The Journal of Best Practices (8 page)

The key to becoming a couple that could communicate was to communicate. (I know this is tricky stuff—try to stay with me, here.) And the key to communicating, Kristen told me, was to use my words. She used this approach when dealing with Emily, our two-year-old. Kristen had taught Emily sign language long before Emily was able to speak. She knew that many of Emily’s temper tantrums were the result of her inability to express herself; if she wanted more banana, for example, she had no way of saying it. But she could sign it. Whenever Emily wanted something and started getting frustrated, Kristen would tell her, “Use your words.” Then Emily would calm down and press her little hands together, saying, “more,” before rubbing her chest, saying, “please.” Emily quickly learned that tantrums led nowhere, but communication produced results. It was an important concept for our daughter to grasp, and at thirty years of age I was going to have to do the same.

The first opportunity came only a few days after Kristen and I agreed to start working on communication. It was Kristen’s day off, and we thought it would be fun to meet for lunch near my office with the kids. We had never done that before, and I was excited to show them where I worked. At home I wasn’t very impressive, but at the office people listened to me, and I wanted the kids to see that. Best of all, one of my coworkers was likely to high-five me right in front of them. For once, my family could see that I was totally the man.

When Kristen arrived, she pulled into a visitor parking space and called me at my desk to let me know she was there.

“Come on up,” I said, peering down at our car from my fourth-story window, trying to sound indifferent. “I’ll meet you by the reception desk.” People were always milling around the reception area, and I figured at least one of them would give me that crucial high five the moment Kristen and the kids stepped off the elevator.

“Really?” Kristen said. “We’re all buckled in. It would be a lot easier if you just came down.”

“But I wanted the kids to see where I work. I thought they’d enjoy it.”

“Well, Parker is gnawing on his foot and Emily thinks we’re driving to Disney World. I doubt they would understand they’re in Daddy’s office.”

I felt a swell of disappointment as I looked around my cubicle, which I’d spent all morning cleaning in preparation for their visit. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll be right down.”

At the restaurant, I had a little temper tantrum. I ignored Kristen’s attempts at making conversation and went out of my way to be rude to our waiter. I felt I’d been made a fool and I couldn’t let it go, but I wasn’t going to bring it up and ruin our lunch with an argument. Instead, we sat for fifteen minutes in that familiar, awkward silence, watching Parker as he worked his way through some dry Cheerios and Emily as she scribbled on her place mat with a crayon. Finally, our food arrived.

“Are you going to tell me what’s the matter, Dave?” Kristen asked, cutting Emily’s chicken and broccoli into tiny, bite-size pieces.

I didn’t say anything, so she took my plate away and fired me a look that said,
We are not doing this today.

“Give it back,” I said.

Kristen smiled and shook her head. “Not until you start talking.”

I quickly looked around the restaurant, hoping that none of my colleagues were there to witness what was shaping up to be a defining moment in my life.

“I’m serious,” I said, stifling a nervous grin. “Give it to me.”

Without taking her eyes off me, Kristen plucked a french fry from my plate and popped it in her mouth. “Mmm, this is
so
good. You should try some.”

I folded my arms and sat back in my seat, scowling at her. Emily started to ask her a question, but Kristen wouldn’t break eye contact. “Just a minute, Emily,” she said, interrupting. Slowly, she held out my plate, and when I reached for it, she pulled it back playfully.

“Gimme the damn burger,” I said.

“I will. Here, take it.”

She did it again and started laughing. She had me now, and all I could do was laugh in return. Finally, she handed back my plate, saying, “Now, use your words.”

It took a little more coaxing, but I finally explained what had been bothering me. I told Kristen that I’d cleaned my desk and that I’d planned on giving them a tour of the building. When I got to the part about the kids seeing me high-five a coworker, we both busted up laughing.

“Well, I’m sorry that we foiled your plan.” Kristen chuckled. “Why didn’t you just say that to begin with? We could have been enjoying ourselves this whole time, but instead you just sat there, brooding. That’s why you have to use your words.”

I admitted that I felt reluctant to submit to the process of communication when it mattered. I understood that we had to talk about things, but it seemed like an exercise that would invite a lot of arguments. “I don’t want to fight all the time,” I explained.

“Well, these little meltdowns are way more toxic and dramatic than the occasional argument,” Kristen said. “I can handle an argument, but I don’t do drama.”

As we ate our lunches, I noticed that I felt more relaxed having talked through my issue. My jaw wasn’t clenched, my shoulders weren’t tight. I was having lunch with my family in a crowded restaurant and I felt happy. That’s when I realized we had just experienced our first victory. When the check arrived, I wrote a note to myself on the back of the receipt:
Say it, don’t show it. Talking = productive. Showing = drama. Kristen doesn’t do drama.
Then I wrote,
Use your words.

In that moment, I handed myself over to the process. I became more comfortable using words to express myself, Kristen became comfortable sharing her feelings with me in return, and it wasn’t long before we started seeing the rewards of our efforts. The most notable being that when something was bothering me—anger over a misunderstanding, interruptions to my daily routine, itchy shirt cuffs—I no longer felt as though anger had a physical hold on me. I no longer felt isolated, misunderstood, or hopeless. I could simply talk and know that Kristen would help me through it, no matter how big or small the problem was.

The change didn’t happen overnight, of course, nor did it happen easily. The first obstacle we encountered was that I had no concept of the subtle, procedural aspects of communication—the unwritten rules of engagement—all of which had to be learned and recorded into my Journal of Best Practices. Not only did I have to learn how to express myself, I had to learn
when
to express myself. “Yes, we need to talk about our feelings,” Kristen whispered to me in the bathroom at my parents’ house on Easter, “but not right now at the dinner table in front of all your relatives.”
Ask if it’s a good time to talk,
I wrote later that evening, just beneath
If you can’t tell whether you’ve offended her, just ask
and
Apologies do not count when you shout them.

