@ Oberlee: Thank you for your feedback, it really means a lot to me. I'm glad that you can see the positive points of thisa article as well as some of its limitations. You made me realize that there is probably a need for a disclaimer of sorts, I don't want people to take it the wrong way. I only meant it to be a guide to what we can learn from our relationship with our pet, not to be taken literally, like everything applies across the board.
Because of your feedback and another persons comment, I've added this to the end:
"A grain of salt.
This guide isn’t meant to be taken completely literally. Obviously there are some big differences between romantic relationships and the relationships you have with a pet. Also, a lot of people assume master/servant roles (you decide which is which, with cats it can get confusing =P), which shouldn’t be applied to human or romantic relationships. Some people see their pets as their children as well, some people are abusive to their pets. These are two more examples where you shouldn’t translate the your pet relationship to your relationship with your partner.
Most importantly, we should take this advice with a grain of salt and take away the lessons of forgiveness and acceptance . If we can apply this to our personal relationships, we can see there’s a lot to be learned from our humble friends."
I hope that helps clarify my intent and the message I was trying to convey.
@ Rob: That's a really good point about training. We are training our partners all the time, whether we realize it or not.
I think it would help the negative connotation of training if we view it in a mutual training way. Instead of seeing training just as master/servant relationship (the way it is mostly viewed) we can see it as both partners being trainers and trainees.
With that distinction I think we can see that training isn't necessarily something negative, it's just the framing in which we see it.
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