Go with the flow.
Before we were married, Kristen and I lived with roommates for a year. They were friends of ours, and it seemed like such a good idea. It was one of those opportunities that neurotypicals might look forward to: a chance to celebrate and bond and party as only young, unmarried people with decent-paying jobs can—a yearlong last hurrah, and I missed it completely.
I wish I had enjoyed it more. Who knew living with friends could be such a disaster? They were, after all, good people, and as roommates go, they really weren’t so bad.
I’ve had bad roommates. One of my college roommates, Derrick, wanted to kill me. That’s not an exaggeration. He waited for me one morning in our room, and when I returned from my early classes, he shouted that he couldn’t take any more of my shit and threatened to murder me if I didn’t move out by the end of the week. “Can you give me another week at least?” I pleaded, holding up my calculus book with both hands to protect myself. “It’s midterms.”
“Fuck you, boy!” he boomed. “Fuck you, locking me out of the room at night!” But I thought I made it clear that I lock the door at eleven thirty sharp, no matter what! “Fuck you, waking me up every morning and telling me you’re leaving!” Isn’t that just proper roommate etiquette? “And fuck you for moving my shit around the bathroom! You don’t touch another man’s things, bitch! Fuck you!” But your system was all wrong! Bar soap doesn’t belong on a sink and toothbrushes should never be stored in a shower caddy!
Derrick was strikingly muscular and I was mostly ribs and hair. Something about the volume of his voice and the way he was pacing the room, telling me that I didn’t know who he was or where he came from, or what it was like to get “beat by an insane motherfucker”—it all seemed to suggest that he meant business. A couple of days later, after acing my calculus midterm (A+!), I moved in with a kid so inclined to talk about the time he’d spent working at the Target store in Eagan, Minnesota, that within a few weeks I’d started to reconsider my decision to move away from scary-ass Derrick.
A few months later I was bunking with Phill the percussionist, who despised and ridiculed the shape of my feet and listened to Jethro Tull at deafening volumes. After a two-week stretch in which he incessantly snapped the Morse code pattern for the word marimba with his fingers, I took a clerical job in the office of residence halls administration, which gave me a first look at all the prime single dorm rooms available on campus. At first, room turnover was slow, but I bided my time. Someone eventually requested a room change, and I helped myself to the fourteen-by-twelve single suite she was vacating. My new room was on a coed floor, across from a pair of dazzling Delta Gammas. Unpacking my milk crates, looking out over Lake Osceola and the music-school campus, and knowing that no roommate would be barging through the door while I typed up my letter of resignation to the residence halls administrator, I wondered how any student could ever walk away from such a beautiful room.
After Kristen and I started dating, I spent nearly every night at her house and never longed for the solitude of my own apartment. That was a first, and it proved that we cohabited well. She was the only person other than my family to earn that distinction. Growing up, I understood the power structure and everyone’s role in the household: Mom and Dad were in charge and it was best not to challenge them. My brother was three years older, so he, too, could give me marching orders that I’d blindly accept if it meant he’d play with me (“Here, Dave, drink this paint thinner. Then we’ll Hula-Hoop”). Most important, my family understood me. They loved me and accepted my little world for what it was. “Don’t mind our son,” my parents would say to guests as I pushed myself down the hallway floor on my face. The brushing sensation of blended-fiber carpet pile against my forehead put me in a place of tranquillity that to this day I can’t achieve with sex, drugs, love, or money. Their guests would cautiously step back against the wall, allowing me to pass. “That’s just our Dave.”
I didn’t have to worry about the sounds that escaped from my head. I had always mimicked the sounds of my environment, so even when I was older a few moos and quacks here and there didn’t seem out of place. Using the corner of my mouth, I would serenade my mom with a perfectly rendered trombone solo as she sat barefoot at the kitchen table, watching I Love Lucy reruns and paying bills. Sometimes she would turn down the volume on the TV and snap her fingers in time, or set her checkbook down and just watch me; if I became self-aware, I’d run upstairs and press my forehead against the cool glass of my bedroom window. Because we lived on a farm, I could get lost in a daydream and wander off for hours without anyone thinking to bother me. If they did come looking, they weren’t surprised when they found me standing motionless, expressionless, watching the wind pluck through the lilac bushes, or sitting alone in a cattle pen, tying individual strands of hay together. “Oh, there you are, Dave,” my dad would say with a smile, his steely blue eyes sparkling the way they often did when he was amused. “Supper’s almost ready, come and get washed up.”
