Two books—one new and the other
old—deal with this issue of training husbands. Angela Christian Pope’s How To Train Your Husband (September 5,
2013) is short, concise and to the point. She offers practical recommendations
to help women cope with their husbands and illicit from them the positive
responses that will make their marriages better. Amy Sutherland’s book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and
Marriage (2007), is unique because the author uses animal training
techniques to train what she calls “that stubborn but lovable species, the
American husband.”
Pope acknowledges that not all
husbands and wives are the same of course, but many do share common traits. She
then makes a bold statement, one that sums up the needs of that complex male
creature we call a husband: “Other than love, which everyone needs, the two
biggest things most men need in life are respect and sex.” If only women would
understand that simple fact, their lives would be a lot easier. Simply put, according
to Pope, men are biologically and inherently “wired for” for these needs. While
many men would find this characterization of them very simplistic (alas, whatever
happened to men’s obsession with male comradeship, sports, and power?), Pope
interjects her expertise to bolster her claim. Other than her educational
credentials, which include degrees in psychology and education, she has also counseled
many couples. Still, her biggest accomplishment is the fact that she was once
in a volatile marriage that lasted for 16 years and then later experienced and
survived a bitter divorce. She has since been happily married again. In other
words, she has seen it all—what works in marriage and what does not.
Training husbands is no easy task
because men bring into their marriages some long entrenched behaviors.
Interestingly, Pope also delivers a cautionary note for women: You can’t train
your husbands unless you are willing to train yourself. In fact, the author
makes it clear that what men do is generally react to what women do. She gives some
general pointers to women as part of her husband-training:
1. Avoid
criticizing your husband in public and especially in front of the children. Such
scathing criticism will “tear a man like nothing.”
2. If
you have to fight, do so fairly. That means no name-calling. There are certain
words one has to avoid like “never” and “always.” Accusing your husband by
saying he ‘never’ cleans or is ‘always’ late will make him defensive and
unwilling to change.
3. Don’t
act like you are fine when in fact you are angry with him. Tell him why you are
upset with him, but in a calm way.
4. In
terms of intimacy, avoid always having a headache. Men are not dumb and they
know when they are being rejected with untenable excuses.
5. Don’t
play games with your husband because being honest is the best policy.
6. Compliment
him as much as you can. These acts of appreciation, indeed, will strengthen
your relationship. In other words, don’t ever take him for granted.
7. Keep
your private life private. While it is a good idea to have a special friend whom
you can confide in, it is always better not to divulge your marital secrets to
others. Keeping your husband’s secrets is also paramount because it is a matter
of trust.
Pope adds other recommendations as
well such as making all important decisions together, praising him, showing
your love instead of simply saying ‘I love you’ and never using sex as a weapon
because if you do that, he will see you as “the enemy” instead of the object of
his affection.” And finally, men need their personal space, so let him have guy
time.
While Pope’s advice might seem
paradoxically geared to making men happy, she in fact deals with the subject of
training husbands as a kind of team work that can occur between couples.
Tellingly, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. When the author
tells women to respect their husbands, she also makes it clear that wives must
also be respected in return; respect is never a-one-way-street.
Amy Sutherland’s book is a bit
controversial because her techniques will raise some eyebrows. Sutherland was
already an accomplished writer and the author of a bestseller, Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons
at the World’s Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers (2006) when she
wrote an interesting article (the most viewed and e-mailed piece in the New York Times in the year 2006), called
“What Shamu taught me about life, love and marriage.” Her book bears the same
title.
According to Sutherland, “the key
to marital bliss is to ignore negative habits and reward positive ones, the
same approach animal trainers use to get killer whales to leap from their
tanks, and elephants to stand on their heads.” Animal trainers use a method
called the Least Reinforcing Scenario (LRS) which is: You reward the behavior
you like and ignore the one you disapprove of. When a trainer notices a dolphin
has done something wrong, he stands still for a few seconds without looking at
the animal in the eye, and then he returns to the work. The idea is that any
response from the trainer, either positive or negative, “fuels a behavior” but
if an unacceptable behavior does not provoke any response that behavior simply
dies out.
While Sutherland admits that her
animal training technique is neither original nor a quick fix, she is adamant
that the approach works for both genders.
Sutherland was leading what
seemed to be a happy life. Her loving husband, Scott, had many good traits but
she was annoyed by his habits of constantly losing his keys and then bugging
her about their whereabouts, leaving his dirty laundry on the floor, putting
empty milk cartons back in the refrigerator, coming late to dinner appointments
as she waited for him in restaurants, and crowding her in the kitchen as she
cooked. Her concern was; how to deal with Scott’s annoying habits and free her
marriage from these irritants. While researching her first book, she thought of
adopting the techniques animal trainers use. Sutherland began to ignore Scott’s
nagging questions about finding his keys; she started giving him snacks to
munch in the living room while she prepared for dinner, and rewarded him by
complimenting him every time he placed his dirty clothes in the hamper.
Her technique did work, and her
marriage, in her own words, became “far smoother, her husband much easier to
love.” She realized that her habit of taking his negative traits personally had
been counter-productive. As the animal trainers’ motto says, “It is never the
animal’s fault.” She added, “The more
positive I was with my husband, or more importantly, the less critical I was,
the faster his husbandly defensiveness faded away.” When Sutherland asked her
husband to do something, he responded positively. “He seemed at ease,” she
noted, “maybe in a way he hadn’t before, he begun to trust me.”
Humans have the habit of not
noticing good deeds and instead focusing on only the negative habits. For instance,
parents do not notice the times when their children are riding in the car
peacefully, but when one makes a mistake, there is an urgent need to dwell on
that negative behavior. Husbands are also not noticed for all the good things they
do for their family, argues Sutherland, but when one does not take out the
garbage, all hell breaks loose.
When Sutherland says the
technique works for both genders, she is right. One day, she went to the
dentist and had crown work. For a week, she was in excruciating pain and kept
complaining to Scott about her physical condition. Then, she noticed that her
husband was quiet and kept listening to her as she whined without uttering a
word. Suddenly, she realized what was going on. “Are you giving me an L.R.S? [i.e
ignoring my constant whining] You are, aren’t you,” she asked. Scott smiled. It
became evident to her that he was training her, the American wife. The phrase
“Did you just shamu me?” became her husband’s typical response when he felt subjected
to Sutherland ’tactics.
Sutherland implies that we are all animals but
men are different animals than women animals. While humans are more complicated
than other animals, there are universal “rules of behavior” that indeed “cut
across all species.”
Husband training conjures up the
notion that women have all the answers for making their marriages work better. Why
is it that only women have to work harder than their husbands to make their
marriages successful? Why do men need to be trained? As a rule, a trainer has
the knowledge and the information a trainee lacks, but the two cited authors here
see husband training as more of an effort to educate women about the simplicity
of men’s needs and the predictability of male behavior. In reality, men are
neither dogs nor dolphins who simply respond to certain stimuli. The trainer method
of reinforcing the positive and ignoring the negative, however, is very
effective in learning. But men are more complex specis than animals because animals
don’t react to power the same way that humans often do. Animals see their
trainers as their masters; humans don’t see others that way. Moreover, men are of
course capable of training their trainer.
