Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.

Warren, my young, hot boyfriend, came over on Monday night. Euphemistically speaking, we played Yahtzee and Scrabble. The next morning, I emailed him a picture of a bucket of mackerels. I also made sure I thanked him at least forty times throughout the day, telling him how much I enjoyed the unexpected visit and his amazing skills at, uh, shaking the cup and rolling the dice and really knowing how to lay down those tiles, if you know what I’m saying.

I’m sure Warren knew what the mackerel picture was about and I have little doubt that he was aware of what I was up to with all the praise. Because Warren and I both spent some time last week reading Amy Sutherland’s new book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage. And in doing so, we learned techniques once reserved for animal training which, Sutherland has discovered, work remarkably well on humans.

Please note that Warren and I are not now, nor have we ever been, nor will we ever be, married to one another. But like us, the rest of you unmarrieds, and even those of you who are unattached, stand to pick up just as much interesting information from the book as the hitched. Plus it’s not a self-help how-to. Nor is it didactic, cloying, cutesy, or unrealistic. Plan to laugh a lot when you read it. And then plan to find yourself training your friends, family, total strangers and even complete jerks how to bend to your will.

Okay, okay, that’s not really what you’ll learn how to do, but you might come away with the temptation. I certainly have. Which is why now, whenever one of us does something the other one especially appreciates, Warren and I mime throwing imaginary fish at each other.

A little background on Sutherland. In 2006, just as her book Kicked, Bitten and Scratched was coming out, she had an essay appear in the Modern Love section of the Sunday New York Times. I am a huge whore for the Times, particularly the Sunday Times, and most especially the Modern Love column. (Being as popular as I am, I even had one of my essays appear there in 2005.)

In the essay, she discussed how, in researching that book—the tale of what happens at animal training college—she discovered that she could apply some of the principles at home. Her guinea pig was her husband Scott. She didn’t tell him what she was doing at first, but once she did, he, amused, turned the tables on her. Thus the long ingrained habits they had that drove each other nuts began to dissipate.

Another part of the Times that I monitor about every ten minutes is the little box on the website that tracks the most emailed articles. Sutherland’s essay took the lead and stayed at the top first for days, then for weeks. It was astonishing. In a world full of wars and famine and celebrity this and that, 2000 words about altering spousal behavior remained king, beating out all other stories. As it would turn out, the piece was the most read and shared in all of 2006. Damn.

And why was that essay so incredibly popular? Easy. Because all any of us seem to ever really want is to change everyone else, make them do our bidding, and have them quit doing whatever it is that we label dumbass behavior. Much easier than working on our own shit, right? Of course, changing others is not how it really works, but we’ll get to what really does work in a minute.

Meanwhile, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I was at Amazon minding my own business when their Big Brother marketing tool alerted me to Sutherland’s new Shamu book and suggested that, based on my tastes, I might like it. Thrilled, I ran over to BookPeople and got the last copy on the shelf, even though it meant risking being caught in the self-help section (which, Sutherland can’t help it, is where the book is relegated, though I think they should have a huge display at the front of every bookstore in the world).

I got twenty pages in when, as we were boarding a flight to head off for some book research, Warren “borrowed” the Shamu from me. And wouldn’t give it back. I didn’t complain for three reasons. One, I already knew from what little I had read, that it’s better not to protest unwanted behavior. Two, I was hoping Warren would learn firsthand a trick or two beyond the ones I planned on learning to train him into. And three, I had a copy of the latest People magazine, required reading on airplanes.

Warren was quoting to me from the book throughout the weekend and once he finished, I took over and plowed through in less than 24 hours. And while a big lesson is that actually, it’s our own behavior that we must learn to adjust if we want to benefit from animal training, the truth is, like all those Times readers, I was taking notes on how to get Warren to jump through my hoops, clap his flippers on command, and balance my ball on his nose, so to speak.

Some of what Sutherland teaches shares a Venn diagram overlap with a lot of the stuff I’ve learned studying Buddhism. It’s not a complete dovetail—Buddhism teaches us to not have expectations, animal training teaches us how to change expectations. But the acquired Zen knowledge reinforced the Flipper stuff and I was off to a great start.

Some examples: Sutherland cannot stand that her husband leaves his stinky clothes on the bathroom floor and that he likes to hover over her when she’s preparing food. Pre-animal-training she would nag, argue, and get pissed off at Scott, all to no avail. Post-animal-training she learned to ignore behaviors she did not like and use diversion in other cases. So she shut her mouth about the stinky clothes and in the kitchen, before starting to cook, she’d set up some beer and chips at the other end of the room. That way, the couple could enjoy each other’s company without her feeling like he was all up in her grill. These tactics worked.

For Warren and me, scheduling is an ongoing pain in the ass. It is not unusual, given the nature of my work, for me to spend ten or more hours in solitude each day. I’m fine with that, but when my work is finished, I crave company. I especially crave Warren’s company. Warren, on the other hand, works around people all day and, because he doesn’t have a flexible schedule like I do, is unable to tend to his to-do list and errands until after work. Warren therefore craves the sort of alone time I get, only he craves it when I want together time. This has been a thorn in our relationship’s side almost from the get-go and I wind up sounding like a whiner unable to entertain myself while he comes off seeming to me, on my crankiest days, like The Selfish Alone Time Hog From Hell.

We try various tactics—these days we have hard and fast together nights on the calendar. But then I complain about how this robs us of spontaneous opportunities those other nights. And he interprets this as me never being satisfied. I interpret this as him being inflexible. As if all this doesn’t suck enough, the thing is, we really, really, really like hanging out together, but the schedule tension crap was robbing us of some of the joy.

This past Monday, as I have done so many Mondays, I vowed to let Warren have the day and night to himself without riding his ass about it. The difference, since I’d read the book, was that I decided to have a genuinely good attitude about it. So you could’ve knocked me over with a hummingbird’s feather when Warren announced he was going to pop by. Was this a result of what he’d read in the book?

Not long into his visit, wanting to reinforce his good behavior in the hopes of having more of the same on future Mondays, I encouraged him to leave. Not because I didn’t want him to stick around, hell, I want him to move in. But I wanted to show him that I really understood he likes time alone. That is, I tossed him a mackerel. He, in turn, announced he was staying. Does it sound like we were fucking with each other? We weren’t. We were just testing out something new.

And there are no secrets here, people. We’re both working on Shamu-ing each other (Sutherland has made that into a verb) out in the open, totally transparent in our motives, and we’re both getting a big kick out of the results. So much so that I emailed Sutherland to thank her for the book. She, enjoying praise from her readers, tossed me a mackerel by writing back right away thanking me for the note.

Is it a silly way to live, all this fish throwing? I think not. I think we could all use a little more positive reinforcement of the good stuff and some flat out ignoring of the road rage, the cranky customer service worker’s sarcasm, and flaming comments posted anonymously.

Disagree with me all you want. I won’t bat an eye.

Spike Gillespie would like Warren to know how much she appreciates him so she’s throwing him a mackerel in public. She blogs regularly for LaunchPad Coworking and at www.spikeg.com. She is also head mistress for the Dick Monologues. Next show is August 27th and you can email her at spike@spikeg.com to reserve seats.