Some behaviors were too obnoxious for my family to tolerate. High-pitched shrieking, lunging forward and backward, rewinding the same banal movie passage over and over. My mom would reach her threshold and firmly tell me to stop. In my dad, who was normally gentle and reserved, these types of behaviors provoked a different reaction. When he thought I was out of control, his face showed it—frustration, disapproval, anger. He hardly ever had to say anything. I drew my own conclusions about what he was thinking whenever he’d thunder away from me, growling, “Well, for Christ’s sake.” Namely, that I was a disappointment. The swish of his blue jeans accompanied him, whispering accusations at me above the stomping: Well . . . now . . . you’ve . . . done . . . it . . . After I frustrated him I wouldn’t see him for hours. I would hide in my closet, or behind an open door, and mentally replay whatever had happened over and over, forcing promises upon myself to never be annoying again.
After a blissful first year of dating, and having decided that marriage was in our future, Kristen and I began playing with the idea of buying a house together. At first, we viewed the idea as a practical next step in our relationship. “I think it would make sense to find something now, even if it’s strictly an investment,” Kristen said. I agreed, and as we began searching for properties, our conversations about real estate grew more and more romantic. “Ooh, here’s a nice two-story,” she said, showing me a listing online. “Look at that family room. Isn’t that so us? Can’t you just see us in there, playing games in front of the fireplace?” A good investment, and I get to live with my hot girlfriend—just the two of us. Nice! But Kristen had a different idea.
“What if we looked for a bigger place, and we each picked a friend to live there with us?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Would they pay us rent?”
Kristen seemed confused by this question, as though I’d completely missed her point. “Well, yeah. I suppose they would pay rent. But I was thinking more about how fun it would be, all of us living together. Can you imagine?”
I considered the advantages of dividing a mortgage four ways. Yes, I could imagine having roommates.
I immediately thought of Delemont, an incredibly mathematical guy with whom I’d been friends since middle school. He ended up designing bridges—a job that’s just barely challenging enough to keep his interest. We worked about ten minutes from each other and met at least twice a week to have lunch, talk about math, and recite lines from Chris Farley movies. He had dark, wild hair, the sort I imagined could easily clog a drain. That was a check in the minus column, to be sure, and there were other demerits to consider.
When we were younger, Delemont tended to be loud and belligerent, especially whenever he drank or got himself into a crowd of people. In school, he would do or say anything if you paid him—he ate wood chips and friends’ goldfish for a quarter, and struck a science teacher over the head with a textbook for a dollar. He didn’t do these things because he needed the money; he did them because he needed to be outrageous—a motivation that I understood and admired. By the time he finished grad school, he had mellowed out somewhat, but his lack of regard for authority and rules in which he personally did not believe remained. Those weren’t the types of qualities I’d normally look for in a roommate.
Still, Delemont had a capacity for friendship and decency that could make this plan work. In high school, during open gym, some skid mark of a kid was teasing me about how little I could bench-press. He wouldn’t let up. I had tuned him out to study the tiny rhombuses etched into the grip of the weight bar when Delemont went crazy on the kid—getting in his face, yelling at him until a crowd gathered, then demanding that Skid Mark get on the bench and show everyone his highest weight. “You do it! Come on, big shot! Let’s see you do it!” He stayed on Skid Mark like a pit bull and since then I’ve remained loyal to Delemont, who also appreciates a fine rhombus when he sees one.
Kristen agreed that Delemont would make a good choice and then revealed her selection. “I’m going to ask Meredith,” she said.
Kristen had been close friends with Meredith since college, when they became sorority sisters. Meredith also had dark, wildish hair, though it was prettier than Delemont’s, and she had a big, booming laugh that I figured I’d be hearing a lot of. At least, I hoped I’d hear a lot of it. I’d gotten along great with Meredith the few times we’d hung out, when I only had to be some exceptional version of myself to get through the evening. But living with her would present an entirely new set of demands. Full-time demands. For starters, she spoke as fast as lightning. Were she to tell me something important as I snapped a green bean, I’d miss it completely. I also worried that she would get to know me and realize that she didn’t like me. Kristen dismissed the idea, but I had more concerns, none of which I voiced. Will I be expected to hang out with both of them all the time? What if Meredith needs time with Kristen when I need time with Kristen? What if they start an inside joke and they don’t let me in on it? What if Meredith takes huge dumps? Will I be forced to plunge her way out of it? Good God, I don’t want to know that about a sorority girl.
