I have a question. What is to be done when someone does not DO what you tell them to do and does not STOP what you tell them to stop?

They will not stop drinking

They will not leave

They will not give you passwords

They will not shut down facebook

They will not POJA

They will not respond with change to your complaints

They will not.....

Fill in the blank.

As a teacher, I knew that "telling them to stop" was not gonna work with a rebellious kid who had an attitude.

So....since we cannot control other people, what do we do when we "tell them to..." and.....

they don't?

If the spouse does not stop the offending behavior, the next step is usually separation.

I have rethought my answer. It is impossible to give a general answer to specific situations. So my answer is this:

it depends

mozilla,

Are you talking about a spouse or a child?

You don't tell your spouse to do or stop anything. That's called a demand.
You let them know, respectfully, what bothers you and try negotiating a solution to the behavior.

When it comes to drugs, alcohol, and things that are indeed threatening your mental and physical safety, you don't negotiate, you separate.

But you don't tell them what to do, you tell them what it would take to restore the marriage with you. You see, in the end each one makes his own choice to care or to not care for the other spouse. It cannot be commanded.

x2

You can tell a person: "If you do x, I will do y." That's pretty much it. Oh, and "y" is ideally not anything abusive or threatening...usually just something like, "I'll have to protect myself by leaving," or some such.

I tell my kids all the time: You get to control one person in this world. Yourself.

You can only tell them what YOU'LL do...since that's all you got!

Please post more details. Is this your own personal situation? We are usually best able to advise if we can get enough details - especially if there are enough to help it to match up with similar situations we have heard Dr. Harley cover.

Without enough details, the only advice we can give boils down to ineffective generalities: Plan A for 6 months if you're male, 3 weeks if you're female; then Plan B with no compromises. Plan A longer if you're male; Plan B sooner if you're female. That kind of stuff. But with specific details like what is this about, many of us can recall hearing Dr. Harley cover it and can pass along what we know.

Hypotheticals usually don't accomplish a lot here. Is your spouse drinking? Is this a problem you or someone you know is facing?

If my spouse had a drinking problem, the first thing I would do would be to expose the problem to many important people in her life, including her family, my family, our church, our friends here, and to attempt to stage an intervention. I would probably also need to get CPS involved as well to make sure that I don't risk losing custody of my children. The exact advice Dr. Harley would give me for this might differ from the advice he might give my wife if she were facing the same problem.


Details! How is this a problem? Most people here have the opposite problem: they can't get their spouse to spend enough time with them. (Neglect.)

If you have an abusive or unfaithful spouse and you need to Plan B them, part of Plan B is building walls they can't get through. Restraining orders, moving, change of contact information, etc.


Well, those are a red flag for an affair, so the first thing we would advise for those is to snoop like a bloodhound and come back here with more information. And then the details of what was found out would affect what would be advised next.


Generally speaking, if a husband indicates to a wife that he will not respond to her complaints, Dr. Harley advises her to prepare for a separation.

Suggestions:
Write Dr. Harley with an update to your situation(weren't you on the show a month or so ago)?
Fill us in on what's really going on,
And tie it to your previous thread (just post it there - stay on what thread)