In the little, private zoo known as marriage, it helps to remind yourself that you and your partner are just two bipedal primates trying to get along in intimate co-habitation.
The trick, it turns out, is all in the training.
That's what Amy Sutherland discovered, and she didn't even have to learn to crack a whip.
Blame it on Shamu, the killer whale. “I was inspired by watching how they teach killer whales to do incredible behaviours, to leap out of the water on command,” Ms. Sutherland says over lunch recently in Toronto. “Think about it, they are the top predators in the ocean, and trainers can ride them. They can have a good relationship with them.”
Which caused her to ponder the world's oldest marital issue: How to train her husband, Scott, to pick up his dirty laundry off the floor.
A former journalist who wrote about food and the arts for local papers in Vermont and Maine, Ms. Sutherland submitted a column for the popular Modern Love feature in The New York Times about how animal-training techniques improved her marriage. She did it to support her book, Kicked, Bitten and Scratched, about an exotic animal training school in California. The response was overwhelming. Within days, publishers had tracked her down. Reporters from around the world were requesting interviews. The Today show invited her to appear.
You'd think she had made an earth-shattering discovery. Maybe she had: Humans are animals, too.
She promptly wrote a new book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage. Hollywood producers swooped in for the rights and snatched up her animal-training book as well. Actress Naomi Watts is set to star in the story about a young woman who works as an animal trainer during the day and applies her techniques on her love interest in the off-hours.
Progressive animal trainers have simple rules. Reward the behaviour you want. Ignore the behaviour you don't want. Ms. Sutherland learned that positive reinforcement – and more important, the art of saying nothing when something displeased her – worked like magic.
Her husband of 14 years, whom she met when they both worked for the Burlington Free Press in Vermont, had a few annoying habits, she explains. When he misplaced his keys, a common occurrence in their household, he would work himself up into a lather. She would often participate in his agitation, as he stomped around searching. But when she ignored him, they were both better off. No arguments erupted. Eventually, he would stride into the kitchen to announce he had located his keys. Standing at the sink, with her back to him, she would say gently over her shoulder, “Great, see you later.”
He is also an avid biker, and tends to leave a heap of stinky exercise gear on the bathroom floor. When she nagged him about the habit, he would suffer from the convenient affliction known as “spousal deafness.” She decided to take a cue from the dolphin trainers. She became more patient. He did get around to picking it up, and when he did, she thanked him.
She applied the technique to other aspects of their shared life. Instead of bugging him to shave more often, she silenced herself. When he drove too fast, she made sure her seatbelt was fastened and her lips buttoned. When he did shave, she made a point of complimenting him. When he drove slower, she expressed gratitude. “He basked in my growing appreciation” she writes. Like most animals, he tends to repeat the behaviours that prompt praise.
