Living my dream

As Iggy Pop said, now I wanna be your dog.

I want this in my life so badly 😮‍💨
- You could just buy peanut m&ms

If it barks like a dog...

This is probably a me thing, but if I were to catch on to someone doing this I might start wondering at some hidden intent behind everything they do

The biggest thing for me is that she's eroding his emotional sovereignty. She's taking covert actions to modulate and decide his mood for him.
Sometimes, when I'm feeling down, I just want to feel that and get through on my own. But she's deciding which of his moods isn't appropriate and is changing his behaviour. If this were out in the open, he would be able to accept or refuse her attempts to cheer him up or divert him. But he (presumably) doesn't even know it's happening. That's not cool.
It sounds fine because it's worded like she's helping him but she's still taking away his autonomy. Just bring it out in the open: "hey, I've noticed, when you're sad or stressed, peanut M&Ms cheer you up. Would you like me to keep some on-hand?" With that, you've alerted them to behaviours about themself and got their consent to "help" them.
If that's the timbre of their interactions, I've got no qualms. But setting the context as "I train abused dogs" brings the mental image to one step above "hiding medicine in a dog treat."
- I appreciate your comment.
  I've actually talked to my fiance about things like this, because I noticed that I was 'handling' him, and I felt like it was demeaning to him. Luckily for me, he considered what I said and informed me that he likes that.
  Consent makes the difference!
  Probably helps that I'm used to disturbed and abused humans, too...

A man can only dream of having a girl who's so attentive and understanding. She'd make a good mom.
Most of us are so utterly self-consumed.
- Yeah. Positive reinforcement works across a lot of species.. Just because the OP is used to using it with canines first doesn't make it bad to use on humans We could all use a little pick-up sometimes, just doing fine the M&M's to rover and a milk bone to the partner by mistake.

The way she contextualises it is a bit odd, but the actual thing isn't that bad. It's just accommodating him, being aware of his particulars, and helping him over his issues. The gift of a single M&M is unusual, but giving your partner something nice isn't strange. People do similar things all the time in relationships, it's just not thought of as training.
Biggest issue is her framing it that way, because people might either get the wrong idea, or give the wrong idea. Saying she's training him like a dog gives the idea of a lead, like with an actual dog.

That's all fine, it's when she gets naked on the bed with a jar of peanut butter and a spatula that things start getting weird
- a spatula that stings
  Why is she hitting you with the spatula?
  
  Seriously. Should be a newspaper.
  
  Don't yuck the yum

Honestly if we treated each other as well as we treated dogs we'd already be in paradise.
- 😬
  Some dogs.

Many people apparently loving this, I see it as a red flag. She's manipulative and I'd second guess every action she'd take from the day I noticed it
- I personally struggle to see the difference between regular social interaction and manipulation. Do you have a sense on where that lies for you?
  For example, due to being autistic, I struggle with making eye contact, but I recognise that most neurotypical people find that important for feeling connected to their conversation partner, so I often try to make eye contact during conversation. If I see someone has styled their hair in a way that shows they've put a lot of effort into it, I will often compliment them, even if I only feel neutral about it. I baked a cake for a friend when she finished her exams, because I know that physical gestures like this mean a lot to her (especially if it's a surprise); I wanted to make her happy, but it wasn't purely altruistic — ultimately, making the cake was an indirect way of making myself happier.
  Another example is how, when speaking to someone struggling with something, my instinct is to go into problem solving mode and try to help. However, I've learned that some people much prefer space to be sad, and so saying things like "that sounds so frustrating" or "I can see why you're so angry, it's an unfair situation" lands better. It always feels weird and manipulative to do this, because the things I say feel so trite and meaningless. But it seems to really help, and I've had to just embrace the fact that people use different things to cope than I do. It does feel weird though, and if these aren't examples of bad manipulation, then I don't know where that line would be

People forget that humans are just animals (that can sometimes reason and talk). I still stand that dog training guides make better parenting books than many parenting books. At least up till around 3 years old.
The extension of this to adults is more challenging. Intent matters. This could be used abusively VERY easily. That is not happening here, however. With great power, comes great responsibility.
It's also worth noting that, if you use this, plan out how you will explain it later. A panicked, "oh shit, (s)he caught on!" will look bad, no matter what. A calm, thoughtful, positive explanation, delivered with confidence will likely get a lot more acceptance.
A: "Ok, what's with the M&Ms?"
B: "You've noticed then. :)"
A: "..."
B: "I noticed chocolate made you happy. I also noticed you were trying to overcome some negative habits. I decided to help. Whenever you put effort in, I rewarded it with a bit of chocolate. It makes you happy, and helps you lock a good habit in better."
A: "... You've been conditioning me?!?"
B: "Yes, don't you like the improvement?"
A "... yes, but I'm not sure I should..."
B: "M&M?"
- Just squirt him with the water bottle if he starts asking questions like this.
  
