How to train your man

Training men is something I got into after my divorce. I was in a bad way, nothing helped... Antidepressants, Oprah, The Secret. Then one day I discovered Barbara Woodhouse and I realised dog training and men training is exactly the same thing.

"A dog must respect its owner from the day it joins the household" – Barbara Woodhouse (Quote One, pg 19, Dog Training My Way)

I use this quote as the foundation for all my man-training.

"There are those who believe that by giving a (man) dog everything it wants, it will repay their kindness with implicit obedience and love, that is nonsense! A (man) dog must respect its owner from the day it joins the household." – Barbara Woodhouse

In general, there are some things that you need to learn before you embark on man-training... let's call these the Ten Simple Rules of Man-Training:

Tip one: Boundaries apply to all areas of training.

Tip two: If you allow a man to behave badly in the beginning of the relationship, he will continue to do so for the rest of the relationship.

I made this same mistake in marriage to my ex-husband Hendrick (bastard!). When we first got married, I did everything: all the cooking, cleaning and washing. It's like a chorus to a famous song... I did everything and he did nothing. I thought with time he would just automatically repay the favour, but he didn't and he thought it was okay because I had trained him that way.

Tip three: Basic listening exercises. It's very important to get a man's attention by having an interesting word in the sentence for example: Tip four: Will you blowjob wash the dishes?

Tip five: Could you handjob the trash out?

Tip six: Please could we go to Muffdive my parents for lunch on Sunday?

Tip seven: Mothers, you train your sons! If you train them badly you make them the next woman's responsibility to retrain and fix.

Like Barbara Woodhouse says, "I cannot express to my readers too much the necessity to be kind but firm to a new (man) puppy, his idea of your authority is forming and if he knows that you are going to give into the slightest whimper (For instance: "But I don't know how to use the washing machine") you will be whacked for life. To break them of habits formed when they are young, is far more tedious than training them in the correct way in the first place."

Sexual training: This area of training is by far the most important, but often the most neglected. In an ideal world there would be Tracker for your Clit and GPS for your G spot but it's not an 'Ideal World' so we have to train our men

Tip eight: Take a Zoo biscuit and get your partner to practise removing the white icing using only the tip of their tongue, If they complain that it takes a long time, explain to them that the real thing takes a long time, so they might as well get used to it.

Tip nine: Once they have gotten the hang of this, move onto advanced training. Now they have to remove the icing using only the tip of their tongue but this time they must remove the icing doing figures of eight, increasing and decreasing pressure with the occasional flick to the left and right.

Tip ten: Never Nag. Positive reinforcement is far more affective in training. Give your man treats when he is good.

Shirley Kirchmann's is the actor/writer of the wacky one-woman show, Train Your Man.

Got any tips or advice you'd like to share on how to train your man? Post them in the comment box below.