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[quote=Anonymous]I think Carolyn Hax has an excellent viewpoint on ultimatums. In her view, ultimatums are pretty much never useful. When you want your partner to change something, you want them to change because they love you and appreciate how negatively the thing is affecting you. So she recommends presenting it in terms of how it's affecting you, not in terms of what you'll do if they don't change. "I would really like you to come to marriage counseling with me. I'm very unhappy with X, Y and Z in our marriage, and I think marriage counseling is the best way for us to work on that." If he agrees, you know he's in it for you; if he doesn't, you know that your happiness isn't something he values, and you can make decisions accordingly.

In contrast, if you say, "I need you to come to marriage counseling with me or I'm leaving," he may agree to it, but that's necessarily because he cares about you. It may be that he just doesn't want to upset his comfortable life, and is willing to do just enough to keep you from leaving. Which means that once he thinks you've committed to staying again, he'll revert back to his previous behavior.[/quote]

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