What Shamu taught me about a happy marriage - 6/25/06

[Smartmarriages]

- WHAT SHAMU TAUGHT ME ABOUT A HAPPY MARRIAGE
The New York Times
June 25, 2006
Modern Love
By AMY SUTHERLAND

AS I wash dishes at the kitchen sink, my husband paces behind me, irritated.
"Have you seen my keys?" he snarls, then huffs out a loud sigh and stomps
from the room with our dog, Dixie, at his heels, anxious over her favorite
human's upset.

In the past I would have been right behind Dixie. I would have turned off
the faucet and joined the hunt while trying to soothe my husband with
bromides like, "Don't worry, they'll turn up." But that only made him
angrier, and a simple case of missing keys soon would become a full-blown
angst-ridden drama starring the two of us and our poor nervous dog.

Now, I focus on the wet dish in my hands. I don't turn around. I don't say a
word. I'm using a technique I learned from a dolphin trainer.

I love my husband. He's well read, adventurous and does a hysterical
rendition of a northern Vermont accent that still cracks me up after 12
years of marriage.

But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He
hovers around me in the kitchen asking if I read this or that piece in The
New Yorker when I'm trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He leaves
wadded tissues in his wake. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal
deafness but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other
side of the house. "What did you say?" he'll shout.

These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce, but in
sum they began to dull my love for Scott. I wanted ‹ needed ‹ to nudge him a
little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a
little less, who wouldn't keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would
be easier to love.

So, like many wives before me, I ignored a library of advice books and set
about improving him. By nagging, of course, which only made his behavior
worse: he'd drive faster instead of slower; shave less frequently, not more;
and leave his reeking bike garb on the bedroom floor longer than ever.

We went to a counselor to smooth the edges off our marriage. She didn't
understand what we were doing there and complimented us repeatedly on how
well we communicated. I gave up. I guessed she was right ‹ our union was
better than most ‹ and resigned myself to stretches of slow-boil resentment
and occasional sarcasm.

Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for
exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine to California, where
I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching
hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail
clipping, and baboons to skateboard.

I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught
dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same
techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American
husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should
reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't. After all, you don't get
a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same
goes for the American husband.

Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the
hamper. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any
soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes
kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles
became smaller.

I was using what trainers call "approximations," rewarding the small steps
toward learning a whole new behavior. You can't expect a baboon to learn to
flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect an American husband
to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for
picking up a single sock. With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a
bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to
praise every small act every time: if he drove just a mile an hour slower,
tossed one pair of shorts into the hamper, or was on time for anything.

I also began to analyze my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic
animal. Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species, from
anatomy to social structure, to understand how it thinks, what it likes and
dislikes, what comes easily to it and what doesn't. For example, an elephant
is a herd animal, so it responds to hierarchy. It cannot jump, but can stand
on its head. It is a vegetarian.

The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy
matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a
gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes
naturally, but being on time does not. He's an omnivore, and what a trainer
would call food-driven.

Once I started thinking this way, I couldn't stop. At the school in
California, I'd be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf
accept you as a pack member, but I'd be thinking, "I can't wait to try this
on Scott."

On a field trip with the students, I listened to a professional trainer
describe how he had taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his
head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats
on the ground. This, he explained, is what is called an "incompatible
behavior," a simple but brilliant concept.

Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the
birds something else, a behavior that would make the undesirable behavior
impossible. The birds couldn't alight on the mats and his head
simultaneously.

At home, I came up with incompatible behaviors for Scott to keep him from
crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up
parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the
kitchen island. Or I'd set out a bowl of chips and salsa across the room.
Soon I'd done it: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.

I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer
introduced me to least reinforcing syndrome (L. R. S.). When a dolphin does
something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way. He stands still for
a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work.
The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. If a
behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away.

In the margins of my notes I wrote, "Try on Scott!"

TO read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html?ex=1151985600&en=feb4e
152a5c30208&ei=5070&emc=eta1

AND, WE SHOULD PROBABLY ALL BUY HER BOOK:
Amy Sutherland is the author of "Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and
Lessons at the Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers" (Viking, June
2006). She lives in Boston and in Portland, Me.



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