What I Learned from Shamu

Every now and then I catch myself engaging in old behaviors or thought patterns.

It happened to me recently in the most awful and unexpected way. I was talking to a sponsee who was finding it difficult to reconcile her desires with her partner’s habits.

She admitted that he was making efforts.

I suggested that she thank him from those efforts, and refrain from complaining about how much more he wasn’t doing.

So far, so good. But I didn’t leave it at that.

For some reason, my brain went straight to an article I read in the New York Times several years ago. It appeared in a regular Sunday feature called “Modern Love.” The title of this essay was “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.”

I loved this essay, and so did a lot of other people. It became one of the most read and e-mailed articles on nytimes.com. I even sent it to my daughter, who was beginning to have trouble in her marriage.

The gist of the story is that, in the course of writing a book about a school for exotic animal trainers, the writer got the idea that she could use these techniques on her husband.

The writer would be taking notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, and scribble in the margin: “Try on Scott.”

For example, she wrote about a technique called “approximations.”

“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,” she wrote.

“With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, than 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.”

As I recounted this article with my sponsee (my sponsee!!!), I felt an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. There was only one word for what I was advising: manipulation.

Ughh! I felt like I had just put my finger to a flame. I couldn’t believe I had just said that. I actually felt a physical revulsion.

“Never mind about that,” I said quickly. “That’s a bad example, and turned my attention to proven Al-Anon principles. Like powerlessness and acceptance.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I looked up that article and read it again. It was as clever and delightful a read as I remembered, but it was manipulation, pure and simple.

I took my gut reaction to talking about it as a marker of growth. When I first read it, I thought the writer was brilliant.

But rereading the essay, I did find points that seemed perfectly aligned with Al-Anon principles.

Like when she stopped taking her husband’s fault’s personally. In Al-Anon, we call this detachment.

The writer did this by thinking of her husband as an exotic species, which allowed herself a measure of objectivity. Could I imagine my alcoholic as an exotic species? Not so much a stretch.

She also realized that some behaviors were too entrenched, too instinctive, to train away. “You can’t stop a badger from digging, and you can’t stop my husband from losing his keys,” she said. In Al-Anon, we call that acceptance.

One technique seemed right out of the Al-Anon playbook. It was called least reinforcing syndrome (L.R.S.). When her husband used to lose his keys, she’d drop what she was doing and help him hunt, which only made him angrier, and usually resulted in full-blown drama.

The idea behind L.R.S. was to completely ignore behavior that bothered her, under the assumption that by not reinforcing a behavior, either positively or negatively, it would stop.

The next time her husband lost his keys, she kept her mouth shut and continued what she was doing. A few minutes later, he emerged, keys in hand, the storm clouds having passed.

In Al-Anon, this is what we call “dropping the rope.” Our alcoholics are used to engaging us in a certain way. They dangle a rope in front of us, and we dutifully pick it up for a little game of tug of war.

Tug of war only works if there are two parties. When we drop the rope, the game is over.

But that’s where it ends. Because if we are working this program with integrity and allowing the people in our lives the respect they deserve, we don’t get to manipulate. No matter how clever it sounds or how tempting it is.

If we are living this program with integrity, we allow others the dignity to make their own choices.

So what advice did I ultimately give my sponsee? I talked about awareness, acceptance and action.

I have a red coffee cup. I’m aware that red is not my favorite color. I wish it were blue. But no amount of wishing will change my coffee cup from red to blue. I have to accept that.

With that acceptance, I understand that I have certain choices: I can get a new cup, give up coffee, change how I feel about red.

But my choices do not involved changing the color of the cup.

So let’s say the problem is that her partner refuses to pick up his clothes. Her choices are either to figure out how to be okay with clothes on the floor or pick them up herself.

I tell her to ask herself “How Important is It?”

If it’s terribly important, and she must say something, I tell her she can say it once. Then she has to let it go. Any more than once is trying to control.

Shamu lady calls this nagging, and even she recognizes that it generally produces the opposite of the desired effect.

Specifically, I suggested that she not try to force a solution, but keep the focus on how the problem makes her feel and not her partner’s behavior.

“The clutter on the floor makes me feel uncomfortable. Is there something we can do about the situation that would make us both happy?”

In my own marriage, have found this approach to be helpful. My husband doesn’t like to be told what to do. So I present my problem, but not the solution.

Generally, my husband is happy to try to fix it. Often, his solution is different from the one I had in mind, but that’s okay. It generally works. And we both get what we want.

But I also have to accept it if he refuses. I can state my needs. I can ask for help. And he can say no.

That’s what it means to allow people the dignity of making their own choices. If I am living this program with dignity, I have to allow people to make their own decisions and not try to force my will. In every situation.

As for manipulation, I think I’ll leave that to the animal trainers.

Seeing Green

My pool is green. Not just a little algae around the edges, needs to be brushed kind of green. It’s forest pond green. The shade of green that concerns neighbors of foreclosed properties. The shade of green that breeds disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The saga of our pool is almost as long as my seven-year marriage. We live in a part of the country where it's difficult to find a house without a pool. When we got married, my husband owned one of those rarities. For reasons that had nothing to do with the pool, we decided that I should move into his house after we got married and sell mine.

It worked well for a while. It was a nice house and we were both happy, except for the storage situation. Even after selling or giving away much of my household effects, we had too much stuff. Our garage and closets groaned with the weight of it. We considered ways to add on or expand, but none of them seemed feasible. So eventually, we set out to look for a house that would neither be his nor mine, but ours. One that was right sized.

It didn’t take us long to find a house we both loved. We tell people that we liked the house but bought the yard, which looked like a lush, green park. In the center, stood a large diving pool.

