himself in her shoes, she instead put her faith in the bullet point: because of his syndrome, my husband isn’t able to put himself in my shoes. This made things much more bearable for her. Dave doesn’t understand my feelings . . . because his brain can’t process them. Dave didn’t put my needs above his own . . . because he didn’t see I was depressed. Dave makes hurtful comments about my abilities as a mom . . . because he doesn’t understand how difficult motherhood is.

  Prior to my diagnosis, Kristen often told me in frustration, “You just don’t GET IT, Dave.” Now that we know I have Asperger’s, Kristen still finds herself saying those exact words all the time. The difference is that she now says them calmly, as a matter of fact. “You just don’t get it, Dave. Your brain doesn’t work that way.”

  A diagnosis is not a cure, of course. It’s a starting point. My hope was that I could hone some of the cognitive processes associated with empathy, such as perspective switching and behavior prediction, as a skill of sorts, and find other ways to compensate for the lack of affective prowess. Things like keeping a Journal of Best Practices.

  Kristen believed that I could cultivate certain social skills that would pass for empathy in a pinch, and I was excited when she agreed to work with me to develop them. She suggested that we start with listening skills. “You’re doing awesome with the talking,” she told me one morning as we were cleaning up the kids’ breakfasts, which were all over the kitchen floor. “But sometimes, all I need is for you to listen. Let me vent so I can feel better.” I tore a page out of the New Yorker that was sitting on our countertop, grabbed a pen, and scribbled down Empathy—sometimes she just needs you to listen. I said that seemed easy enough and asked what else we could work on, and she smiled. “Let’s just get you listening. I think that’s enough for now.”

  With Kristen’s help, I dabbled for a few months in the art of listening. She had been right—it wasn’t easy. My natural tendencies were hard to overcome. Kristen would start talking about frustrations at her job, and I’d interrupt her with unsolicited practical advice. She would stare blankly into her day planner and mention, as if to herself, “I just don’t know when to schedule this new kid on my caseload.” I’d get involved, saying something like, “How many kids do you see on Wednesdays? Where are they located? I can help you make a spreadsheet that includes travel times and then we can pinpoint the optimal time slot for him.” Other times, she made not-so-subtle hints asking for help, which I blew off. “Ugh!” she’d growl, tripping over a tower of wooden blocks. “This toy room is a mess!” I’d stand next to her, nodding: “Mmm-hmm. I know what you mean.” Then I’d go watch TV, leaving her to deal with the cleanup.

  The misinterpretations of Kristen’s needs were nonstop, as were my attempts at drawing out relevant discussions. Her shoes were kind of hurting her toes; she wished she knew how batteries worked; she was feeling a little groggy lately. These situations didn’t require immediate action or extended dialogue. Just a nod. But how was I to know? Never mind the fact that I had just mastered talking again; around Kristen, I was like a golden retriever who had suddenly learned how to speak English. I had so much to say about every topic. “Tell me more about your paper cut! I’ll heat up some coffee!”

  We inevitably argued as frustration over the process and over my shortcomings manifested itself. “There’s nothing to sort out, Dave,” she’d say, rolling her eyes. “I was just mentioning that my normal route to work was slow today.” And I’d wonder, If you didn’t want to hammer out a solution, then why did you bring it up?

  Frustration was to be expected. Like a wobbly, newborn fawn, I was having trouble getting on my feet. It might have been cute the first few times I messed up, but we’d been at it for a couple of months and I was starting to get upset by my lack of progress. Screw this empathy. But Kristen kept encouraging me. “You have to remember that your brain doesn’t process this naturally. This may never come easily for you, but you’re doing great.”

  That autumn, Kristen’s dad, Jim, became seriously ill and was hospitalized for two weeks. Because her parents are divorced, and because she is their only child, the responsibility of Jim’s care fell entirely on Kristen. I’ve heard of other people our age flying across the country to take care of their parents after they had fallen ill. Some had considered the geographical divide a reasonable excuse to leave after a few days, while others had made longer-term arrangements. We didn’t have to worry about that. Jim happened to live only a few miles away from us.

