Someone I know wants to write a book on the training of husbands. Her thesis, apparently, is that men are only barely trainable. She wants to offer up her husband as an example. He IS an example. The only problem is that he is an example of just how trainable men are. He is perfectly trained by his wife to do nothing domestic.

It really is not hard to train many men to do nothing domestic. I often see women doing it. They ask him to watch the children and then complain that the clothes don�t match or, if they match, that they were not the right clothes, or, if they were the right clothes, that they were not clean enough or were too wrinkled. They complain that the food the children eat is not the right food or too much food or given to them at the wrong time.

It is as if they do not want their men to succeed on their turf. If their husbands come close, they move the finish line. Eventually, the men realize that they can�t win, except by losing, and they give up. See, they are perfectly trained to be yet another child so that the woman can play �look at the cross I have to bear.�

People sometimes ask me how I get my husband to be so helpful around the house. The truth is that I don�t get him to do much at all. I almost never get him to do anything he was not willing to do in the first place. The answer therefore is that I married a homebody and I have never quite managed to train him out of it.

It�s not that I have not tried from time-to-time. I can fall into the perfection trap with the best of them. It�s that I don�t stay there. The pay-off is not big enough. I�m lazy. I�d rather have someone else do the work than have it done exactly to my specifications. Heck, when it comes to domestic chores I don�t even do them to my satisfaction because it�s too much work. I�d also rather have someone else do the work than be a martyr about it. Being a martyr is just too exhausting.

So, perhaps she has the wrong example. Her husband is not Exhibit A of an untrainable man. Mine is---and thank goodness for that.

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