A week later, we asked Delemont and Meredith if they’d be interested in living with us. Kristen’s conversation with Meredith went precisely like this:
Kristen: “Dave and I are buying a house and you’re totally moving in with us!”
Meredith: “Oh my God! Fun!”
That was it. That was their entire discussion.
Delemont and I took a different approach, belaboring the strategy and logistics as only engineers and lunatics would. Discussing geography over lunch one day, we used a french fry to trace a series of ketchup arcs that represented ideal, acceptable, and unacceptable distances from our respective hamburger and hot dog offices, which we then analyzed against real estate prices.
It took some time to convince him, as there were plenty of cheap apartments within walking distance of his office. What ultimately sold him was the idea of living one last time with a group of friends.
“I think it will be fun living together,” he said. “After living with my parents, some freedom will be nice. Just try to find something in this second ketchup arc.”
A month later, Kristen and I found a three-story town house with two bedrooms and two full bathrooms upstairs, a beautiful kitchen, family room, and dining room on the main floor, and a full basement finished as an apartment. The location suited our commutes, so we arranged a visit with a real estate agent. Kristen fell in love immediately. She floated from room to room, lifted in reverie, suggesting who might sleep where and how we might arrange our new furniture, while I hunted for substandard craftsmanship and structural problems. We spent all of ten minutes in the house before Kristen announced, “This is the one. This is our home.”
And so it was. We were thrilled. Everything about the house was perfect—even the walls were pristine. The rooms had been tastefully painted, and the upper floors had these great picture windows that looked out onto the large pond in the backyard, and into the woods beyond that.
Kristen and I moved in a week before anyone else and felt at home right away. In the mornings, we’d open the windows in the breakfast nook and listen to the faint whispers of blowing leaves and wind chimes. Late in the afternoon, sunlight would pour in through the windows in the family room and spread across the rich oak floors, causing them to glow, illuminating the bottom of our dark leather furniture. Fifteen minutes would pass in an instant as I’d stand in one place, mesmerized, staring at the floor. Kristen had been right—this was our home.
Then our friends moved in.
I wanted to be easy to live with. Really, I did. If I ever end up on trial for being a pain in the ass, prosecution’s Exhibit A will be the two-page memorandum I circulated to our roommates before they arrived. It was Asperger syndrome in its purest form, delivered in four excruciatingly long and schizophrenic bullet points and an anxious half-page conclusion. The first two points essentially read Let’s have fun this year and Let’s remember that we’re friends—it’s best to keep the lines of communication open. The latter half of the memorandum read like this: On second thought, let’s not overdo it on the communication—it’s probably best to give each other plenty of space and Actually, let’s not overdo it on the fun, either. And don’t damage anything. I had intended to convey to my new roommates just how easy and comfortable our living arrangement could be, as long as we all adhered to a few simple guidelines—my guidelines.
Delemont and Meredith were remarkably generous, saying only, “Does Kristen know you sent us this?” and “I think most of the guidelines in your memo go without saying.” The latter was probably a reference to my prohibition of major renovations and rowdy all-night parties. Everyone seemed to be on the same page. Almost.
I’d asked our new roomies to refrain from hanging picture frames on “my pristine new walls,” which left a giant loophole for Delemont, who skirted my request by nailing a dozen frameless pictures of bridges around his room shortly after he moved in. “You said no picture frames,” he said, proudly extending a gigantic middle finger to me and my policies, and my rage ignited. Rather than confronting him directly, I spent several days bemoaning Delemont’s actions to anyone who would listen and being short and dismissive with everyone else. I was standing outside on the deck with Kristen when she decided she’d had enough of my moping.
“Dave, I understand that you’re upset with Delemont and his nails, but can you please tell me why it’s a big deal to you?” she asked.
“What can I say, Kristen? He’s completely fucking insane. Who nails pictures to walls? Pictures that he tore from a fucking calendar about bridges!”
“Delemont does, I guess. But I still don’t get what you’re so angry about.” Meredith spotted Kristen and me from the kitchen and wandered out to join us.
“Kristen, nails leave holes. The house that you and I bought last month didn’t have nail holes; it was spotless. Now, in partial custody of a crazy person, it does. I didn’t put them there, you didn’t put them there. He put them there.” Great, now I look crazy. Can’t you just agree that this is a huge deal and that my anger is 100 percent his fault? He is to blame. He is to be questioned, not me! I’m the victim!
“Right.” I knew she couldn’t see my point, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed with Meredith standing right next to me. Around her, I had always played the role of Kristen’s Charming Boyfriend—my favorite character—but that guy was nowhere to be found.