  The first few days Jim was in the hospital were chaotic, and I did my best to be supportive while I silently obsessed over the notion of how this hospitalization might interrupt my week. (Silently, meaning it was something of a personal accomplishment not to have mentioned it.) Kristen needed to be at the hospital all day, so I stayed home with the kids. It was just as well that I did—I’m pretty useless in hospitals because I am absolutely terrified of them. The few times I visited Jim I was pale and sweaty and nurses were constantly asking if I needed to lie down. Upon entering his room, I was always told to have a seat. But where? The sickest people within a hundred miles of my house are right here in this building, and probably half of
them have sat in that chair. I touched nothing, said nothing—just stared at my feet, pressing my fingertips to my face to make sure I was still conscious. Nurses greeted me with a pat on the back—“And this greenish-looking fellow must be Kristen’s husband! Heard a lot about you!” Oh, lord. Please don’t touch me.

  Kristen, in her usual way, handled things much better than I did. She’d kick back and lounge in a soft hospital chair, putting her feet up on her dad’s bed. She’d watch television, read magazines, or talk to other patients while her dad slept. Sometimes, under protest from me, she would wake Jim up to let him know I was there. He’d ask how I was doing, he’d joke about the hospital food, and I would offer monosyllabic responses, aware that my breathing was shallow and frantic—aware that I could die at any second. How could he do this to me? Kristen would grab me by the hand and try her best to keep the conversation going, knowing how much her dad loved to talk to me.

  We made it through the first week without much difficulty, but things started to unravel the following week. The specialist hadn’t shown up for a few days, the neurologist wasn’t being responsive to Kristen’s concerns, and the insurance people were making things impossibly—almost artfully—difficult. Kristen’s spirit was waning and instead of listening I tried rolling up my sleeves and fixing everything for her.

  “Venting solves nothing,” I told her one evening. “We need to track down this specialist and confront him. We need to find an advocate who will help us with the insurance stuff. And if the neurologist is blowing you off, then I’ll go stand in front of him until he agrees to listen to you.”

  “Dave, forget it. I can handle this. I just wanted to talk.”

  “So, let’s talk. Let’s put a game plan together.”

  She looked at me for a second or two, then said, “Forget it. I’m tired,” and went to bed.

  I spent the rest of the evening sitting at the kitchen table with my notebook, writing about what had happened to see if I could determine where I’d gone wrong. What may have been plainly obvious to someone else had left me confounded—I simply couldn’t interpret her reaction. I replayed the exchange countless times in my head and got nowhere. Finally, I wrote down, Just be there for her. I was still stumped as to how, so I packed up and called it a night.

  The next day, I let the kids enjoy an all-day cartoons marathon. I was lying with them on the couch, still in my pajamas, staring at the ceiling and devising a strategy for Jim’s care, when Kristen called. Her voice sounded small and shaky. Defeated.

  “Can you come and get me?” she asked.

  “Sure. What about the kids?”

  “My mom’s on her way over to watch them. I just . . .” She paused and sighed as if the air were too heavy to hold. “When she gets there, just come over. Please.”

  When I arrived at the hospital, Kristen was outside, waiting. Her face looked strained, as though she were bracing herself against the cold wind. I kept telling myself to simply be there for her, whatever that meant. I wanted to do this right.

  Sliding into the front seat of my car, Kristen sniffled, and I could see that she was fighting back tears. I put my hand on her leg and asked if she was okay, and she nodded. “Just drive somewhere,” she said. I shifted my car into drive and began circling the parking lot, slowly and awkwardly. Has she snapped? Does she want food? Does she want to hear some music? On our third time around, she asked me what I was doing, and I admitted that I didn’t know and was afraid to ask. “Just go somewhere,” she said. “But not here.”

  I was pulling onto the highway when Kristen finally made it clear how I needed to help her. “Okay,” she said, trying to sound patient, as if it were perfectly normal to have to tell her husband how to engage with her. “I need to talk, and I just need you to listen to me. You may not interrupt me, you may not offer to fix anything for me, you may not give me any advice, and you may not act like you’re as mad as I am. Okay? I just need you to listen.”

  “Okay.” Just drive and listen. It was a test, and with things having been spelled out so clearly, I finally felt ready for it.

  For ten minutes, Kristen unloaded. As she slashed her way through her anger and frustration, I went into hyper-stifling mode, indicating that I was listening by nodding my head and offering single-word responses instead of what was on my mind:

  “. . . He can hardly walk to the bathroom . . .”

  “Mmm-hmm.” You really should eat something—your body needs nutrition.

