By Melissa Ritter, Ph.D.
Keeping promises is considered a measure of one’s worth—we prize being “as good as our word.” Yet not one of us hasn’t struggled to keep some of our promises, often feeling ourselves failures when unable to do so. Why is it sometimes hard to keep a promise?
Promises are avowals of intent that mark a wide range of interpersonal events, including marriage, agreeing to specific behavior toward another person, and guaranteeing completion of a task. They require us to declare a conscious objective: we will love our partner for life, we will never do the thing the other does not want us to do (or we will always do the thing they want us to do), we will get the job done. But people have so many out of awareness thoughts and feelings, we may not “know” of our ambivalence about a stated commitment.
There are a number of commonly understood reasons promises are broken, including that our feelings, capacity or circumstances have changed over time. The fading of romantic love for one’s partner is emblematic of this phenomenon. What once was is no more.
And death of a loved one, loss of a job, birth of a child, falling in love, and illness, to list but a few, are all events that can shift—often monumentally—our feelings and consequent behavior. We may no longer have the capability and/or willingness to keep a specific promise, or it may no longer benefit those concerned to do so.
Less obvious are the internal conflicts that are out of awareness at the time the promise is made. For example, take the “forever” promise. As in, “I will love you forever,” “I will be your friend forever,” and “I will stay with you forever.” Most of us have said something like this to at least one person in our lives. And most of us meant it sincerely when we said it. At least consciously.
Only a fraction of our thoughts and feelings are in awareness at any moment. We often focus exclusively on those feelings most favorable and least threatening to our sense of well being. So, we know we want the other person in our lives forever, but we might not be aware of concurrent feelings of doubt, fear and anger. Or we might have some vague uncertainty hovering at the edges of awareness—“hmmmm, maybe I am not so sure”—but we don’t attend to this because we imagine it would put our connection to the other in jeopardy.
People are psychologically organized to protect against emotional distress by keeping unsettling thoughts and feelings out of mind. We don’t want to acknowledge that our romantic partnership requires strained compromise, or our unhappiness at work is interfering with job performance. We are reluctant to face painful realities.
A young man in my practice lamented the end of a long-term relationship with his partner. They had lived together for many years—forever had been promised—and the breakup was extremely distressing for them both. “I loved him, I really did,” he said tearfully, “but I sort of always knew…it wasn’t as deep and enlivening as I wanted.”
From very early in this romantic relationship, my patient felt contradictory emotions simultaneously: he loved his partner, while also hazily sensing dissatisfaction and despair, feelings that did not draw his conscious attention. He and his partner did make a cozy and gratifying life together.
To acknowledge significant negative feelings was frightening to my patient. He did not want to lose the relationship, but was also dimly aware of irritation, boredom and loneliness. As this conflict entered his awareness, he was able to explore—with relief, as well as anxiety—previously unrecognized feelings. He emerged sad, but also hopeful.
The same phenomenon can interfere with keeping less significant promises as well, like promising to complete a task by a certain deadline. “I will have it to you by next week! No problem!” The conscious intent to do the job on time is wholehearted—you are going to do what you said you’d do. You want to!
But, hold on. Maybe you unconsciously resent having to do the task, or are worried you won’t do it well enough, or regret choices that led to this unwelcome demand on your time. And so, somehow, the work doesn’t get completed because there is a part of you that never wanted to promise you’d do it in the first place.
So, what are we to do? Trying as best one can to keep promises is crucial. These interpersonal contracts facilitate trust and love. But since so much is out of awareness, are we doomed to make promises we cannot keep? Well, yes. People always struggle against themselves. We disregard human complexity when we harshly criticize others—and ourselves—for "failing" to feel and behave exactly as promised.
But we can make a concerted effort to know ourselves, to attend to that which we might prefer to ignore. Then when we make a promise, we are alert to the possibility of contradictory feelings about doing so. This is one goal of psychoanalytic therapy: to bring out of awareness thoughts and feelings into our conscious minds. But, of course, one needn’t enter therapy to look inward with friendly determined curiosity before making a promise.
Melissa Ritter, Ph.D., is a psychologist-psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. She is a supervisor and faculty member at The William Alanson White Institute, as well as co-editor of this blog, Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Action. She is co-chair of the White Institute LGBT Study Group, and clinical supervisor at The City University of New York and Adelphi University.