Another challenge lay in all the misdirected rage we had to deal with. Not Kristen’s rage, of course, but mine. She had been right; bottling up my anger for three decades had been a mistake. It was as if a dam had burst. Now that we were attempting to deal with things, all the pain of being misunderstood by and misunderstanding others was breaking free. Because of this, not every conversation went smoothly. I would ask Kristen where my phone was, for instance, and within half an hour we would be examining my innermost feelings about that award I received in second grade for having the messiest desk in the classroom. Nevertheless, Kristen maintained her end of the bargain and hung in there with extraordinary patience. More than once I found myself apologizing for hours of constant swearing, yelling, and dramatic weeping, while Kristen stood by like the cartoon coyote whose face had just been blackened by an exploding bomb and replied, “It’s fine. It’s all in the name of progress.”

Asperger’s made it difficult for me to read Kristen properly—another roadblock. Using my words was one thing; interpreting hers was something else altogether. Harder still was trying to interpret what she
wouldn’t
say. Though I have yet to master this skill, and perhaps never will, I did commit to reaching at least a functional level of mind reading. I eventually got there, but not without months of unnecessary, painful eruptions. My tendency had been to enter into our emotional discussions like a raw nerve; nearly everything could provoke an extreme reaction. Kristen would take a second longer than I thought necessary to answer a question, and I’d explode: “Silent treatment?! Fuck it! I’m outta here.” Now that we are aware of my propensity to misread things, Kristen takes these outbursts in stride, while I do my best to preempt them:
Calm down. Don’t assume you know what she’s thinking. Use your words.

To overcome all of this, Kristen suggested strategies for recognizing and dealing with my emotions in real time, telling me when I had reacted inappropriately and showing me different ways to respond to my feelings. (Again, but worth repeating, this was something that she had never bargained for.) When I came unglued one evening because the kids had gone to bed late—eight fifteen instead of the normal seven thirty bedtime, pushing my entire evening schedule back forty-five minutes—Kristen sat me down and worked me through it:

“Listen. It’s okay for you to expect a certain bedtime, and it’s okay for you to get upset. But it is not okay for you to rant and rave in front of the kids when we stay up later than usual. They’re absorbing everything you do. They’re learning by your example, so if you’re not careful we may end up with two little spazzes on our hands.”

As I cracked open my notebook to write down some thoughts, she suggested a better way of dealing with bedtime: “If you start feeling freaked out, you have to tell me, ‘It’s almost bedtime. Let’s get them ready.’” Or, she told me, if I really wanted to take a step in the right direction I could simply get the kids ready for bed myself. (Duh.)

While Kristen worked diligently with me on expressing my emotions, I began to take a keen interest in casual conversation. Before we started all of this, the ability to talk casually with people seemed to me to be on a par with the ability to juggle or to do a headstand. As my ability to express myself improved, I couldn’t help but think that I could extend this discipline to casual conversation. I figured that could make life easier for me in untold ways. I also suspected that if I were generally better at talking to people, then Kristen would like me more.

But I wasn’t born with the gift of gab. Instead, I was born with something along the lines of anti-gab: my instincts don’t just inhibit productive interaction, they defeat it altogether. I might laugh at inappropriate times, or meow. I sometimes win my audience over in one sentence and alienate them in the next: “I hope your sister is doing better since her divorce. I mean, let’s face it, she was lucky to have found
anyone,
really.”

Luckily, my brain does an excellent job of observing people and memorizing and copying their behaviors. Kristen has said that I sometimes resemble someone with a multiple personality disorder and that I should be grateful for it, and I suppose she’s right. I use the characteristics I observe in other people to create characters that I can assume at will: Outgoing Man, Boyfriend Guy, Quiet Dude. This ability helps me to seem normal enough to get by in life, but I knew that I could do better, especially considering the progress I’d made in the first couple of months after my diagnosis.

I decided that I needed a role model—someone I could study, from whom I could learn. I had always listened to Howard Stern in the mornings, and if he could earn millions of dollars for making four-hour conversations sound interesting, it seemed a good place to start. I began taking notes about what made Howard so effective at communicating, though this was always at the expense of being on time for work. My boss wanted to know why he could see me sitting in my car in the parking lot at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, nodding my head and scribbling in a notebook. I suppose he thought I should be attending his weekly department meeting, but I had something more important to do:
Howard works methodically through his anecdotes and uses interruptions by others to his advantage. Pacing and flexibility =
critical
.

Then I expanded my range. I studied David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Regis Philbin. Emulating these talk-show celebrities may sound corny, but these people made conversing look so easy on their shows. These were the leading experts. These were the people from whom I needed to learn.

Because I’m typically on the fringe of a discussion, nodding my head and praying for it to be over, or at least for it to be my turn to talk about something, I am completely fascinated by those who can do it with ease. Watching a great conversationalist in action is, to me, as captivating and entertaining as watching top athletes or ballroom dancers. Great conversationalists engage with their entire bodies. They supplement their words with calculated, expressive eye contact. They don’t judge the people they’re talking to, but rather encourage honest and open discourse. Great conversationalists ask questions that motivate others to keep speaking, rather than questions that can be answered with a terminating yes or no. When it comes to personal questions, they know the difference between those that are relevant and those that seem creepy and intrusive; they avoid the latter. If they aren’t intrinsically interested in a person or a topic, they don’t turn around and walk away midsentence like I do. They feign interest, and they do it convincingly: “Now, was this the
first
time your mother had ever been to Duluth?” They finish their sentences, and they know when to move on. In other words, they do everything I don’t.