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From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love.
Welcome to a new season.
And Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers out there.
If you listen to the show, you're clearly into stories about relationships.
So you may have heard of a guy named Dave Finch.
There was a time when a lot of people wanted to hear his ideas about making relationships work,
because he seemed to have solved a big problem in his own marriage.
As he tells it, the problem stemmed from his overpowering need for order and predictability.
And it came out in all kinds of everyday situations,
with his wife, Kristen, and their two kids.
Take this, for example. I had it in my head that nap time was 10 o'clock and two o'clock.
And if the two o'clock nap didn't happen because somebody dropped over for a visit or because they were,
you know, fussy and not going down for a nap,
I would start to almost spiral in a way.
It was this sense of panic.
And I would lash out and try to seize control.
And she would say, why are you freaking out Dave?
I already have two babies who won't go down for a nap.
And now I have a husband who's freaking out because babies won't, they're babies.
They don't always take a nap.
And I remember saying to her, you told me nap time is 10 and two.
So if it's not 10 and two, you have to tell me that.
And she was thinking, why would I have to tell you that?
Be an adult. Don't be a third person in this house. I have to take care of.
Tensions kept building between the two of them.
But then they had a breakthrough. Dave went to a psychiatrist.
Five minutes into the conversation is like, you can stop. You have Asperger's.
This was in 2008. So they were still using the word Asperger's. But it was so revelatory for me because
for three years, the most important person in my life was saying things like,
you just don't get it, Dave. And in that moment, she saw me, not as a husband,
who is a walking checklist of deficits. But as a human being who is wired a certain way,
who doesn't mean to be making things difficult all the time, it's not all his fault.
These days, the term Asperger's isn't used much. But it refers to an autism spectrum disorder.
After that diagnosis, Dave began to understand all the ways his brain worked differently.
The autistic mind craves predictability. And when that prediction doesn't match reality,
it's considered a personal violation. And that's why the autistic brain starts to spiral and
feel very anxious and dysregulated. I needed to understand what was expected of me,
how I needed to show up in those situations. I really needed a sense of control, a sense of
structure, a sense of predictability. Dave couldn't get predictability. But maybe he could figure out
how to be a better partner. So he came up with an idea. Every time Christian got frustrated with
him about something he did or didn't do, he wrote it down. So maybe he could get it right the next time.
One rule he had was be present in moments with the kids, which meant playing with them instead
of getting annoyed when they didn't follow exactly the rules of a game. Another rule was just listen.
When Christian had a problem, she didn't need a literal spreadsheet of solutions. All she wanted
was for him to show a little empathy. Dave's list of rules got longer and longer.
Don't change the radio station when she's singing along. Don't sneak up on her and surprise her
when she's pouring coffee. She hates that. Apologies do not count when you shout them. Don't just
take what you need from the dryer. Fold all the clothes and put them away. He wrote all these
rules down on post-it notes and little scraps of paper and kept them in a drawer in his bedside table.
Dave talked about all this in a modern love essay, which led to a best-selling book called
The Journal of Best Practices, a memoir of marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to be a
better husband. And he became a public speaker. Thank you. I am Dave and it's really exciting for me
to be able to come and talk to you this morning. Sharing what he learned with other struggling couples.
The big game changer for people is adaptability, a willingness and an ability to change, to adapt,
to unlearn old behaviors, and it's hard, but it is possible. Thank you.
Seems like a happy ending, right? But listen to this one interview Dave did at the time.
I, Reglass, the host of this American life asked Dave how Kristen felt about one of his best practices.
It was the rule about acting empathetic. But wait, is that satisfying for her? I mean, I mean,
if you say to her like, God, that must be terrible for you and you're not really empathizing and she
knows you're just saying it by wrote because you've been trained to do it. Is that actually satisfying to her?
That's a really great point. I can now surmise, you know, using intellect that, yes, that must have
been very trying for her. Still, Dave stuck to his best practices for a few more years, until one day.
