Strong Man has left a new comment on your post “Coming Soon(ish): The Marriage Action Plan“:
I’ve already mentioned the issue of ultimatums or consequences that are short of divorce. After you’ve stepped up your own efforts and increased your sex rank, what can you do to show your wife you are serious before dropping the D-bomb?
Many people don’t really respond to words–don’t know you’re serious until you show it in your actions. How can you do that?
Athol: The short answer to that is the Divorce Ultimatum is the last resort that happens in Phase Six of The MAP. All the self-improvement stuff happens in Phase One through Three. Phase Four drops the boom that change needs to happen and you are serious. Phase Five can last months or a year even as you stage yourself for potentially divorcing them.
The longer answer is something Jennifer and talked about a lot today and we essentially came to the conclusion that everything boils down to three basic strategies for dealing with a spouse with an intolerable relationship breaking issue.
The first strategy is talking. This works great with a normal spouse. Sometimes problems can just be talked through and resolved and life continues on. But with a truly troublesome spouse, talking essentially proves pointless, for as Strong Man agrees, many people don’t respond to words… only actions.
The second and third strategies both use action and are good at evoking behavioral changes. One possibility is creating an aversive experience, that the spouse actively wishes to avoid happening to them. The classic example of this, is the husband’s closed fist slamming into the wife’s face for doing something he doesn’t like. I use that example of domestic violence quite purposely, because ultimately all the aversive techniques require the use of force as a backing.
Some examples; a time out on a toddler requires that you are physically capable of returning them to the time out corner if they decide to simply walk away from the corner. Grounding a teenager means nothing if they can simply leave out the window, it’s nothing but talk unless you can march them back into the house by the arm. Yelling threatens potential physical contact. Breaking their stuff for being bad requires the use of force. And quite clearly anything the police, courts and prisons do to control behavior is an aversive technique based on force. Spanking is an aversive method too.
The other basic option is negative punishment, which means you take away from them something they want, or simply fail to supply it. The toddler throws a fit, and there’s no ice cream. The teenager is bad and you simply refuse to drive them anywhere. You cut off an allowance for bad behavior. None of this requires the use of force, just simply not giving them something they want.
As you may guess, The MAP works in part on negative punishment. The whole point to becoming highly attractive is to become the sort of spouse they actively want in their life. The ultimate “taking away of what they want” is you leaving them. You’re their cheese and cutting off the cheese supply is meaningful. But before you actually get to that point, there’s a hundred little points of display of the fact that you will be leaving if things continue as they are. Some examples;
Collecting business cards from divorce lawyers.
Losing weight and looking more attractive.
Starting to pack your bags.
Removing precious (to you) items from the house into storage.
Saving money for a new apartment.
Changing the bill paying around and names on accounts.
Searching for divorce related issues on the Internet.
Opening a dating profile.
Changing Facebook relationship status to “it’s complicated”.
Taking your wedding ring off.
Separate vacations.
Separate beds.
Going out alone.
Asking for marriage counseling.
Going into individual counseling.
All in all there are hundreds of little actions that hint or plainly state that the ultimate removal of what they want is a potential threat. You just don’t need to say the word divorce for any of it to be effective.
As I said, Jennifer and I tossed this around a lot today, and everything turned into either talking, using some degree of violence, or involving a movement toward divorce. As I hope is exceptionally clear, I don’t advise physical force as a method for evoking change in your marriage. Quite obviously you’ll likely end up in jail for trying it and rightly so. (I don’t believe Strong Man would advise violence either!)
Oh a fourth way… duh. The other way The MAP works is by positive reinforcement. As I said before, you’re trying to turn yourself into the cheese that they want. Once they want you, they tend to do whatever it takes to be with you. Which is also the reason so many husbands running The MAP don’t get past Phase Three before everything comes together and they get laid like tile.
Hmmm…. cheeeeeeese….
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