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Originally Posted by oberlee  On the other, however, it doesn't work and leaves me feeling a bit...put off. Animals are not our peers. As a pet, a dog is more like a child than a lover. I know I praised the "reward" thing above, and that is great, but at the same time, partners are not someone we have authority over to "reward" or "praise." Ideally, anyway. The whole analogy gives a weird master/submissive quality to relationships that is unsettling. In our relationships this exists, but it's very fluid, and not constant. Also, we shouldn't have to "train" our partners. That means you're in a bad relationship. |
We train our partners regardless if you realize it or not.
If you never appreciate your partner regardless of what he or she does for you, you train them to know that they can't expect appreciation from you. If you train your partner by always expecting them to perform certain tasks or chores because it's their job, you're training them to perform those certain tasks and if they don't perform them, they may experience negative feedback from you. If you never tell your partner you love them regularly and you only tell them you love them when you want something from them, you train your partner to expect that treatment, that you only love them if they behave a certain way or perform certain tasks. When you look at your partner with "bedroom eyes", your partner is trained to know what that means and that he/she may be experiencing a very good time with you very soon.
This happens in relationships all the time, in fact I would challenge you to view your current relationship and find an area where you don't do this to your partner or vice versa, I would argue that it's almost impossible that this doesn't happen even to a very small extent. It doesn't mean it's a bad relationship (or maybe it does depending on your POV) but it does mean that training is present, we condition ourselves & our partners to respond a specific way due to the stimulus provided on a regular, daily basis. You just may not be conscious of the fact that you do it.
The best relationships are those that look like a mutual admiration society and keep up that pattern of reinforcing the positives about the other partner and never focusing on the negatives. Showing appreciation for each other on a daily basis reinforces those strong feelings and you can view that type of stimulus as a form of training.
Training can be made to sound like a bad word but when you are repeating specific behaviors to obtain specific results & responses, you are training yourself & your partner to continue doing those things that make each other feel good, when you look at it that way, the word training isn't that bad.