“Are you guys talking about Delemont’s bridge pictures? What’s up with those?” Meredith asked.
I couldn’t keep myself from ranting. “Look, what if we had a baby and he came over and pierced her ears? Wouldn’t you be pissed off?”
“I’m not sure if I’d call that the same thing,” Kristen said.
How is that not the same thing?!
“I think you’ll be able to paint over the holes easily enough,” Meredith offered.
That’s when I snapped.
“Oh, that’s fucking great, Meredith! We’ll just paint over it. No problem, right? Grab a fucking hammer and let’s smash some walls! No big deal, right?” I snatched Delemont’s cigarette lighter from the patio table and chucked it into the grass below. “Fuck all this!” I reared back to kick the table, but then I saw Kristen’s face. I’d never seen her look more stunned or horrified. I didn’t even bother looking at Meredith. Suddenly, my head was spinning and I couldn’t take myself or them. I barged past Meredith, stormed inside, and went upstairs to our room.
Fuck.
I’d gotten that stunned What just happened?! look millions of times before—from teachers, from my parents, from friends—but never from Kristen. She had just caught her first glimpse of her fiancé going from zero to boiling in an instant, with no legitimate provocation. For more than a year—scratch that, for more than a decade—I had managed to conceal from Kristen my hardwired incapacity to deal with things like nail holes and anger. I had always kept myself in check around her, and then suddenly this happened.
To Kristen, nail holes were no more significant than fingerprints on the doorknobs or dust on the carpet. To her, such intense anger about something so superficial was far more damaging than the holes themselves. But I didn’t get that. All I saw was her face during my outburst, her expression and speechlessness mirroring my desperation. For the first time, I didn’t feel like the life of her party, and I hated myself for it. Great. Nice job, shithead. Mer just got it, too—that’s perfect. Game over. You’re the freak now, and they’re all going to hate you. Happy? Happy, fucker? I just wanted to crawl into my old closet at my parents’ farmhouse, or push myself facedown through the halls to my old hiding spot behind the dining room door, and wait for the episode to leave my head. Fucking Delemont.
Kristen eventually joined me on our bed to talk about what had happened. Had we known that I had Asperger’s, there wouldn’t have been so much confusion. We might have known that I tend to feel a greater emotional connection to inanimate objects, like walls, than I do to most people. We might have known that a sense of order and control was critically important to me. We might have known that my brain wasn’t built to tolerate reality when reality doesn’t match my expectations. Circumstances being what they were, however, an explanation was in order.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
I was too ashamed to look at her, so I stared at the wall and nodded.
“Is this really about a few nail holes? Or is there something else?”
“Today it’s about nail holes. But what about tomorrow? It might be wild parties, complete strangers driving motorcycles through our house. There’s no control. I can’t deal with this.”
Kristen laughed. “So, today’s nails open the door for tomorrow’s home-obliterating motorcycle parties?”
I couldn’t laugh with her because it made perfect sense to me. Of course! Duh. She tried explaining the difference between reacting and overreacting, saying, “It’s natural to get upset about things. I was just surprised by the intensity of your anger. You can get mad, but it’s not okay to get so mad that you lose control.” I understood her point, but I couldn’t imagine myself reacting any differently.
“I don’t know what my problem is,” I said. “I just can’t handle this.”
“Dave, I think you just need to relax. This whole year is about having fun. We just have to let some things slide. Okay?”
I said okay, as I would hundreds of times that year when being told exactly the same thing. You have to relax. You have to pick your battles. Let’s just enjoy this. “Okay.” But how?
The year progressed without any more nail holes, without the dreaded wild parties, and without any crazed motorcyclists cutting donuts on our immaculate oak floors. (It’s worth mentioning, however, that Kristen cut a deep four-foot scratch into the kitchen floor by accident, and unlike Delemont’s nail holes, there was no way to repair it without full replacement. Yet I managed to laugh that one off. Forgiveness is easy when you’re in love.)
But that’s not to say that things got any easier. Meredith contracted conjunctivitis—pinkeye—and I quarantined her for days. It wasn’t a formal quarantine; she had simply gotten the hint that I was fearful of contamination when she saw my hand, protected by a latex glove, slipping a list of nearby hotels with phone numbers under her door after I found out that her eye was crusted shut with pus. “The antibiotics I’ve been given make it impossible to spread,” she insisted from behind her closed door. But come on. That’s just ridiculous.
