If the neighbor's dog keeps escaping into my backyard and getting into the garbage and trampling the flower beds and shitting everywhere, relying on the neighbor to provide a solution to the problem may not be the most effective course of action.

If I'm waiting for him to put up better fencing or train his dog or whatever, I may be waiting forever.

You don't actually have any control over this dude anyway. Does it look like you have control? Is he doing exactly as you've controlled him to do?

Who would want to control another human being anyway? What an onerous task. And to actually succeed in controlling someone would be to kill their spirit and deprive them of their autonomy. What a shitty thing that would be to do to someone.

It's not about control, it's about what I'm willing to put up with.

The only boundaries that matter are my boundaries.

I draw the line somewhere and then it's up to me to decide what that means and what I will do when one of those lines is crossed.

If I think the lines I'm drawing exist in someone else's body or mind then they'll take advantage of me til the cows come home. They'll erase my line and re-draw it wherever they want. They'll feign confusion about what the line means.

We'll quibble and reach some sort of new agreement about the lines, but if it is not truly their intent to respect those lines, then arguing about lines of demarcation and moving the goalposts won't actually solve any problems.

If I don't know where I've drawn the line that tells me when I sever the relationship and hit the eject button then I'm just twisting in the wind.

I don't worry about trying to maintain someone else's boundaries because I know where my boundaries are and that's all that matters. Control never need enter the picture.

Maybe the neighbor secretly enjoys it when he looks out his window and sees my flowers destroyed and me with my little shovel picking up his dog's shit.