When people in your family - or maybe even close friends - don't do what you would want them to do? Oh, I don't mean when you ask them to bring you a soda and they forget. I mean when they marry someone you don't like, or maybe just don't like for them. I mean when they make life choices that you would advise against. I'm sure it happens in every family, mine no less than anyone else's.
In my family, we pretty much say, "Oh well," (to ourselves of course) and go on about our own business. In some ways that is because we actually afford the adults in the family the right to make their own decisions, even if that decision makes us flinch a little, somewhere inside. In other ways, I think it is an avoidance issue, too. In my family, we avoid conflict, for the most part. No knock down, drag out fights for us. Power struggles were much more subtle at our house.
Still, there is a part of me that still wants to give advice in these cases... and a bigger part that feels the advice would not only be unfollowed, but largely unheard. It doesn't even matter how logical and good my arguments would be for my case, they wouldn't touch the decision making process at all. And I'm not really into the "I told you so" response to disaster, either... So, I'm not hoping for failure, although it is at times like suspense at the movies, when you know something is going to happen, and you don't want to watch. I keep my eyes diverted and practice not carring that disaster looms. What do you do?
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I do what you do: nothing. And in the end, it's probably best, as long as no one's being hurt. Then you have to step in, yelling and all. Granted, the people who need that kind of intervention are aces at keeping it from the ones who can help, so that's a problem.
The only thing I can think to do is gently question the decision -- "So you've thought this through?" -- and then be there and be supportive when it goes south, like you know it will.
And who knows. Maybe it'll really work.
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