How to train a husband

Attention, frustrated wives: if you want your husband to start listening to you and stop leaving his socks on the floor, all you need is a little patience and a lot of mackerel. Such is the putative relationship advice of Amy Sutherland, a journalist who spent a year at an animal-trainer school and decided to apply the trainers’ techniques to her husband’s annoying habits.

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.

So to teach her husband, Scott, to stop storming around the house when he couldn’t find his keys, she practiced what trainers call Least Reinforcing Scenario, which means she ignored his outbursts, and didn’t offer to help with the search. To prevent Scott from hovering over her while she tried to cook, she engineered "incompatible behaviours" by setting a bowl of chips and salsa at the other end of the room. Soon she had a key-finding, salsa-eating mate and, she says, a happier marriage.

Sutherland first wrote about her experiment in the New York Times in 2006, where it became the most e-mailed story of the year. Now her book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love And Marriage, has come out, and a movie is in development. Sutherland admits that her ideas are not groundbreaking: in the 1890s Ivan Pavlov experimented with dogs to study stimulus and response.

In the 1930s, B. F. Skinner used rats and pigeons to develop his theory of "operant behaviours," the idea that behaviour is affected by its consequences. That doesn’t mean the strategy is not controversial: critics bristle at the idea that humans are as easily manipulated as dogs or marine mammals, and contend that books such as Sutherland’s reinforce war-of-the-sexes stereotypes about women using their feminine wiles to manipulate simple-minded men.

The idea of women training simple men is a well-worn trope of pop culture. In the 1963 film If A Man Answers, Sandra Dee’s mother hands her a canine-training manual with the advice "If you want a perfect marriage, treat your husband like a dog." More recently, the BBC reality show Bring Your Husband To Heel featured a professional dog trainer teaching wives how to get their husbands to sit and stay.

While Sutherland claims that animal-training techniques work on both genders, in another new book, Seducing The Boys Club, Nina DiSesa advocates a gender-specific approach to changing people’s behaviour. DiSesa, who was the first female chairman of the ad agency McCann Erickson, argues that women should use their femininity to manipulate the men they work with. Instead of criticising an employee’s ad proposal, she flatters him for his "brilliant" idea, then sweetly asks if he had any other inspirations. "Women use these tactics with men all the time," she says. "We’re mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters. We know how to handle men, we just don’t do it at work."

While DiSesa’s tactics may appall feminists, the appeal of Sutherland’s approach is obvious: no tearful couples-therapy sessions, no tantrums about unmet expectations. But Sutherland says it’s not a quick fix. In fact, she was the one who wound up being retrained, as she taught herself not to take her husband’s actions personally, and not to react when he did things that annoyed her.

DiSesa also says she retrained herself to stop criticising and confronting the men she worked with, and instead use "S and M" — seduction and manipulation, to get her way.

And, she says, we shouldn’t admit to our manipulations. "If people think I’m being conniving, I am," she says. "But if men see it coming, they’ll duck." Sutherland’s husband eventually caught on to her experiment (it didn’t help that she wrote a book about the animal-trainer school), and even started using the techniques back on her. Now they use the word ‘shamu’ as a verb, as in ‘Did you just shamu me?’

Shamuing might work to get your husband to stop leaving his socks on the bathroom floor, says psychotherapist Marlin Potash, author of Hidden Agendas: What’s Really Going On In Your Relationships. "In small doses, it’s really a good idea," she says. But she’s skeptical of the idea that the technique will work with real marital problems such as lack of communication or sexual incompatibility: "I don’t really believe that changing these small behaviours is how one transforms a marriage."

Sutherland makes no claims to be a relationship expert. And she’s not opposed to therapy, although she says, judging from the enthusiastic response to her essay, "Psychologists might want to consider bringing more animals into the mix."

Animal trainers use lots of tricks to train their charges. Try the techniques below at home.

· Reward positive behaviour: If your mate picks up just one dirty sock without being asked, give lots of praise. Or a tasty fish.

· Ignore negatives: Don’t nag about the rest of the filthy laundry still piled on the floor. Trainers call this Least Reinforcing Scenario.

· Don’t take it personally: Laundry is just laundry, not a symbol for how much your spouse loves you or values your marriage.