Worse than exposing my aversion to bacterial infections, however, was the fact that I never quite figured out how to cope with the social dynamics of the household. My failures in dealing with group situations began taking a toll on both Kristen and me. Spending time with Delemont or Meredith individually was never a problem. I knew that the key to hanging out with Delemont was always to talk sincerely and literally, to include tremendous detail, and to tell highly exaggerated jokes. I eventually learned how to manage Meredith as well. Details seemed to confuse her, as did having to repeat herself (“Wait, repeat which part? What was I saying again?”), so I learned to get to the point quickly and then activate hyper-listening in preparation for her astoundingly fast-spoken response.
But these techniques for one-on-one engagement flew out the window whenever we convened as a group. Game nights, especially, were ripe for disaster. For weeks, we followed a particular sequence of games: Catch Phrase! followed by Scattergories, followed by Kristen and Meredith gossiping to each other while Delemont and I played Mastermind. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed this pattern, but I sure did; the routine had become as essential to game night as the games themselves. When someone suggested a new game, or when the group decided to change the sequence, I couldn’t handle it. Scrabble?! I would participate in the games, but my lifelong pattern of scowling and brooding in response to a change in routine would take hold of my behavior. I would grow silent and passively belligerent: We always start with Catch Phrase!, and they know that, so why are we mixing it up? Delemont might laugh about something, then look to me to keep the joke going, and I’d snub him by asking if we were still playing. “Well, are we? Because I thought this was game night. So, whose turn?” If someone asked me what was wrong, I’d say that nothing was wrong and then grow even quieter.
The fun would plow forward without me, and my anger would turn inward: You’re only ruining this for yourself, dumbass. They think you’re a jerk, and they’re right. Kristen and our roommates would assume that I was angry with them, although I thought that I could trick them into thinking I was crabby about something else. They knew me better than that. “Dave, what’s the problem? Why are you pissed at everybody?” Kristen would whisper. I don’t even know.
We’d end the evening early, Delemont and Meredith would return to their rooms, and Kristen would be disappointed with me—her sulking fiancé, who should have been enjoying the company of friends. “Is it impossible for you to have fun now?” she’d ask, and I’d tell her to forget it. The awkward evening, with all my mistakes, would play in a constant loop in my head for days until something would happen, for instance dropping my phone, and then I’d melt down. Sometimes I would sit in my car, furious at myself for making everything so hard, sobbing uncontrollably, slapping myself in the face over and over and screaming, “Fucking asshole! Fucking asshole!” But who hasn’t done that from time to time?
The fact that I used to sit around in my car and punch myself in the face after a rough night of Scattergories should have been a clear indication that something was amiss. It wasn’t until years later, however, that I’d understand the underlying problem: I didn’t know how to go with the flow. As life skills go, adaptability is perhaps one of the most essential. Things happen unexpectedly or they don’t always break in your favor, and maintaining composure under those circumstances is often the only way to get through them with your sanity intact. Unfortunately, those of us with Asperger syndrome tend to be short on flexibility, just as we are on empathy and conversational give-and-take. (If you’re keeping score at home, that’s Asperger’s three, marriage zero.)
This natural disinclination to go with the flow made living with me almost unbearable for Kristen and our roommates. Back then I was jeopardizing friendships with my emotional outbursts, but as time went on, the stakes became much higher. My inability to cope with real life and the resultant anger it fostered made me, if not an unreliable marital partner, then certainly an unpleasant one. And it didn’t take long for my status as a husband to erode from “unpleasant” to “unworthy,” all because of my inability to deal. Going with the flow was especially important after we had kids and life became truly unpredictable. As infants, Emily and Parker didn’t seem too concerned about my daily routine. My days amounted to a series of interruptions. As the kids grew, they took cues from our behaviors as to how they should react to things, and as someone who lost his mind over hamburger buns, I was not a very suitable role model. With our children’s development at stake, it was more important than ever to learn how to minimize the damaging outbursts and behaviors.
Fortunately, the kids and I had Kristen to show us how to roll with life’s punches and how to do it with a smile. “What can you do?” she’d say with a shrug, heating up a steamy shower at three A.M. if one of the kids was suffering a croupy cough. Almost as a matter of protocol, I’d insist that we head straight to the emergency room (just as I did whenever one of them bumped their knee or had a runny nose), and with wet hair clinging to the sides of her face and a toddler nearly asleep on her hip, she’d stop her gentle lullaby to comfort me, saying, “If it gets worse, we’ll go. But I think the cough sounds better, don’t you?”
