The Journal of Best Practices (31 page)

Enough about me, though. The morning the Best Practices were born (Pi Day, my fellow nerds), Kristen and I embarked on a mission with one objective in mind: to save our marriage. A worthy goal, if totally ambiguous.
Save the Earth
comes to mind:
Oh yes, definitely. Which part?
We didn’t know it, but the first year and a half of saving our marriage was really about understanding who we are, what our relationship
actually
is, and what we both need to do to make it work. Eighteen months, dozens of Best Practices, and innumerable hours of soul-searching later, Kristen and I finally reached this awareness. (I’m rather amazed we lasted five years without it.)

But we still weren’t there. Our marriage was better, no question, but it wasn’t exactly working. When Kristen curled up next to me in bed during our weekend in Chicago and told me, “You get me,” she was wrong. Or at least, wrong-ish. I didn’t get her, entirely. I understood who she was, how she behaved, what made her laugh. But I didn’t understand what she needed. For our marriage to work, I had to understand that.

With the final evolution of the process—
Don’t make everything a Best Practice
—after two years of lugging around notebooks, folding the frigging laundry, calling for performance reviews, and interviewing myself in the shower, I finally
got
Kristen. I understood what she needed from me: put the notebook down, love her, love the kids, and simply
be
—be myself so that she can love me back. That’s it. It seems unspeakably easy to me now, but perhaps I should consider that a testament to how far we have come since renewing our commitment to each other and to our relationship.

It’s a funny thing. By liberating myself from the process of becoming a better husband, I actually became a better husband. I also became a better dad. But I wasn’t the only one transformed by our journey; Kristen had also changed. I just had to get out of my own head long enough to notice it. Once I set my notebook aside, I saw that we had become our own perfect version of the family I’d always envisioned. In every room of our house, framed pictures now adorn the walls and tabletops, telling stories of some of our happiest moments together as a family. Granted, these pictures were all taken by other people who had framed them and given them to us as gifts, but the pictures were still of us, and we had finally managed to hang them on the walls—that’s something to be proud of. We were eating homemade dinners together, dinners that Kristen had prepared while I ran through the sprinkler in the backyard with the kids, wearing my goggles and dreaming of the day when I’d be able to afford a wet suit. Kristen and I were going on dates (or rather, going on the exact same date time after time, God bless her heart). And best of all, it was
our
affectionate hugs that were now being interrupted by two little sponges squeezing in to absorb all of the love. All this from a journey to earn back my wife’s friendship.

One final thought. For those of you in a relationship blessed by perfect compatibility, continual bliss, and matching clothes (I’m looking at you, Andy and Mary), I’m happy for you. Thank you for reading this book to each other under a warm blanket. For the rest of us (I’m looking at you, everyone else), when you find yourself staring defeatedly at your spouse over breakfast or watching them hunt through the dryer for a pair of socks, and you wonder,
Who in the hell did I marry?
—and you will—I can now say with absolute certainty: there is hope. You can turn things around.

I have the nightstand drawer to prove it.

I
have been blessed with the support of many extraordinary people. I’d like to thank my parents, Jim and Mary, for a lifetime of love and encouragement. I’m also grateful to my brother, John, and his wife, Jen, for remaining in my corner, and to my wife’s parents, Jim and Sandi, for loving me and accepting me as their own. My kiddos, Emily and Parker, cheered the loudest for me and colored pictures to buoy my spirits on the days when all I managed to eke out was a chapter title. Thanks to my friends B.J., Laurel, Courtney, Traci, Delemont One, Delemont Two, Greg, Jen, Phill, Meredith, Valerie, Cliff, and the best neighbors I could ask for, Andy and Mary, for their continual reassurance and clearly questionable standards of friendship.

I was fortunate to have persuaded a number of people who are much smarter than me to read my manuscript in one form or another, and their insights and perspectives made rewriting
The Journal of Best Practices
thousands of times a true joy. Many thanks to Rebecca Connelly, Laurie Cunningham, Dr. Sheila Flaherty, Justin Jones, Adina Kabaker, Kelly Kennoy, Cathy Postilion, Sylvie Sadarnac, Jason Sarna, Cathy Scherer, Michael Tirrell, the incomparable Nancy Beckett, who expertly demystified the art and process of storytelling, and the late Mary Scruggs, who urged me to write this book and left much too soon. Very special thanks to Dr. Gail Richard for her invaluable elucidation of empathy and its impact on communication and socialization, and to Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, whose research has afforded me the luxury of understanding myself better.

Daniel Jones at the
New York Times
helped to shape the essay that became the basis for this book. Daniel has the astounding ability to express more in two sentences than I can say in two pages—had he written my acknowledgments, you’d be done reading them by now. Thank you, Daniel.

Beth Wareham welcomed me to Scribner, an opportunity for which I cannot thank her enough. I owe an overwhelming debt of gratitude to Susan Moldow, Kate Lloyd, and everyone at Scribner—thank you, thank you, thank you for your support, your enthusiasm, and all of your hard work.

Two people made a profound impact on my life recently and I’d like to thank them now. The first is my agent, Suzanne Gluck, who is one of the nicest people I know. Her extraordinary vision and unfailing support, her wisdom and guidance—these are gifts that have changed my life, and for that I’ll always be grateful. The other is Samantha Martin, my tireless and strikingly intelligent editor at Scribner, who never failed to provide me with a brilliant window into my own personal journey, and who always pushed me to do better. Suzanne and Samantha, all I can say is thank you.

Most of all, I owe thanks to my wife, Kristen, who made all of this happen. This book captures only an infinitesimal sliver of everything she puts up with in a typical day, of her capacity for grace, understanding, and love. The greatest thing a man can do for himself is to marry someone who is infinitely better than he is. And that’s exactly what I did. With Kristen’s support, I know I can accomplish anything.

David Finch grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. He earned a degree in music engineering at the University of Miami, where he stunned the locals with his gleaming, pasty white skin, then returned to Illinois, where he worked as an audio engineer and studied sketch-comedy writing at the Second City in Chicago. He and his wife, Kristen, married in 2003, and in 2008, David was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. His essay “Somewhere Inside, a Path to Empathy” appeared in the
New York Times
and became the basis for this book. David lives in northern Illinois with Kristen and their two children.