  Negative reinforcement should be HIGHLY limited. It can cause unforeseen knock on effects. Any negative reinforcement should be highly targeted, without triggering a fight or flight response. It should also be accompanied by clear instructions for how to correct it. This applies to both humans and pets.
  It's quite likely that most of the negative traits in the OP were caused by an attempt at negative reinforcement.
- You could also be even more cautious: "I noticed that they cheer you up, so I try to have them on hand for when you're feeling down." No mention of conditioning, wholesome, hard to argue against.
  
  We constantly condition each other all the time. It's a part of human interaction. We don't usually do it consciously, but it's conditioning nonetheless. Couples will subtly condition their behavior to be more in tune with each other.
  Consider a simple example. Imagine a you're in a couple, and you just moved in together. You're both used to living alone. You're used to flicking on the bedroom light as you walk into the bedroom before bed to prepare for bed. Unfortunately your partner tends to go to sleep before you. You wake them up a few times by accident, and they understandably grumble. You feel bad about it, as you care about them and don't want to wake them up. You wince the next day when you see how tired they seem. In time, you stop flicking the light on before you enter the room. Your partner's actions have conditioned you to not turn the light on. Your partner conditioned you without even intending to. We condition each other constantly. We observe what effect our behavior has on others, and we adjust our own behavior accordingly. We usually just don't refer to it as "conditioning," as that tends to have a nefarious connotation.
  
  It also hides the conditioning aspect. We hide things when we consider them negative. If they are asking, they have potentially noticed a lot more. If you hide it, you believe it was a bad thing you were doing, and they will react VERY strongly to you doing it.
  By being upfront it will derail their train of thought on the matter. I personally used this a few times in my youth. It pulls the teeth of an argument quickly.
  Here it is basically acknowledging what you have been doing, while defusing the various "ah ha!" reveals and got-yas they had mentally planned. At that point they have to actually think, rather than just react according to the script they built in their head. Once they are thinking, it's a lot easier to communicate properly.
- That feels very Abed
  
  Especially the end line

-Listens to what he means when he is speaking -Pays attention to his nonverbal cues about his emotional state -Respects his boundaries and only assists him in expanding them, not demanding he do so -Rewards him for engaging in new healthy behaviours that he finds uncomfortable
Fellas, is it being an asshole for checks notes engaging with your partner?
- Yeah, this person isn't disrespectfully treating a human as they would a dog, they're just respectfully treating dogs as they would a human.
  
  We can't get a dog's consent to engage in experiments. Continuing with this method after realizing and not talking with him about it would be intentionally ignoring consent.
- I think the concern would be generating a Pavlovian response to her presence instead of genuine desire to be with her, but I don't even know what that really means because our animal brains aren't rational. There isn't a such thing as "genuine" in this context because it's all based on emotions. Should you not have sex with your partner because it can make them feel attached, for example?
  
  Just hit it from the back so they don't get attached
  
  Sure, positive associations can be fabricated but it's not as simple as the pavlovian response observed in dogs.

i remember this episode of Big Bang Theory
- And How I Met your Mother
  
  And Community

Some people take great offense when you don’t pretend humans have somehow evolved beyond the animal kingdom. Yes, we are still animals, and much of what works for them still works on us.

If THAT is what counts as "being treated like a dog", woof woof!
- 🦴

Someone who always has a snack for me if I'm feeling down?? Sign me the fuck up!
- I was like 'I need a caretaker/trainer'
  
  My fat ass (food motivated btw) immediately thought of the snacks but someone who can make me quit my bullshit is even better!

It's odd, sweet, I think. She's doing her best in the way she knows best
- Has hammer, sees only nails.

Me, reading title: "WTF?!? That's messed up!"
Me, after reading the post: "I'm so fucking jealous."
- I also want M&M rewards.

My main issue with this is that the way we train dogs is that we train them to be dependant on us. So yeah, she's training him to come out of his shell, maybe, but if it works the same way a dog does he'll only be loyal and listen to her. Especially because anyone else he meets won't treat him like a dog and will expect him to behave like a person without the expectation of rewards which would probably make him more adverse to others
Of course, he's a human being too so it won't go down exactly like that. I'm just saying that from the very first premise the way we train dogs is by training them to be codependant
- Well, once he opens up she can train him to be more independent. But first he needs the security and wiggle room.
  Its not the best approach, but in the mental world you take what you can get.
  
