Why you should treat your partner like your dog

[Jonathan Mead]

I recently wrote an article about why you should treat your partner like your dog. I think perhaps there's something we like can learn from our canine friends about better relationships.

You can check it out here:
5 Reasons You Should Treat Your Partner Like Your Dog | Jonathan Mead

I'd love to hear your thoughts. =)

[uberinquisitive]

Cute article!

Not sure how #4 relates to dogs?

[oberlee]

Jonathan Mead, here's what I like about your article:

-it's got a great hook. Any good article has a touch of the "Huh, what???!" to it that gets us reading. We then realize that you mean something the direct opposite of what you seem to be saying.

-you make great points. I think the one about reward vs. punishment is very, very true. We often, especially when in a relationship for a while, tend to take the positive for granted.

-the way you remind us that a human relationship is one that goes deeper than behaviors, deeper than "why don't you wash the dishes" or "why don't you take me out more" (can you tell I'm a woman? lol) and making that into an analogy of man and dog, only because the relationship between a man (using that broadly, I'm a woman after all) and a dog is nothing more than emotional.

Here's what bothers me:

-purely grammatical: you write in the beginning (and this is copied and pasted): "This advice might sound a little usual, but just go with me for a second." I'm assuming you mean UNusual. The funny thing is, most people will read it as such only because that's what they expect, but still.

-uh, well, what I praised you for above. That is, equating our everyday human relationships with those we have with animals. On the one hand, it brings it down to what it really is. 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.

Overall, I think it's a good article. I would stick in some things at the end, such as why you can't take the man-dog to man-woman (or woman-man) analogy too far, and what its shortcomings are. If you did that, my experience with the article would be:

"WHAT??? Let's read further."

"Oh...he's not a dick. He's writing about love and acceptance of your partner. Awesome."

"Wow. He's right. I love how transferring love to love of an animal shows what's really important in a relationship."

"Wait a minute...this is a little weird. My partner isn't a dog, he isn't submissive to me. Nor me to him."

"OH...cool. He addresses that and shows the values and shortcomings of his analogy. I love this guy. How insightful. I'm going to go cook a romantic meal for my hubby because he is so wonderful to me. And he took out the trash before I asked him to."

Hope that helps.

[robc]

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.

[Jonathan Mead]

@ 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.