David spent years trying to be the 'perfect' husband. It completely backfired.

American author David Finch was inspecting an annoying hole in his favourite pair of underwear when his wife Kristen Finch walked into their bathroom and told him she wasn't happy in their relationship. 

For years leading up, he had been desperate to be the 'perfect husband'. 

But his hyper fixation on this pursuit of relationship perfection ended up being his marriage's downfall, he tells Mamamia's No Filter.

"She came in and said, 'Hey you know that thing where we're trying to fix our marriage. Well, I don't want to do that anymore,'" recalls Finch. "I was so confused. I didn't cry. I just said okay."

For as long as he can remember, Finch has always experienced the world differently from those around him.

He tells No Filter that he was certainly classified as a "nerd" at school in the '90s, but many of his friends were athletes, so Finch became "popular by proxy". It put him in a fortunate position, though he still felt different from his peers. 

He was very hyper-observant. He'd rather be at home practicing his saxophone or drawing pictures than at a Friday night party. He could pick up new skills or have an acute understanding of a new concept within 30 minutes of concentrating on it. 

Finch had Asperger's syndrome, which is now more commonly classified simply as autism. But he wouldn't know he had autism until years later. It was actually his future wife that would guide him towards receiving a diagnosis.

"There was always a love with Kristen and me, we knew each other way back when we were in preschool," says Finch.

David and Kristen Finch on their wedding day. Image: Supplied/Facebook.

Once the pair entered high school, they became firm friends. Finch says he never felt "good enough" to be romantically with Kristen. And she had eyes for another man, Mike.

"Mike was somebody that I had grown up with in school as well, along with Kristen. I was always Kristen's funny, dorky friend. In our early 20s, Mike and Kristen got engaged."

Soon after the engagement though, Mike was killed in a car accident, leaving Kristen distraught. Finch says he struggled to know how to emotionally support his best friend.

"I didn't know how to show up for a friend who was grieving. I knew how to show up for a friend who was happy or annoyed or a little bit sad. After Mike died, she really shut down and went away for a little while," he explains.

"After about a year and a half, weirdly, she and I ended up living in the same town across the street from each other. She called me one late afternoon, and she said, 'Hey, I would love to go get a cup of coffee. Are you around?'"

At the time, Finch hated coffee. 

But the chance of reconnecting with his really close best friend was an opportunity too big to miss. So he swallowed his distaste for coffee and raved about it alongside Kristen at their local cafe.

Slowly it became a coffee every week. Then a coffee every few days. Those coffee catchups turned into dinners. Love blossomed.

"I would say to myself, 'You're dating your best friend. If you screw this up, you've lost a girlfriend and your best friend.' It was high stakes," he notes. "But she loved this weird guy she was dating. She really loves people who are authentic, unique and quirky, people who are not mass produced humans."

The pair would go on to marry and have two kids. 

But five years into marriage, Finch's "unique quirks" started to grate on Kristen, who didn't full understand his behaviour in certain social settings. The marriage was not going well.

"It wasn't this willful denial of social norms. It's just those norms haven't been presented to me in a way that I've internalised and that I'm willing to perpetuate and emulate," explains Finch. "I had a great deal of inflexibility, and a sort of intense preoccupation with random, weird things. Those things were then being challenged in being married and also in fatherhood. My routine wasn't the same anymore."

Kristen, a speech pathologist, at this point had begun working with kids diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. She started to see striking parallels between these kids and her husband's mannerisms.

Finch went on to a see a specialist, with his wife's support, and was officially diagnosed. He says it was a "big moment of relief", like a "rebirthing".

"For some reason, that confirmation gave her license to see me in a different light, to forgive me. She was like, 'I now know that it's not your fault. You're not willfully being this pain in the butt.' She kissed me on the forehead, went upstairs and she slept better than she had slept in years."

David and Kristen Finch today. Image: Supplied/Facebook.

The whole experience inspired Finch to write his book, The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband.

It's a candid tale of self-improvement on steroids — Finch devoting himself to improving his marriage by zealous and excessive note-taking, performance reviews, and writing collection of hundreds of maxims and hard-won epiphanies. 

Yet ironically, it was his hyper fixation on fixing his relationship that almost was its demise.

***

"In the bathroom I was like, 'Wait a minute. What do you mean? Are you divorcing me? Are we separating?' She replied, 'No I don't think it's a divorce. I don't think we're separating. It's more like we're detaching.'"

Kristen added: "Let's just call it unmarried."

Reflecting on that moment eight years into their marriage, Finch says it was "like a huge mic drop".

Kristen's idea of 'unmarried' was similar to 'conscious uncoupling'.

Interestingly, she wanted to stay in a monogamous relationship with Finch. Rather she wanted this to be an experiment in behaviour modification — for the two of them to focus on themselves and their own happiness.

"She essentially sent me out into the world as this free range husband. She wanted me to go and find passion projects that weren't about being a better husband," says Finch.

So he got into mountain biking and standup comedy. He wrote more and even started his own business. But it was a process that he found (understandably) deeply confusing.

Eight years on from that 'unmarried' conversation, Finch says he and Kristen have never been better.

They still live together and co-parent their two kids. Basically, they're now no longer codependent and they have their own hobbies. They're still monogamous. They just don't have any resentment or an overwhelming amount of emotional investment in their marriage, explains Finch. 

It's also been great for their sex life (and yes they're still physically intimate in their 'unmarried' marriage). 

"Kristen's whole thing was that I kept asking in all facets, 'How can I be better?' She said it was needy and a bit childish. When you are not burning with resentment, and you don't feel these feelings of regret or whatever, sex is amazing," he says.

"I thought the whole point of marriage was to outsource my happiness to another person, and vice versa. But it's been great — we each just get to live our own lives now."

You can listen to the full conversation on Mamamia's No Filter now.

Feature Image: Supplied/Facebook.