I just got out of the shower and Kristen marched into the bathroom and said, I have a revelation
to share with you. We're done being married. We're just done.
And I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean we're done? She's like, this marriage,
this thing we're doing, the thing we've been doing and it's exhausting for both of us. We're not
doing that anymore. We're just, we're done being married. I said, wait a minute, wait a minute.
I've been doing the best practices. I've been working the method. I'm about to go give a lecture in
Missouri about how to be a great partner in a marriage. I said, so we were separating. She said, no,
more like we're detaching. And I remember asking, detaching, what does that even mean?
Because to me, it sounds like we're not married anymore. And she said, and you know what, Dave,
we'll call this unmarried. And then she just turned around and left the room.
We'll be right back.
This podcast is supported by Cartier.
For my 20th wedding anniversary, my husband gave me an amazing letter. We were having lunch in
the park. The same park we got married in. And in the letter, he talks about all of the journeys
and things that we've done. And he says, if I said to you, you were going to watch African
Sunrises from Ghana. If I said to you, you'll eat breakfast in Paris and sleep in the desert,
dance in the streets of New Orleans or ride a camel all while by my side at the time, it would
have seemed like a wild dream. But yet, those dreams are in fact our memories. I cried like a baby
when I read that letter. And I cry every time I read it. It made me feel in love. It made me feel in love.
With love from Cartier.
I'm David Marquez. And I'm Lulugar Sienovaro. And we're the hosts of the interview from the New
York Times. David and I have spent our careers interviewing some of the most interesting and
influential people in the world, which means we know when to ask tough questions and when to just
sit back and listen. And now we've teamed up to have these conversations every week. We'll try to
reveal something about the people shaping our world. And we'll get some great stories from them too.
It's the interview from the New York Times. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Kristen had just dropped this beager bomb on Dave. Right as he was getting out of the shower,
no less. So was this the end of their marriage or just another bump in the road? I asked Dave to
sit down and talk with me about it. Dave, welcome to Modern Love. Thank you so much for coming on
the show. Thank you so much. I can't wait to have this conversation together. So let's pick up
where we left off. What did you do after Kristen told you she wanted to be unmarried? You were literally
heading to give a talk about how to have a successful marriage. I had to climb in the car and drive
all the way down through Illinois to get to Missouri. And then drive through Missouri. And I had
given somebody talks at that point. I wasn't worried. I knew I could get my way through the talk.
The bigger picture was like, I'm about to go tell these people this and my wife just said,
I don't want to be married anymore. Yeah, what was going through your head on that drive?
I just replayed that moment over and over. What could she mean? I didn't go to a place of
positivity when she said that. The eight or nine hours I had in the car right after that moment
were catastrophizing and trying to imagine new scenarios of what our life would look like. But
really it was just replaying with deafening loudness the conversation that we had had that morning.
Oh, Dave, I'm like feeling really crushed. It was a moment where I felt I had lost my partner.
I was starting to feel what must have been grief. What you thought it meant then was we're done.
Yes. It just sounded to me like this is the first step in what is ultimately going to lead to divorce.
And I thought it's not even that I need christen to be my wife. The scary thing for me was
everything I was doing it's still not good enough. Like how is this person going to stay in my life
if I can't be good enough even after all this work? That was the scariest part for me.
In the days and weeks after that conversation in the bathroom, you started to see what
christen meant by unmarrying. What did you see her doing as she put unmarrying into action in her own
life? So I was very confused. And since she wouldn't give me a definitive, we are terminating the
marriage. I knew that we were still in a relationship. And I remember even asking her at one
point, I was like, am I supposed to be like dating other people? She's like, God no. I was like,
okay, so we're still faithful to each other, right? Which is good because I don't want to go out
there and start dating people. And I'd ask her, like, does that mean I don't have to do household
chores or like she's like, no, you have to do the dishes. You still have to, I was like, God,
damn it. But as I started observing her, what she was doing was going out and having long coffee
dates with friends. And she was treating herself to leisurely strolls in the mid morning. She was
journaling. She was reading books by Brunei Brown and Annie Lamotte and all these great thinkers.