  “. . . And then this new doctor who I’ve never seen before comes in and starts talking about discharging Dad . . .”

  “Okay.” I hope you can get home early tonight. Emily’s been sad at bedtime without you.

  “. . . And he is obviously freezing in there this morning, and nobody brought him a blanket . . .”

  “Man.” What?! Those bastards. Give me two minutes in front of that charge nurse and I swear to God, your dad will be swimming in blankets.

  We were making a U-turn by a cleared soybean field outside of town when I realized that for the past ten minutes, I hadn’t been making things harder for Kristen. Instead, I had been listening and it had felt good. It was a victory for me, and for Kristen, who had finally found the way to get through to me: directness. It wasn’t exactly empathy, and it wasn’t exactly romantic, but it worked. I wanted to ask her for a high five, but it seemed an odd thing to ask of someone whose father was hooked up to machines, so instead I did my best to expand our moment of success. “Right.” “Yep.” “I understand.”

  Later that evening, I sat down in the family room with my notebook and logged our first real victory in what I hoped would become a successful path to empathy, or something like it. Sometimes, she just needs you to listen. I was scribbling some thoughts about the difficulty in knowing when and how to listen, and how I needed Kristen to tell me what she needed from me, when she came downstairs in her pajamas and joined me. “Hi, hang on,” I said.

  She sat patiently on the couch until I finished, and when I closed my notebook, she said the most amazing thing I’d heard in months: “I know today wasn’t easy for you, but that drive was exactly what I needed. It made all the difference in the world to me. Thank you so much.”

  Yes.

  I wanted to talk about our win. I wanted her to read my journal entry. But I didn’t want to blow the progress I’d just made, so I kept my response short: “I’m glad it helped. I want to be there for you.” Today I felt a little more like the husband I want to be for you. I mean, who knows? Maybe over time, this will even become my typical way of behaving! Wouldn’t that be great? I can totally see myself being Mr. Empathy! “I love you,” I added.

  “I love you, too.”

  She kissed me good night and had made it halfway up the stairs before I finally burst.

  “Hey, today was really exciting for me.” She stopped, and I got up from the couch to continue: “I mean, I know this week isn’t about me, and I should probably not talk right now, but I’ve been going nuts trying to develop this empathy. I know I wasn’t quite empathic this afternoon, but it did feel good to give you what you needed, even if you had to ask for it.”

  “It felt good for me, too.” She yawned.

  “Just think. If I can talk and listen, and somehow do it all without being selfish, then I’ll pretty much be the total package. Right?”

  She continued up the steps, laughing. “That’s right. A selfless man who knows when to listen. I don’t know what more a woman could ask for.”

  I honestly don’t know, either. Seriously. What else could there be?

  Chapter 5

  Laundry: Better to fold and put away than

  to take only what you need from the dryer.

  LAUNDRY. Late one night I wrote the word in large, sloppy capitals in my journal, then underlined it twice. Beside it, I wrote: Better to fold and put away than to take only what you need from the dryer.

  This was clearly going to be my next Best Practice. It had been a long time coming, and I was
none too thrilled. Rekindling the spirit of our friendship, talking about things that bothered me, listening to the things that bothered Kristen—these Best Practices were romantic and intimate, and committing myself to them every morning had made me feel redeemed and somewhat heroic. But folding laundry? Come on.

  The evening started off casually enough. Kristen and I had gotten the kids to bed, and we were standing in the kitchen, eating M&M’s. The clock on the oven read 8:37. We had the whole night ahead of us.

  “What do you want to do?” Kristen asked, leaning into me for a hug.

  I slid my hands down the back of her pants and took a minute to mull it over. Then another minute. And another, before she caught on and got annoyed.

  We, of course, ended up on the couch, watching a movie. Kristen had done some laundry earlier in the day, and after taking our seats, we found ourselves fenced in by several stacks of loosely folded clothes. A tower of underpants nearly collapsed into my popcorn bowl, so I moved the clothes to the opposite end of the couch; Kristen muttered something and relocated them to the coffee table. I wondered—silently—why she didn’t take the clothes upstairs and put them away. After all, she had separated them, washed and dried them, and folded them. Why not just put in that little extra effort to finish the job? I chewed it over as I pulled the lever to raise my footrest and recline my section of the sofa. I mean, really, what is it with her?