Kristen had expected our year living with Delemont and Meredith to be one of the happiest years of our life together—a dream that exploded in her face because of my failure to adapt. While someone else might have packed her things and left, Kristen didn’t give up on me. Instead, she handled it with her usual grace. Not gracefulness, not finesse, but authentic grace that she bestowed on me even though I hadn’t earned it.
After our roommates moved out, it occurred to me that I had run out of opportunities to enjoy living with them. I apologized to Kristen for ruining the entire year and she shrugged it off. “This year was a disappointment, but then again, I didn’t know how challenging it would be for you.” Then her eyes brightened, and she added, “We’re getting married in a month, and then we’ll have lots of opportunities to enjoy things together. So let’s just relax and have fun.”
That’s how Kristen handles things. She doesn’t look backward, only forward. In doing so, she had committed the ultimate act of going with the flow. It was a perfect model for me to follow, but of course, I failed to make that connection. And for years, I kept failing. She constantly had to remind me to chill out. The other cars got a green arrow and I didn’t: “Relax, Dave. It happened four hours ago. You can’t let it ruin the whole day.” Emily ate a candle: “This isn’t the end of the world, Dave. No, you don’t need to fly home from Italy, she’s fine.” Both of our children proved to be terrified of people in costumes after we waited in line to buy tickets at Six Flags Great America: “Dave, oh well. Let’s find something else they’ll enjoy.” “Okay,” I would say. But how?
Sometimes I argued with her. “Going with the flow is for hobos and douchebags. It’s for people without goals or vision. People with nothing to accomplish. Me, I’d rather accomplish things.” She would insist that going with the flow wasn’t about complacency or letting the tide carry you along. “People like you especially need to learn how to adapt,” she’d tell me. “You do have your own vision, you do have goals to pursue. But life throws punches and if you don’t roll with them, you’ll get knocked down and you won’t accomplish anything.” For the longest time, her point failed to sink in, even when she put it bluntly: “I don’t like being around you when you’re flipping out over stupid stuff. Knock it off.”
Her message finally clicked for me in the fall of 2008. I was sitting on the floor in our family room, trying to make good on my most recent Best Practice: folding laundry. I had a meeting with my sales director the following morning, and I was watching SportsCenter on ESPN in preparation for his inevitable sports banter—sort of like cramming for an exam. The show’s anchor made a reference to one of the greatest tennis champions of all time, Roger Federer, and as I squared up a pair of boxers, I took a moment to wonder what it must be like to be the best at something: This Federer can’t lose—he just wins all the time. Well, not all the time. I guess he can’t win every point. He doesn’t win every game, actually, or even every match. But he’s the best—I like that. Federer knows what he needs to do and he doesn’t let a bad call or a loss bring him down and . . . OHHHH!
I scrambled up the steps and into our bedroom, waking Kristen to share my epiphany:
“I was watching sports highlights and it all makes perfect sense now! Go with the flow! Pick the battles! Let things slide! I don’t, so every day we’re putting out some big drama fire. I wish I would have realized this years ago!”
“Sports highlights taught you this?” she asked. “Really, Dave?”
“I know you’ve told me this six million times, but it’s so clear to me now! I think I’m onto something!”
“That’s great,” she mumbled. “I’m happy for you.”
That was the most enthusiasm I was going to rally from Kristen given the time of night, so I grabbed my notebook from my nightstand drawer and—in a manner of speaking—teed off. A highlight reel of my journal entry that evening might look something like this:
Go with the flow.
Purpose—Flexibility is an essential social skill, like communication. Being inflexible prevents me from experiencing joy which is right in front me. It stresses me out. My failure to adapt has driven a wedge between Kristen and me. It’s making me a bad role model for my kids.
Payoff—If I can learn to go with the flow, then I will be a more stable husband and father. I won’t have to live in a constant state of agitation. I may start enjoying things!
Process—Start by learning to pick the battles. Learn the difference between critical and favorable outcomes. Emily and Parker never, ever coloring on the walls with crayon would be favorable. Raising kids who don’t flip out every time something goes wrong—leading by example—is critical. If necessary, ask Kristen to help define what’s important.
The storm of ideas and dot-connecting finally let up around two A.M., and rather than finishing the laundry, I went back to the beginning of my entry and thought about what I’d written. Going with the flow was shaping up to be an essential behavioral goal, on a par with Be her friend, first and always. Which worried me, because going with the flow was clearly against my nature. Then again, if I were relying solely on Best Instincts, there would be nothing to practice.
I can do this, I thought. There are so many areas in my life that will improve by going with the flow. There’s no telling how much of a game changer this is going to be.