From: weaver@jetsun.weitek.COM (Michael Gordon Weaver)
Newsgroups: alt.romance
Subject: Re: Won't have Sex with a Fat Guy
Date: 15 Oct 92 19:56:24 GMT
Organization: WEITEK Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Oct14.224149.24308@bradley.bradley.edu> dave@bradley.bradley.edu (David Vessell) writes:
>weaver@jetsun.weitek.COM (Michael Gordon Weaver) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct13.161621.6126@bnr.ca> P.8188 writes:
>>>[Y'all know the story by now.]
...
>Punishment is not necessarily bad, depending on how one goes about it.  By
>that I mean it doesn't have to be unreasonable and cruel.
>
I guess I didn't make my point. I don't say that punishment is not good 
or bad in itself, but that it is not effective the way it was applied
in this case.

Punishment drives a person away from some behavior, while reward draws
them toward some behavior. When you use punishment, you do not have
much control over what sort of behavior the person chooses, except that
they will tend to avoid the punishment. For instance, in this case he
could avoid the punishment by leaving her.  When you use rewards, you
can direct them to your goal.

I think punishment can be effective when used in one of two ways:

First, when used as conditioning. In this case, the punishment
needs to become so closely associated with the undesirable 
behavior that whenever the person behaves in that way, he 
thinks of the punishment. 

Second, when used as a deterrent. This doesn't work as good 
as conditioning, but can be used for more complicated behavior.
In this case, you rely on the person's rational thought to 
do the dirty work. You tell them if they do something, then
they will be punished. 

What she did in this case doesn't fit either of these. She
chose to punish him for being fat, which is not something you
can condition someone against, because you are not fat one 
day and not the next. Also, you can't condition someone 
by doing something just once, you need to punish repeatedly.
She also didn't tell him ahead of time that if he got fat,
she wouldn't have sex, so she didn't choose the second 
alternative either. 

What she did is say, in effect, you have made me unhappy, so I 
will punish you, and then you will figure out how to make me 
happy, and I will stop punishing you. This is poor motivation.

I think her goal is to make him thin. In this case, he needs
to change his behavior to eat less and exercise more. She needs
to address these behaviors, not the fact that he is fat.

>Or she could make resumed sex a reward in itself (rather than choosing to 
>view the lack of it as punishment).  
>
I don't think she can do this, because (I think) he is used to getting
sex without strings attached. If your boss lowered your pay, and then
said he would raise it when you did this or that, would you think of 
it as a reward? I don't think I would.

Also, I think that using sex as a reward or a punishment in a marriage,
which is after all a sexual relationship, is bad in the long run for
the relationship. The partners in a relationship need to be able
to believe that certain things in that relationship can be counted 
on, and in a marriage, I think sex is one of those. If you can't 
count on your partner for anything of consequence to you, the 
relationship will die.

>                                     There's a lot of ways this situation 
>could be handled, so long as she is understanding and he is willing.
>
I agree.


Michael.