Hi Erin,

My answer is no if you want to keep things kind and nice for the parter at fault and you want the other to not be disappointed anymore. That person’s action has been done too many times, and now it has become an habit, and I suppose words and empathy were not enough to change it. You can break such an habit in two ways. You either apply randomly a strong action every time the bad behaviour happens and you make that punishment always more painful at every occurrence but not threatened in advance, or you give that person randomly some very nice reward when he actually does something good and this reward have to be always better but not agreed in advance. As you see, it is like you are training a dog, and personally it feels like depriving that person of his human dignity; not to count that punishment or rewards come at your own expenses; the older the person, the more time it will take. In my view, the easiest thing to do is to break the relationship (let’s say after at least 3 disappointments). If the partner at fault cared for the other, he/she will feel ill and that will be his/her punishment, a few months later one may try to re-establish the relationship and see whether that person learned the lesson. If the partner at fault did not care, then it was better the relationship actually ended.

Anyway, do not forget that one can still salvage the relationship by being a pious saint that forgives his/her partner every time.