Research using the item-method directed forgetting paradigm has consistently shown that instructing a subject to forget an item tends to make it more difficult for that item to be retrieved. Two general theoretical accounts have been proposed to account for this phenomenon, passive accounts which explain forgetting as a function of a discontinuation of resources invested in to-be-forgotten items, and active accounts, which explain forgetting as a function of resources deployed in service of decreasing activation of the to-be-forgotten item. In the current research we aimed at distinguishing between these accounts by presenting some items a single time, with a single instruction, and some items multiple times, with conflicting instructions. Across two experiments, we found evidence that presenting items with conflicting instructions (one remember and one forget) did not lead to worse memory for items than presenting them a single time with a remember instruction. Our findings are generally at odds with current active accounts of directed forgetting.