  That's kind of my point. What part of our whole understanding of how to train dogs involves training them to be more independent? I don't really think there is any. At best you can point to like dog socialization training, but I don't think that makes them more independent, that's just training them to be social when their owners are around.
- Well okay but what do you want her to do then, not treat people like she treats dogs?
  if you want a different class just get more girlfriends

Intent matters, and methods matter. But I think what the friend is missing is that the methods aren't bad; op is using methods developed from scientific analysis of abused animals with the intent to ethically care for them. Coming back to intent, she clearly wants to help this guy who her training is identifying as having some kind of background of abuse. The methods might be a little crude in the sense that they were developed for animals and not for people (who are animals, but animals with several distinct qualities from other animals, like the ability to communicate complex ideas), and there are different, more well-adapted methods for people, but they're only crude in comparison to those modern human-focused methods. They're still quite effective, and I would still consider them ethical for use on humans when paired with an altruistic intent, which she seems to be conveying. As long as she still views the guy as fully a person, a peer, then I see nothing wrong here.
- Intent matters, and methods matter.
  pretty much agree, it's not like she's conditioning him to sounds CLICK-CLICK good boy....
  
  Though there's probably a significant amount of people on lemmy who would be into actually that.
- The only vaguely concerning bit I see here is the penultimate sentence. Evading consent is sketchy, but I'm not a behavioral psychologist and thus have no working knowledge on how that would impact his "treatment".
  
  I think that's what stuck for me. Manipulation takes many forms, not all look evil. She should take these observations and talk to him about it, instead of using them as tools to treat his feelings.

This is literally how I want to be treated.
- somehow I could tell even before you said it

I mean this simply gets into the ethics of manipulation. Ultimately, it comes down to choosing happiness.

sounds like they treat their partner better than most people do, honestly.

We’re all animals, whether or not we want to believe that is simply a fact. And on top of that we are stressed the fuck out which pushes people, to vary degrees, back towards monkey brain. I consider myself pretty self-aware and therapy has proven that but oh man did my last job do a lot to leave me defensive and short with even the people I care about.
There’s that phrase “you can’t logic someone out of an argument they didn’t logic themselves into” that very well encapsulates the idea that trying to force some higher intelligence, some emotionless, robotic reasoning onto people does very little to actually help(though it should help more than it does and I’m disappointed in people running on pure, angry emotion all the same).
We need to stop acting like we aren’t the way that we are, it just hurts us. I’m not saying we need to excuse bad behaviour because, unlike wild animals, we have a great capacity to know better and adjust, but we do need to be more ok with the reality of ourselves.
- To add to this, you can do this to yourself as well. Reward yourself for the right behavior, tell yourself your did a good job, etc. It's (I'm guessing) harder than extrinsic motivation, but it still works. Take advantage of having a stupid lizard brain under all the stuff that makes us human.
  
  We very likely conditioned ourselves to hate ourselves, and it so clearly works, so absolutely we can use those same tools to teach ourselves to be kinder as well.
  I spent a whole year writing a journal and that basically put it in writing that things weren’t quite as bad as I had thought. Even without doing it now my mind will go to better places automatically because I built up that reaction and understanding.
  
  I feel like this was ultimately the point of the love yourself movement. I don't know how you could convince yourself to love yourself without conditioning yourself to do it, too.

She seems to have only the best intentions, but I can't help but feel a little creeped out. She's using a psychological trick to leverage this man's trauma in order to get him to behave in a certain way, and she's doing it without his knowledge or consent. I think that's dishonest at the very least, and I don't think building the foundation of your relationship on calculated manipulation is going to lead to a good outcome.
I'd even go as far as saying her emotional intelligence creates a power imbalance in the relationship, which she is deliberately exploiting.
- I agree that what she does is manipulative and condescending even with the best intentions (paving the road to hell and all that), but I have issues with the use of "emotional intelligence" here.
  An emotional intelligent person does NOT do this kind of shit on purpose.
  They meet the other person where they're at and on the same level, they communicate honestly, they don't presume to educate or manage them.
  I'd say she comes off more as emotionally stunted, she has no idea know how to relate with her partner as an equal.
- Eh, I see it as a way to overcome trauma. In therapy don't they give you "tools" to use to achieve the same? Unknown that's the individual doing it themselves and not a third party doing it. But I don't see it as overly wrong.
  At least until the individual overcomes the trauma, although I suppose they themselves should be able to acknowledge that they have overcome it.
  So I don't know. What I do know is if someone felt that strongly, directly towards my mental health, it would be amazing.

IDK as a guy this doesn't seem weird at all. If anything, it sounds like she likes him and is willing to put in work to make him feel more comfortable and make the relationship successful. She doesn't really use any dehumanizing language and the way she connects the dots between what she notices in dogs and her date seems very empathetic. If anything, the guy's lucky to have found someone with so much emotional intelligence and hopefully she's getting out what she's putting in

Friend is jealous of dogboy
- You know if the dude’s friends pick up on this they’ll start calling him dog boy.