A phenomenon called shopping

‘Why are you in the car Pooncha are we going
shoppiiiiiing,’ my 13 year old niece
Rahelle inquired, her eyes sparkling momentarily as she daintily slid herself into the backseat of the car. I’d asked my sister Ru to drop me off in church for a meeting after picking my two nieces up from sports/band practice in school.

I must admit I drip with girlish enthusiasm whenever I anticipate some event at the old alma mater, but the sports meet held Friday had been designated a classified affair due to security concerns. The upshot? The proceedings were off bounds to cheering aunts and other like species.

Notwithstanding, the shopping motif became the hot subject for five minutes as we reprimanded my niece thoroughly for even thinking such flamboyant thoughts in these trying times. Immediately after this lecture/sermon that would have done any young village curate proud, Ru and I sunk our teeth into a deep but vitriolic conversation on the cost of living and stopped only as we arrived in the church premises.

At which time I quickly reminded myself that despite the state of the nation and the economic crisis, I must endeavour at all bally costs to love my neighbour and forgive those who plot and plan etc. All that biblical stuff about turning the other cheek and giving coats if people ask for shirts also made their way into my short term memory.

While I cannot promise that another visit to the vegetable stall or a walk down the super market aisle would not bring back the vitriol, for the moment all was calm and still.

Be that as it may, what is it about teenage girls that make them like shopping so much? I recall in the days of yore, when as a teen, my friends and I would meticulously plan out our shopping expeditions. It was like some medieval treasure hunt as we mapped out a course of action. In those days life was simple.

Shopping and malls meant Liberty Plaza. So We would walk down Colpetty and Bambalapitiya and of course go to Liberty Plaza. Later we were thrilled to prowl around the shops at Unity Plaza. The most daring amongst us, myself included, would look for nose rings in some tiny wayside joint in Wellawatte.

That’s about all the body piercing we were willing to go through except perhaps a provision for four ear rings on each ear. How wild and rebellious we thought ourselves to be, as we sported silly red streaks in our hair (from easy to wash off spray cans). I shudder at the type of body piercing and tattooing that goes on now.

What to wear came next. Who bally cares what we wear to a shop? – nobody I suppose except teenagers. Today I’d go in my PJs if I could. As a teen it took me two hours to decide — and that was just on my ear rings for the outing.

But having said all this I have to leave you with the following advertisement which appeared in a weekly advertising tabloid recently. It was offensive, sexist, ageist, and in every way politically incorrect. Welcome to Sri Lanka, and enjoy.

It said in large letters:

‘Vacancy of Privet (sic) Secretary FEMALE’

‘The ideal candidate should have:-’

‘Fluent (sic) in English’ (naturally one supposes given the content of the ad)

‘Little knowledge in computer’ (nobody told the employer that a ‘little knowledge’ is a dangerous thing)

‘Good looking and social’ (now there’s a come hither line? One would think beauty was in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps the employer wanted to enter the young miss in the ‘Miss Working Girl Contest’ what what!)

Next the advertisement read thus.

‘Unmarried.’ (Really?) The ad goes on to say;

‘Forward your CV within 14 days with a passport sized photograph & contact number.’

Chee Chee Corea was quite regular to school. Why? He wanted to be present with his benefactors constantly. His fortune lay there. The well known Major Chapman was the English master at San Bandick and none dared to cross him. Chee Chee was careful as to how he conducted himself in the presence of Chappie yet keeping his mates in hysterics. During a term examination Chee Chee came up with the following gems where even the stiff upper lipped Chappie could barely conceal his laughter.

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

A backward poet writes inverse

A chicken crossing the road; poultry in motion. If you don’t pay your exorcist, you can get repossessed. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds. You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it. Local Area Network in Australia: The LAN down under. He broke into song because he couldn’t find the key. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine. When you’ve seen one shopping centre, you’ve seen a mall.

 Chee Chee was asked to write a short essay about a foreign family. Here’s what he wrote;

Su Wong marries Lee Wong.

The next year, the Wongs have a new baby.

The nurse brings over a lovely, healthy, bouncy, but definitely a Caucasian, WHITE baby boy.

"Congratulations," says the nurse to the new parents.

"Well Mr. Wong, what will you and Mrs. Wong name the baby?"

The puzzled father looks at his new baby boy and says,

"Well, two Wong’s don’t make a white, so I think we will name him....Sum Ting Wong.

Ta Ra and see you next week.