I don’t think Tim and I will ever be done with course-correcting our communications. Even after 20 years together, Tim and I are constantly checking in with each other. It’s work. It’s also key, I think, to the success of our relationship.
I’m going to share one of Tim’s best relationship tips here. I think of it as the What Can We Do Differently Technique. He’s used it countless times on me. I try to use it too, but I’m probably not as adept at it whipping it out when I’m upset. I tend to sulk more. Tim sulks, too. I suppose sulking means you care, but it isn’t much fun.
Yes, sometimes we just retreat into self-pity after one of us irritates the other before we feel able to use the What Can We Do Differently thing. This makes sense to me physiologically. The sympathetic nervous system, once it gets triggered into fight or flight, takes it’s sweet time cooling off. Sometimes you must wait for all that cortisol get catabolized before you can even talk. Hours, according to my research. Stupid physiology.
First I'll lay out the source of a lot of our conflict: our differing attention styles.
When Tim first met me, he happily observed, “You’re an HSP!” (Highly Sensitive Person). He then bought me Elaine Aron’s first book on the topic of people like me. The started me on the journey of learning about how to manage what for me is a way-too-stimulating world.
I’m still working on this. Later I would be diagnosed in a clinical trial by the Max Planck institute with a 99.99% probability that I have synesthesia, which for me includes colored hearing. I just thought everyone was like me. This is how I am wired and it never goes away. Every single sound I hear intrudes into my brain as a colored shape. I live in a sea of earplugs.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want to be like other people. I want other people to be like me.
My synesthesia creates a rich world that informs my creativity. Yet I am often quietly struggling to navigate a very noisy world full of apparently utterly oblivious people whenever I leave my house. I’ve spent a lot of my life not wanting to leave my house wishing that other people were more like me. I hope that isn’t offensive. It’s honest.
“We’re both on some sort of spectrum,” Tim explains to me. I think this makes us protective of one another, because we both know how it feels to be outliers.
I can’t tune anything out. Tim, on the other hand, has difficulty tuning things in. But oh boy, he can hyperfocus. I explain to friends that my husband has a narrow bandpass filter. Whatever gets in, gets in. I repeat myself a lot. Also, (waving hands in front of his face and saying TIM first) I repeat myself a lot. And then I follow up with, “Did you get that?” He genuinely appreciates my hand waving and my saying his name. He's never sure that I’m addressing him, he explains, which is weird given that we live alone together.
I have learned not to use the letters A and D and H and D together in describing how Tim functions. Tim finds the D parts (Disability and Disorder) deeply offensive and if I make the mistake of using them, he feels hurt. He will defensively point out all his extraordinary accomplishments, like over 70 patents, a full-length surround sound movie, a CD where he hired a live symphony to play his music, his painting, and right now, his Maffle patent. With Maffle, Tim’s merely trying to reinvent an AI-free ad-free private version of the internet that doesn’t hurt people, a project that has required him to program all day for much of the past 7 years. Not kidding.
I joke that Tim has trouble doing things that are simple.
It’s true that those Letters That Shall Not Be Named are often shared with famous weird entrepreneurs like my husband. I can safely call it Tim’s “attention issue” without causing hurt feelings around here. Tim’s attention issue comes with side effects, like only processing about 20 percent of whatever I say, losing objects constantly, and having absolutely zero idea how to use a thing called a calendar. The other day at a party Tim pointed to me at and said gleefully, “She’s my human Post It note!” Not a job I wanted, but someone’s got to do it. Anything that has paperwork, Tim shudders. I do paperwork.
So, in short, I can not tune anything out, Tim can not tune anything in.
This gets interesting when we try working in the same space. Tim longs for me to work with him in his studio and I usually do. I'm so touched that he wants me near him. But he is oblivious that his toe tapping finger snapping apple crunching concert across the room makes my brain want to explode. I also can not handle motion in my peripheral vision. I secretly loathe whirling ceiling fan blades. It’s like I’m in a giant blender. So when Tim gets up and wanders around buzzing and bouncing around his studio I want to get out a giant man-sized fly swatter just to make it stop. Fortunately he designed these amazing movable wall panels, to be used as vocal booths. I slide these around to block out all the activity of his peripheral nervous system going on on the other side of the room. Some part of his body is always in motion. It's like a moving seizure. The moveable wall panels are really helpful.
Prior to focusing at my computer, I announce, “I am going to put in my earplugs now,” as the sign that he needs to shut up. It doesn’t always work. Earplugs only do so much. Sometimes I give up and, laptop under my arm, head up to my office and hope he doesn’t have hurt feelings. “Wait, don’t leave me!” He cries out tragically. “I’ll be quiet, really!”