And she was like, Dave, go mountain biking, take trips by yourself, go whatever. And so I started
aping her work. Okay, Dave, I got to know what that meant for you. I started saying, well,
I've noticed that she's really gotten into essential oils and burning white sage and energy
clearing the house. I could do that too. So check this out. Here's my white sage that I still...
Well, there you go. Oh my God. I went full woo for about three months where I was like, you know,
I had my chakras tested. And that didn't feel right. I was like, I'm not experiencing the joy
that she seems to be experiencing in her new Kristen Renaissance of just living her life outside
of the marriage. So then I tried to get myself some friends. And I architected how to get friends.
And I went out there and I experimented. And I was needing from them, all the stuff I was
needing from Kristen, which was like this constant sort of, you know, brotherhood companionship
awesomeness. And after a while, I was too much for them. And they're like, dude, no, I don't want
to be much with you anymore of the sucks. I mean, during this time, if you went somewhere together
and you had to introduce her, what would you even say? Like, how would you explain your situation
to someone? So at this time, I was meeting a lot of new people, a lot of philanthropists, a lot
of business people. And I had to go to a bunch of different functions and stuff. And sometimes Kristen
came along. And when we went somewhere and I would introduce her, I would introduce her kind of
awkwardly as my not wife anymore. Oh my God. Dave. I feel like I am Dave. This is not really my
wife, Kristen. We're kind of married, but apparently we're not. And she would get,
it's, she would get so angry. What would she say? She would roll her eyes and go, oh my God, I'm
his wife. I'm Kristen. She did not love that I had taken off and put away my wedding ring and
put that in a drawer. And I replaced it with a skull ring that I had bought from an artist in
Spain. Oh my God. You're taking this. You are confused, but you're taking it to a different level.
Yeah. I was very chippy about this. This was like, I didn't sign up for unmarried. I didn't work
this hard for the last six years to be floundering like this. Yeah. But I wasn't introducing Kristen
as my not really my wife anymore. To get under her skin, I truly thought that I couldn't
introduce her as my wife anymore. And that I didn't know what else to call her since we were both
clearly married. And I mean, through all this, you're watching Kristen seem comfortable with your
new relationship dynamic. She's having a life. She's having fun outside your relationship.
And when you try to do similar things, it's not working. Was it confusing to you? Was it
was it painful? Yes. So what I was observing was
Kristen doing the work that was helping her to thrive. And it was bringing her back online. It was
bringing her joy back into the world. She was alive again. She was flourishing. And I was still
struggling. And I felt very lonely in that. There were periods where I even felt resentful,
where I was like, so she has moved on from trying to be somebody who the marriage is all that makes
her happy. She's moved on from that. She's running a different playbook now. And I felt sort of
abandoned in my ridiculous best practices. And frankly, felt like I was floundering.
And how long did it take for being unmarried to start making sense to you?
One of the very first times that I understood what she meant by unmarried, probably four,
maybe five years after she introduced the idea to me, was that she was done managing my energy.
Wait, four or five years? Yes. Wow. So the next phrase that she coined after unmarried was
energy manager. And she was done running 10 steps ahead of me, making sure that the environment
that I was in was something safe, feeling and predictable and within my control. Because
if I got into a bad mood, then she would get into a bad mood. So to avoid me getting into a bad
mood and her ultimately feeling that same way, she would prevent the sort of things that she
knew would trigger my bad moods. And it was exhausting for her. And I didn't even know that she was
doing this. So she was this unwilling participant in my grand experiment to create the best possible
husband. What she was saying was, I'm out of the experiment. And we neither one of us needs to
be working this hard all the time. You stop trying to be this perfect husband. I'm going to stop
trying to manage your moods and your energy and being your partner in this big experiment.
