The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch Read Free Book Online Page A

our union, as fractured as it was. There was almost no communication, as our conversations only led to arguments. The responsibilities of working and raising children and being married to an underdeveloped man left Kristen exhausted all the time. I never offered to help. I had no idea how to be a parent. Or a husband, for that matter.
    Though it was difficult to admit these things to myself, the naked honesty was refreshing and strengthened my resolve to get in there and fix everything. While I couldn’t envision the steps we’d need to take to get there, I found it rather easy to summarize the end goal: We have to get back to being friends.
    I committed myself to this concept—to this Best Practice—without any clue as to where we should begin. It felt like quail hunting with my dad on the farm where I grew up. Quail are these smallish game birds that huddle together under the cover of tall grass as predators approach. They don’t fly until it’s absolutely necessary. I’d take a step and suddenly, out of nowhere, there would be a half-dozen birds in my face, launching themselves into the sky, while my dad yelled, “Shoot! Shoot!” from across the field. I could see the birds, I could count them, but I could never get the hang of setting myself, drawing my gun, aiming, and firing before they flew out of range. Dad would laugh and roll his eyes, and I’d stand there trembling, wondering, Which one was I supposed to shoot? Such were the problems in my marriage. Problems were everywhere, but which one should I attack first? What was the first step to getting our friendship back?

Chapter 2
     
    Use your words.
     
    D etermined to find out what that first step would be, I sat down with Kristen in our family room about a week after my diagnosis, along with my notebook and pages upon pages of information on autism spectrum conditions that I’d printed from various Internet sources. The kids were upstairs napping, and at that time of day the sunlight fell directly upon our television screen, making it impossible to watch. Kristen was relaxing with a celebrity gossip magazine and eating black olives straight from the can. I plopped down beside her on the couch and arranged my materials neatly before her on the coffee table.
    “What’s all this?” she asked, leafing through my stack of papers.
    “This is all the Asperger’s stuff about me that we need to fix if we want to save our marriage. You’re the expert, and I need you to show me where we’re going to start.”
    I felt proud: I’m doing it! I’m stepping up! I’ll be Asperger’s-free in no time! Kristen nodded thoughtfully, then shuffled the papers together and set them aside. Then, for the third or fourth time that week, she reminded me, “We can work together to fix our marriage, Dave. This isn’t about fixing you.”
    I opened up my notebook and jotted down, Fixing our marriage is about working together and managing my behaviors. Not fixing me.
    “That’s good,” I said. “Keep going.”
    Kristen suggested that we begin by working on communication. Our ability to talk to each other, she told me, was paramount, yet we’d been struggling with it for years. When it came to discussing anything other than what was for dinner, we fell apart.
    “There are many things that we need to address in our relationship,” she said, “but we won’t get anywhere if we can’t communicate with each other. Communication has to come first, then the other pieces will start to fall into place.”
    I wrote the word communication in my notebook and said that I agreed, especially considering that she was an expert on speech and communication disorders.
    “Those aren’t exactly the issues we’ll be dealing with,” she said. “It’s not like you’re nonverbal.”
    “No, really. I read about it.” I searched through my stack of papers. “People with Asperger syndrome have difficulty communicating. Hang on, it’s in one of these printouts.”
    I found the