Love is blind, they say. During courtship you don’t notice your sweetheart’s bad habits and blemishes.  You begin to notice them when the passion of the honeymoon is over. Then you see many things that are not to your liking.

“They taught you nothing” is a common complaint in Indian families, usually told to the young bride, referring to the wife’s parents. The wives too have similar complaints about the husbands. Your partner may have many faults and imperfections. Everybody has. You can not expect any parent, however good,  to train anyone according to your liking. That training has be to be done by you.

You have seen how they train the elephants and lions in the circus. You may not have seen the training itself. But you have seen how they manage these beasts.  Even more ferocious animals are trained.  These can not be trained as you train horses or elephants. Theses fierce animals do not tolerate any effort to frighten them. So the trainers use other tactics.

It may not be fair to compare husbands and wives with these animals. But we have to admit that all of us have some animal instinct in us. So, some of these techniques can work for human beings.

The simple method is to prize the acceptable behaviour and ignore the unacceptable behaviour. Here there is important principle to remember: When a  behaviour gets attention, the person’s mind gets focussed on that behaviour and it gets reinforced. Whether the attention is positive or negative, the result will be the same – the behaviour will be reinforced.  So, if you show displeasure in case of an unacceptable behaviour, the behaviour will be reinforced. But if a behaviour is ignored, it gets less attention of person and so the behaviour disappears.

So after telling your partner what you expect, do not pay any attention to the unacceptable behaviour,  but show appreciation when the behaviour is acceptable to you.

A person’s habitual behaviours can not be changed overnight. You will have to try this for several months and you will need a lot of patience and perseverance to train your partner.

There may be some habits or behaviours you will not be able to change. Take the example of the husband’s tendency to dominate over the wife.  You may have a husband who vehemently promotes women’s empowerment and insists on giving her equal rights. But you disobey him in public and he will feel very hurt. You may mange to change him to a point. But beyond that you have to put up with some amount of bossiness.

The important thing is to know what can be changed and what can not be. Here it will be useful to remember the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi: Lord, give me the courage the change what I can, the forbearance to endure what I can not and the wisdom to know the difference.

It is also good to remember that your partner too is tolerating some of your behaviours which are not according to his or her liking.