I’m more a soaker than a swimmer, but I enjoy a pool. Until I got skin cancer a few years ago, I spent many happy afternoons on the top step of my pool with a book. Throw in some cheese and crackers, a glass of wine and a nap, and you have my idea of a perfect afternoon.

My husband worried that the pool would be maintenance issue, but I wasn’t concerned. I had pools before and they were never any trouble. I always hired a pool man. It cost $25 a week, and was money well spent.

But my husband didn’t want to pay a pool man. Unfortunately, he didn’t really want to maintain the pool, either. If prodded, he would tend to the chemicals, but the brushing fell to me.

This was before Al-Anon, of course. I brushed the pool every week, and resented every stroke. I begged for a pool man. Instead, my husband installed a saltwater system, which would produce its own chemicals, and a barracuda, one of those rubber things, that roams around vacuuming the bottom. Once outfitted, it would be virtually self-maintaining.

Except that it wasn’t. The cell had to be cleaned, the barracuda didn’t reach everywhere and the salt-water system couldn’t keep up in the summer. Soon I was back to weekly brushing. I whined and complained. I asked for a pool man for my birthday, thinking that would certainly make my husband do what I wanted him to do. But he remained unmoved.

Then I started going to Al-Anon. I learned that I was powerless over my husband. He could choose not to hire a pool man. I could choose not to brush the pool if it created resentment. I let the pool go.

So we entered a new phase of pool maintenance. My husband would ignore the pool, and I would tell him when it was green. I never suggested what he should do about it, I just mentioned its color, and my husband would eventually take care of it.

This worked fine until the cell needed to be replaced. Last summer, between the bad cell and the summer heat, the pool got quite green. Then we had some sort of event and I asked my husband about the pool. He called a pool man, who got it cleared up in two or three visits. Then winter came and we were out of town about half of every week, and the pool was once again neglected.

My sponsor has taught me that I can say something once, then I have to let it go. If I say something twice, it’s like a yellow warning light. Three times, and I’m definitely trying to control.

So the pool became a dilemma. I mentioned it was green. Months went by. It got worse. We had company coming and I asked if we should do something about the pool. That made two times and I was seeing yellow, but the pool was still green.

By now I’m thinking this is an issue for the health inspector and I’m in a quandary. If I say something three times, I’m in the red zone. If I take matters into my own hands, it’s still an attempt to control. It’s me saying, nonverbally, “You obviously can’t do this, so I’m going to do it myself.” Either way, it’s a manipulation.

(Sigh)

I realize that this is a luxury problem. It’s the type of thing Al-Anons struggle with when we are no longer struggling with the things that brought us to Al-Anon in the first place. I’m happy to have this problem. But it still presents a conundrum because either way I’m screwed.

So on the way to work this morning, I asked my husband what he thinks we should do about the pool.

Turns out he called the pool man that morning.

Which brought me back to one of the first Al-Anon principles my sponsor taught me. Sometimes, if you keep your mouth shut, things will work themselves out.

Motives and Manipulations

At my home group meeting last night I was trying to take my sponsor's advice and not try to rehearse what I was going to say. I tend to overprepare for everything. It gives me the illusion of control. But I understand that the ideal is to ask God to give me the words when the time comes. If I am thinking about what I'm going to say, then I am likely to miss something I needed to hear.

I admit that my ego and a lack of faith have kept me from practicing this principle. But last night I gave it a try.

Last night was a ticket meeting, so rather than go around the room, everybody got a number. If your number got pulled, you got the chance to share. If your number didn't come up, you got to listen. So it was a good time to practice this idea. In a group where everybody shares, I find myself getting more and more worried about what to say as my turn draws near. In this case, I had no idea if or when it would come.

As it turned out, my number came up pretty quickly. I said a silent prayer that God would give me words because I had no idea what to say.

I never thought about myself as a manipulator. More the opposite. I tended to say whatever came into my head, and if I bludgeoned you to death with it, I'd say, "I was just being honest."

But I could see that when I tried to control my daughter, that was manipulation. I was willing to "help," but only if she behaved the way I wanted her to.

Motive was easier for me to talk about. My sponsor is always asking me about my motive, and sometimes the same action is right or wrong depending on what my motive is. It's okay for me to call my daughter because I love her and want to see how she's doing. It's not okay for me to call her because I want to control her in any way.

I also talked about other people's motives being none of my business. That my job was to take the next right thought or action and leave the rest to God. If I try to figure out another person's motives, it's a losing game for me. I just drive myself crazy.

After I spoke, a lot of other people talked about their manipulations, and I realized I had done most of them, I just never recognized them as such. Every time I listened to my daughter's phone conversations to try to discover what she was up to, I manipulated. Every time I waited for my daughter at the coffee house across from the movie theater so I would see if she tried to sneak out and go somewhere else, I manipulated. The list goes on. You get the idea.

I felt a little dumb, really, that I hadn't gotten that. Like I had taken a test and put the wrong answers.

So I was surprised at the end of the meeting when one person approached me with her call sheet and asked which Kathy I was because she'd like to call me. And I was even more surprised when a woman came up to me and said, "Have you ever heard the phrase 'no good deed goes unpunished'?" She wanted me to be her sponsor.

I was floored. Of course, I told her I'd be honored to be her sponsor. But secretly I didn't get it. There have been plenty of times in the program I've thought I had something to offer other women. But lately, I feel like I'm just struggling to get this myself.

My sponsor is fond of saying, "My God has a sense of humor." I couldn't help thinking that about myself last night. I just pray he gives me the words for my sponsees when they need them.