Un-Marry Me!

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re kicking off our new season this Valentine’s Day with a story from a Modern Love veteran. David Finch has written three Modern Love essays about how hard he has worked to be a good husband to his beloved wife, Kristen. As a man with autism who married a neurotypical woman, he found it especially challenging to navigate being a partner and father. To make things easier, Dave kept a running list of “best practices” to cover every situation that might come up in daily life. His method worked so well that he became a best-selling author and speaker on the topic. But almost 11 years into their marriage Kristen suddenly told him she wanted to be "unmarried." Dave felt blindsided. He didn’t know what that meant, or if he could do it. But Dave wasn’t going to lose Kristen, so he had to give it a try. Valentine’s Day Bonus: How does politics affect your love life? Hear Anna Martin discuss this tomorrow on “The Run-Up,” a weekly politics show from The New York Times. You can search for “The Run-Up” wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Welcome to a new season.
0:07.0	And happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers out there.
0:11.0	If you listen to the show, you're clearly into stories about relationships.
0:17.8	So you may have heard of a guy named Dave Finch.
0:21.7	There was a time when a lot of people wanted to hear his ideas about making
0:25.9	relationships work because he seemed to have solved a big problem in his own
0:30.3	marriage. As he tells it, the problem stemmed
0:33.2	from his overpowering need for order and predictability.
0:37.2	And it came out in all kinds of everyday situations
0:40.0	with his wife, Kristen, and their two kids.
0:43.0	Take this, for example, I had it in my head that nap time was 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock.
0:48.0	And if the 2 o'clock nap didn't happen because somebody dropped over for a visit or because they were you know
0:54.2	fussy and not going down for a nap I would start to almost spiral in a way it was
1:01.0	this sense of panic and I would lash out and try to seize control and she
1:09.6	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.
1:16.6	They're babies. They don't always take a nap. And I remember saying to her, you told me nap time is 10 and 2, so if it's not 10 and 2, you have to tell me that.
1:25.7	And she was thinking, why would I have to tell you that?
1:27.9	Be an adult.
1:29.2	Don't be a third person in this conversation was like you can stop you have Asperger's this was in 2008 so they were
1:44.8	still using the word Asperger's but it was so revelatory for me because for three
1:51.2	years the most important person in my life was saying things like,
1:56.0	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
	...

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