I am at odds about "making" my husband promise me that he will do his part in rebuilding the trust that we should have between us. He blows it all off and just expect it to happen with no work on his part. When that happens, I hear myself making ultimatums that I don't want to have to make, ie LEAVING HIS BUTT FOR GOOD!!!! Hey, this is marriage building, is it not? Making ultimatums cannot be a good thing--it hasn't worked for me. 99% of the time, we fuss and cry and then I give in and then he goes back to his behaviors.<p>All making ultimatums does is:<p>Proving over and over again that you are a push-over and that you are asking to be walked on--if you don't follow through with your ultimatum<p>Threatening the one that you are supposed to love--making love conditional. How is your spouse supposed to perceive love if you are always bluffing?<p>Threatening makes a lot of chaos and fighting. Not good.<p>How do you get someone to come to an agreement about their destructive behavior when that person denies that his behavior is harmful?<p>How do you to get them to bother to make an agreement with you when they don't figure that what they are doing really hurts you--or worse, they don't care that it hurts you?

<<<How do you get someone to come to an agreement about their destructive behavior when that person denies that his behavior is harmful?>>><p><<<How do you to get them to bother to make an agreement with you when they don't figure that what they are doing really hurts you--or worse, they don't care that it hurts you?>>><p>I'm in the same boat. I'm pretty sure it's got "HMS Titanic" written across the back. If someone can throw us a spare lifeboat here, or a deck chair, or a piece of an iceberg, or something, I'm listening too.

Hmmm...
I think both people have to first decide what the "rules" are in order to get to an effective POJA.<p>If you guys disagree on what is fundamentally right or wrong, that's the place to disect... You know, if you both have a different set of values...<p>This might be one of those problems in marriage that doesn't HAVE a solution because of different mindsets... It will take some negotiating to get to a reasonable place of expectations that you both can live with.<p>Maybe find something that your H is passionate about and use that as a comparison just to get him to be able to consider your position.