Insert "it should've been me" meme here.

No sex or kinkiness needed. Just take me home, animals are treated better than humans ;_;
- Animals deserve it more
  
  It's not a zero-sum.

Woof
- I'm gonna run away from home and start barking at people.
  Maybe I'll get lucky, either way I'll be taken care of.

I lucked out, I have someone to train me with snacks too uwu

Gotta say, this smells a little like a top tier troll post. That out of the way, I also would like someone to carry around peanut M&Ms for me.
- Top tier reward

This is just poorly thought out. You offer dessert and to pay, then classify it as food motivation. I mean it could be that he's happy you're paying, or happy you want to be out longer. If anything, he just ate, so food motivation would be at its lowest.
You're taking an animal that isn't as complex as humans or even has a concept of society, and trying to apply that to a person in a relationship. I think the thought is there, but the conclusions are a bit flawed.
- M&M?
- We're only more complex in that we have language systems so can assess situations in a more detailed way. The majority of the time we have pretty much the same instincts and responses to stimuli to many other animals because, in short, it takes less energy/effort. Being able to conceive society, something canines can do, doesn't stop other natural instincts. There is a level of simplification, yes, but this is a social media post, not a scientific study so it won’t explain every minute detail!
  
  We’re only more complex in that we have language systems so can assess situations in a more detailed way.
  In part yes. But we also have a society. We have concepts of social norms that we created and evolved. We have expectations developed through a lifetime of education and media. A human from 50 years ago would feel lost in today's world, let alone a dog. We may be driven by some same basics, but we are more complex.
  My point is that we can't talk to dogs like we can to humans. So we learn signs and try to interpret them as best we can. But interpretations are just that - interpretations. They can be wrong. A better method would be to talk and discuss the issue, removing the need for any guesswork.
- I mean it could be that he's happy you're paying, or happy you want to be out longer.
  Oh, have you seen video of their lunch or something? You should post it, we can figure this out right now.
  
  That's my point. We don't know. She made a wild assumption based on terms used to train dogs.

The lady has training with animals and is applying what she learnt to make a guy at ease with her... I'd say the friend is the asshole here. You do the best you can with what you got.

Someone wouldn't like watching House M.D. if this is making them feel immoral.
House Trains His Protégé | House M.D..
(if you don't want to see the whole thing here's s timestamp for the more relevant portion)
That's just basic psychology more or less. These are just the thoughts you shouldn't say ouloud perhaps. You can often compare things because there's similarities, but the nature of the things being compared may make it offensive.
It's more like "training dogs has given me an understanding of basic psychology which came really handy in my relationships" than "I'm training my bf like a dog".

When logic doesn't work, appeal to the lizard brain ... often. We're kinda not that complex.
I totally respect this, but worry egoes (his) will get in the way during a lull in the snacks.

Weak. Submissives, come to me and I will treat you as lesser than a dog. You may not be useless, but you are worthless 😎
- I will throw you like Donkey Kong throws a barrel.

The NYT had an article from 2006 which described a very similar "training". It goes into greater detail. Here is an archived version without paywall: https://archive.ph/n4GPa
- The book is good as well

Isn’t this just reinforcement, like reinforcement vs punishment from behavioral psychology? It works.

I don't see a problem here.

62yo male here thinks she's a damn genius... maybe she should like, make some of those tiktoks or something...
- As a 62 year old, you should not encourage awful things...like going on TikTok
  
  true, but how else are all those other women gonna learn her wise ways if she doesn't? american women anyways...

The problem is not the actions. The problem is your mentality. If you're trying to train a human being, that sounds pretty f****** terrible. On the other hand, if you're trying to support for and care for them, it doesn't sound terrible.
Based on the wording, it sounds like the former, but perhaps you're just trying to make your post dramatic for the internet and the actual situation is more like the latter. We don't know, but you do, so act accordingly.

Yeah I think that's pretty gross. This person stated that the person they are dating is emotionally unavailable and has potentially been abused as a child. But because they find them pretty, they decided to manipulate a person like they manipulate animals for selfish purposes. (Both are bad!) Their partner probably needs therapy not to be emotionally manipulated by their partner.
- Have a M&M
  
  I'm vegan
- I am asking this more out of curiosity than criticism, but how would you deal with someone who is emotionally unavailable, shows signs of childhood abuse, but treats you pretty fairly?
  
  Be there for them and try to convince them to get professional therapy, maybe? And not Jedi mindtrick them using food out of whatever mood you don't like that they're in.
  
  Honesty?
  Not like a dog?

Hey if it works out works. She is an asshole for not using proper grammar and punctuation though.