TIME OUT:When trust is lost, relationships are jeopardised, writes MARIE MURRAY
IT IS said that the best way to keep a promise is not to give it. Few would disagree. So why, then, make any promises at all? Given the fallout from breaking a promise, surely it would be better not to promise anyone, anything?
Instead, why not deliver on what we can and apologise for what we cannot do, without the danger of declarations, oaths and pledges, which if they are broken, leave the recipient aggrieved, angry, upset and feeling betrayed.
A promise is a promise. Promises are in a different declarative category to casual agreements. They are not simple statements, aspirations, hopes or willingness to try to do something. They are declarations of intent. They are verbal contracts. They say to a person, “You can put your trust in me. I promise.”
A promise is a pledge. “I give you my word” – what a truly awesome sentence that is, because it is a statement of your status as a person who is credible and true. That is a solemn statement. It says I will do this. I will not renege on this commitment. This is my priority and here is my personal assurance – I am as trustworthy as this promise.
A promise has psychological significance for the person who promises, and for the recipient of that assurance. It is psychologically complex when it fails, with implications for parent-child relationships, and all adult relationships of commitment and intent. Promises are emotional promissory notes.
Making a promise is a gamble with high stakes in intimate relationships. When trust is threatened, relationships are jeopardised. We make promises at our peril, and we do well to remember that before they trip from our lips without having been thought through, given the psychological distress they cause when broken.
Promises are risky because they are, by definition, undertakings based on the future. Yet we do not know what the future holds. Although promises are declarations of future intent, they cannot be copperfast, because while we know what we intend to do, we do not know what may happen to impede us.
But the fact that we retain the practice of promising means that it serves some human function we require.
When we swear an oath, we call on heaven and earth as witness.
When we solemnly declare, in marriage vows, to be with another person in all circumstances until death, we invite witnesses into the gravity of the undertaking and the seriousness of our intent.
This is why there is such cynicism when marriages are dissolved and re-entered sequentially if each new undertaking breaks the vows of the last.
If “my word is my bond”, then with what consideration do I give that word? A misleading advertisement is a broken promise. Fraudulent behaviour is breach of trust. Deception undermines belief.
Faith is belief in the future. Agnosticism is disbelief in the promises of the afterlife that most religions propose. In the past, breach of promise with regard to marriage ended in lawsuits. Neglect is betrayal of obligation to care.
What outrages public sensibility are broken promises – not what austerity measures must be undertaken by a government but the failure to acknowledge that it breaches promises in what it does: salary promises in contracts of employment, promises of pensions, of security of income, of stability of tax and the possibility to plan ahead without fear of erosion of what one has worked for.
A generation has had its promise of a future taken away. At the heart of civil unrest lies broken promises, implicit or explicit in once-revered institutions in which people put their trust.
“We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot,” said Abraham Lincoln – wise words that show how difficult trust lost is to regain.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and author. Her most recent book, When Times Are Tough, based on her RTÉ Radio 1 Drivetime psychology series, Mindtime, and Irish Timesarticles is published by Veritas.