Anyway, I lived through a marriage much like what is described. If I wanted to know what he did with the rent money I got the cold shoulder treatment. If I pretended that everything was fine even though his fantasy business plan would put us in the poor house again, I got lotsa love and attention. If I met what I knew was his girlfriend and acted nice without saying a word, I got a happy husband and didn’t have to hear his threats about dumping me and the kids. Sure worked well for eight years. And when I left him, he had no problem finding a new partner to support his behavior.

I agree, it is passive aggressive to some extent. This ‘solution’ also smacks of the old stereotype of the woman as the ‘fixer’ and mature one and the man as the child who must be reigned in. High maintenance men are great for distracting the woman from caring for herself.

Which leads me to my conclusion that what the writer proposes is a form of co-dependence, which still has quite a following among people. No surprise that her ‘suggestions’ are popular.

the last person I knew who was a great enthusiast of this book turned out to be a charming, manipulative sociopath who badly abused one of my friends.

make of it what you will.

What I get from the idea of “good teachers use operant conditioning” has more to do with maintaining order in the classroom than any larger questions of teaching methodology and philosophy. It has to do with teaching students the proper behavior for being in your classroom and it begins the moment you walk through the door for the first class meeting.

In my experience, a quick look of disapproval for disruptive/unwanted behavior followed by continuing the lesson without missing a beat can work wonders. When disruptive students are an issue and we have had a good class, I praise the entire class and reward them, if possible.

Of course, I learned this all the hard way.

(BTW, I love your post because it captures a lot of the queasy feelings I’ve had following this discussion from blog to blog.)

Good teachers and managers are usually good operant conditioners.

Managers maybe, Pavlov is the patron saint of HR departments the world over, but good teachers merely lubricate the student’s path along the learning curve of the subject, a bad teacher is the one who doesn’t teach the student to the level of being able to teach themselves, but instead spends all their time creating a co-dependent relationship between the student and the teacher that leaves the student unable to work without the teacher there coaching them.

If you extend the metaphor to relationships the bad teacher will end up with what Sutherland has, this system where her husband has to be constantly trained and retrained forever to stop pissing her off, where as if she was a good teacher she’d be training him to be self correcting, because like the good student he should want to not piss her off and to take her feelings into account before he indulges in assholey little hissy fits. He’s a sentient being, he should be expected to act like it.

Oh, wait. You meant something different, right?

I don’t know why people stay in relationships that don’t work, but if you can make them work just by changing the tone, I see an alternative to calling the divorce lawyer that may at least be worth trying.

I can understand being pissed off at someone who seems to be trying to discourage you from being who you are and encouraging you to be who you aren’t (I once lived with a guy who only greeted me with a hug when he came home if I was washing the dishes – ick), but that’s not always what it is.

You don’t have to be someone who has tantrums and behaves counterproductively – and a lot of parental or partner behavior actually encourages counterproductive behavior, so you might as well stop and say, “I gotta change my tapes.” If changing your tapes means you ignore the behavior that annoys you and respond to the behavior you like, well, that’s actually just being sensible – and really more natural.

It’s what you really do with most things, isn’t it? I don’t like watching football, so I ignore it and read a book instead; it doesn’t have to be a fight. I like watching Buffy, so if someone is watching it I will join them; it doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s a straightforward expression of, and reaction to, what I like and don’t like that makes no particular demands on anyone.

You don’t have to be ignoring what you don’t like “for the relationship” – just ignore it because you don’t like it, the way you would ordinarily do with anything else. The trick here is to realize that by actively trying to do things that are unnatural to you in order to alter someone else’s behavior, you’re just making things worse.

Yeah, it’s not the same as Having a Discussion, but it’s still perfectly honest communication.