And sometimes he remembers to stay quiet.
The other day I was trying in what little time I had left to work on my computer in his studio before rushing off for an appointment. Meanwhile, Tim, on his computer, can not resist sharing with me the adjective/verb noun combos his random naming software for his Maffle project keeps generating.
He created a program that combines two words, to be used as handles for new users. I am, for example, known as Puny Photon, which works because Tim likes to call me Sparkles (supposedly for the optimistic temperament that he claims I possess.) Other usernames that his program has conjured are Fabled Wind, Prepaid Couple, Gnarled Sportsman, Ancient Listening, Moral Shamble, and the unfortunate Scat Cupcake. You get the idea.
I was determined to send off some timely scheduling messages to my writing critique groups, but Tim kept shouting out these usernames his program was generating. Each time, I was jerked away from my focus. I kept trying to refocus. Out of the blue, Tim cries out. Mop dipper! Reviled Knob!
“Okay, thank you,” I said testily, thinking that my acid tone will clue him in to my state.
I worked a few seconds longer only to hear Tim cry out, “Naive Romance!”
At that point, I just gave up. I was not able to send off my letters. My fury boiling, I feared saying anything I might regret. Self pity commenced as I left for my appointment.
Driving a while, I tried to calm myself down and failed. Not liking my state of mind, I got the courage to call Tim to complain. I told him I didn’t like how I got so angry, and then I felt I couldn’t express it.
Sometimes he gets hurt when I complain, so I knew this was a risk. To my relief, he didn’t get hurt or defensive, but just asked what we could do differently going forward.
So, this is the whole What Can We Do Differently thing, right here.
It isn’t easy to say when you are upset. But it can work like magic.
Tim does it often. It stuns me every time. The question assumes we agree to do something differently. It assumes we are working together for a common goal, rather than on opposite teams. It assumes that we can prevent a miscommunication from happening again.
He said he truly didn’t know that I was in this intense focused state. He thought that because I was about to leave, that meant I couldn’t possibly be highly focused on my computer at that point. Weird. But I think I understand how he might think this way. Tim does not focus when he leaves the house.
When Tim leaves the house, he does what I think of as Tim’s Pirouettes. The door closes, you wait, and then, yes, there he is again, back to retrieve the thing he forgot. And then the door closes and again, yes, here he is again for another thing he forgot. This goes on a while, like Tim’s natural reverb setting. He thinks my highly focused behavior prior to leaving is neurotic and unusual. I don’t do any Pirouettes, though. I do everything I can to avoid the Pirouettes. Maybe he will understand my focused leaving behavior some day. Maybe not.
I thought about his question. I had not actually told him I was focusing when he kept interrupting me. I thought my irritated tone would have communicated enough.
I told him I probably could have been more direct in telling him that I was focusing.
He said that what he really needed a code word or phrase.
I’m familiar with this idea of his. He has in the past suggested I need to wear a special hat for when I am focusing, so he would look at me and then instantly know not to bother me. I think this is an unconscious form of victim blaming, (“but you weren’t wearing your Warning Hat!”) so as of yet I have not tried employing a Warning Hat for whenever I am focusing. But maybe I need to see what I can do differently.
“What code word could I use that would work on you?” I ask, feeling skeptical.
“The next time I interrupt you, why don’t you shout HOLY CHRIST JESUS?”
“I can do that?” I say excitedly.
“Of course,” Tim says.
I admitted that would feel satisfying. But I’m not sure. “Are you sure it’s okay?”
“I am writing HOLY CHRIST JESUS on a Post It note right now and putting it on your desk so you remember,” Tim assures me.
I start to feel better as I drive. Maybe this will work.
While he’s on the phone with me, Tim can’t resist sharing more usernames his program has generated.
“Here’s one,” he says. “Some Assfish.”
I crack up. “Okay. What’s an Assfish?”
Tim gets onto Wikipedia. “It’s is a real fish,” he says. “It says it lives at a depth of over four thousand meters. It has bony ears.”
“That’s you.” I say. I know I'm being childish, but I'm still feeling some residual irritation. “You’re a bony-eared Assfish.”
He takes this happily and goes on to read with breathless wonder that the Assfish has the smallest brain to body ratio of all known vertebrates.
I make a mental note to give another donation to Wikipedia.
Before hanging up, I tell him that I love him. “You have the best metacognition of any man I’ve known,” I tell him sincerely.
I also tell him that if my shouting HOLY CHRIST JESUS doesn’t work I am going to start putting Ritalin in his breakfast cereal.
I can’t stop laughing on my way to my appointment. Some Assfish.
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