I'm going to work on making myself happy. I suggest you do the same. If we're going to stay together,
I really need you to be happy for yourself by yourself. And then we come together in the middle
and share that happiness. Wow. I mean, that feels like progress. I totally get what she's saying to
about energy manager. That's so real. But I mean, now you have to manage your own energy. How did
you do that? A fellow classroom dad, you know, the parents of somebody that my kids went to school with
and pulled me aside and was like, Hey, you ever been mountain biking? You want to go mountain biking
with us this weekend? Me and a group of guys are going. I was like, Oh, yeah, okay. And I was
immediately addicted. First ride. I was like, I need to do this every day for the rest of my life.
And I am all in. And Kristen said, perfect, Dave, that's the sort of heat that you need to follow.
Like follow that chase that feeling. What does that feel like? You don't need me to be part of that.
Go find a hobby that you lights you up. And so I was like, All right. One of the first times
where I thought, you know, maybe this unmarried isn't so bad. I was flying
weightlessly down the side of a mountain in Park City, Utah,
having the time of my life, laughing out loud, hooting, hollering, feeling, every turn and every jump
and every near death experience with a tree or a rock and laughing the whole way down the mountain.
And I got to the bottom and I thought, You know what? I'm here by myself. This feels like my soul
is alive and on fire. I love it. And I texted Kristen. I was like, I think I know what you mean.
The previously married you, not the unmarried you would not have done that would not have leaned
into this hobby, would not have leaned into this freedom. No, because my Asperger model for
faithful good husband was you do everything with your spouse, everything that you do that you
enjoy, every hobby, every undertaking, every lawn project, every whatever is with your partner.
I had become someone who was determined to be Dave Finch relative to his marriage with Kristen.
And if it's a good marriage, then I'm a good guy to be around. And if it's a bad marriage,
then I suck. But behind the scenes, Kristen had a different take. She was looking at it like he's
going to all this trouble, all this effort, living and dying by rules. And Kristen was like,
why don't you be Dave Finch? I'll be Kristen Finch. We'll have our marriage. And Dave, your hobby
cannot be our relationship. I started to see that what Kristen really meant, and this is semantics,
she probably meant anti-married. The way that we are married is not working. We're going to flip it.
It was more of a divestment from all the things that were really holding us up in our relationship,
as opposed to a termination of a marriage. I just want to be clear, unmarried, anti-married,
kind of looks a lot like just being married. Yes, we are still totally subscribed to the
traditional trappings of a marriage, meaning we still live together. We are intimate with each other.
We are exclusively faithful. Neither one of us has any intention, design, desire to go outside
of the marriage for anything other than friendships and hobbies. It's more that we have parted ways
with the other traditional trappings of marriage, which is expectations and mean needing you to
be this thing that will never materialize, mean needing the relationship to feel a certain way.
We are anti-married because by throwing those things aside, we actually have more room to enjoy
watching each other flourish, supporting each other, cheering each other on, being there when
things are hard for each other, the aspects of our marriage that we wanted in the first place,
which is that joy of being together. The marriage that she was done having was the marriage where
everything was a project. She was looking at it like he's going to all this effort. I just want
to sit on the couch with him and watch TV. I just want to take a road trip with him and the kids
to an amusement park and just have fun together. I don't want everything to be a homework assignment.
Right. But now thanks to Christen's wisdom, we are committed to our own happiness first
so that we can bring our happy selves to this relationship. When Christen said,
hey, Dave, we're detaching. We're unmarried. She knew that I wasn't going to organically
feel my way through a very gray situation. She knows that I need parameters. I need
language and I think she needed the language too. So Dave, have you gotten better at navigating
those gray areas? Can you give me an example of what it's been like for you to ease up on your
project of having rules for everything in your life with Christen? I have. And here's an example.
