New to Site - Just found about another

[Zues126]

Coffee, one thing I think is important to understand is that all that really matters is actions, words are meaningless.

I've been a manager. With an engaged employee you don't have to do much to get the results you want. If they show up late they apologize. If you have to bring it up, they immediately take ownership and promise to fix the behavior. With a disengaged employee, however, it's totally different. They will minimize their issues, blame outside influences, point out how other people are late and they aren't held accountable, call it a stupid rule, there ought to be flex time, they get their job done anyway, they worked through lunch the other day, etc, etc, etc. My god, it makes you want to stab yourself in the leg. Point is Coffee, with those types of employees you can't just have a Mr. Beaver lecture about the importance of attendance, because they don't care what you say. The only option is to document what happened, give them disciplinary action, and then terminate if they don't change their behavior.

As a parent, it's nice to have a child that wants your approval, that wants to do well. If they get a bad grade they will apologize, fix it, and understand any punishment they get. But if a child is rebellious, if they are physically attacking you, breaking things, walking away and slamming the door to their bedroom and turning up their walkman (or whatever it is these days), trying to talk to them like Mr. Brady is just going to look pathetic. This is where you have to literally take the door off their bedroom because privacy is a privilege, throw away their walkman (or whatever), cancel their cell plan, and change your internet password so they can't be on social media.

Bottom line, if someone is openly rebellious words are WORSE than pointless, because they only show your reluctance to take action. Words say "I hope you change your behavior if I ask nicely because I am too much of a wimp to do anything about it".

But that's good news! If you're not very good about handling conflict, words would be difficult. I mean, if she starts talking back, attacking, etc, it might be hard to stick to your guns. But since words AREN'T important, she can back you off, get you to agree to things you don't agree to, and then later you can ACT according to your game plan anyway. If she says "I thought we agreed on this" you can say "I felt threatened and agreed to that out of duress, I am not ok with this, this is what I am going to do going forward..." Much better than saying something and not following through!

Here's the thing. You have to be willing to ACT.

As an employer you can't have an employee that you're afraid will quit, or they will run the show. That's why corporations go to great lengths to not depend too much on any one person.

As a parent you can't depend on your children to meet your emotional needs, either because you want to hang out like buddies, or because you need them to act lovingly towards you so you feel better about yourself. You have to be very detached.

So too with WW. I haven't read much. Just the fact that there was an OM is enough. To what degree, when, I don't care. If there's an OM and she's been disrespectful then she's a WW.

You don't need a big speech, you don't need to tell her how it's going to be. Just put the damn hammer down. ACT.

How to act? Easy. Let me ask you this: If you knew with 100% certainty that she was never going to recommit to the marriage, and that you would end up divorced...looking back from that man in the future, how would you like to see that you handled the situation? How long did you wait? Did you file and protect yourself or did you let a year go by and hope that she would come around? What did you need to do before you felt at peace with filing? My point is that whatever you do, do it because you feel it's appropriate for a man to do before terminating a marriage. And if you feel it's appropriate to terminate your marriage at this point then file with conviction.