This past Thanksgiving, Christen decided, hey, we're going to do a friend's giving with her
closest friend, basically her sister, her ride or die down in Texas. And I said, sure, we'll do a
friend's giving. But behind it, what I'm thinking is, well, wait, thanksgiving is a very specific
set of events that happen. And now we're changing that. Is this even going to be a Thanksgiving? Or
is it going to be just a complete, you know, nebulous, undefined scary fest for three or four
days? It wasn't even defined how long we would be there. That's tough for you. It is tough for me. And
the first impulse that comes in to my mind is, all right, we need some parameters on this. I need
to understand how do they prepare their turkey? Is it brined? Is it deep fried? This is Texas.
It's Dallas. So is it going to be barbecued somehow like under the ground with some kind of
seasoning on it? I don't know how they do it. And so then I decide, all right, you see what you're
doing here, self. You could beat yourself up for the next three or four weeks and try to understand
this and be miserable by the time you get in the car to go to Dallas. Or you could set one rule.
And that one rule is there really are no rules. When we go down there, if you're having fun,
then things are going in the right direction. Wow. Did your hack of the one rule is there's no
rules? Did it work? It did. And I knew it was working the next morning on the drive. Because normally,
I insist on driving always. And I actually let Kristen drive for a couple hours. And we all just had
fun in the car. And I think if you're on a family trip and you're all having fun, by the time you
reach your destination, you're still having fun and laughing and it's going well. That's a miracle,
yeah. So after this 12, 13 hour drive, we pull into our friends driveway. And what I didn't know is
that things were just going to get even better. These are like exceedingly decent people,
which means that they do not tart up their Thanksgiving dinner. It was a turkey. It was perfect.
Like everything you want in a turkey, like it was just a turkey. The best thing was the moments
when Kristen would come over with either a glass of wine or a cup of tea or whatever,
Kristen would come over and just sit down next to me and kind of lay into me like a blanket.
And I was like, all right, this is I could do friends giving. If that's what this is, I could do
this every year. Like the whole thing from start to finish, as much as I wasn't sure about a
friend's giving, I'm not sure I would do it any other way now.
Dave Finch, I truly feel like I took a master class in relationships and emotion and marriage.
After all this, do you still stand by your list of best practices?
All of the best practices amounted to a surface clean to fix myself so that I would appear to be
the world's greatest partner. My bigger work than my deeper clean is to be somebody who goes out
and creates for himself a life that they can then share with that chosen partner. But I stand by it
and so does Kristen. There were a couple of plunkers. Some of them are truly admittedly.
We all got some plunkers. Some of them were aspirational. The two that come to mind are the laundry
thing, right? Like I still to this date, root through the dryer for the one or two things I need and leave
the rest in. Oh, I wish you hadn't told me that. Oh, we'd come to such an understanding.
I'm so sorry, Anna. I know I've hurt my heart, but okay.
I have my limitations and that's one of them. I'll take it one step further.
Since I am no longer somebody who pines for everyone to like him, I'll admit this to you as well.
Not only do I do that, I will root through the dirty, closed hamper to take out my dirty stuff
and just wash that. Because it makes it so much easier when it's in the dryer for me to just
take it out because I don't have to sift through other people's clothes. All right, listeners,
you can direct your hate mail to Kristen Finch.
Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Josa, Emily Lang, and Reeva Goldberg.
It's edited by Mark Pagan, Jen Poient, and Paula Schuman. Our executive producer is Jen Poient.
This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show was recorded by Maddie Mas yellow,
fact checking by Kate and Love and Kelsey Kudak. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell,
original music by Dan Powell, Mary and Luzano, Pat McCusker, and Diane Wong, digital production
by Behemuch Blani and Mel Galokley. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones,
Mealee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
If you like our show and want to stay updated with the latest episodes,
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, you should definitely check out the run-up.
It's a weekly politics show here at The New York Times, and tomorrow they're releasing a special
Valentine's Day episode all about how political differences affect our dating lives.
And guess what? I'm going to be a guest on that show. So you gotta tune in.
