Interdependency, or being able to depend on each other, is part of what makes a marriage special and successful. Dependability is one of the top qualities people look for in a spouse, and it should be. If one or both of you can’t depend on each other, the viability of your marriage is threatened.
When you don’t keep your word in a relationship, it can impair trust and communication. When your partner finds they cannot depend on you to follow through on your promises, they may stop turning to you for support. This can erode intimacy and connection, which can ultimately threaten the future of your relationship.
Why It’s Important to Keep Your Word
There are many reasons why following through on your promises is critical. Keeping your word helps improve:
- Accountability: Keeping your promises shows that you hold yourself accountable to stick to a plan and follow through.
- Credibility: Showing up for others, doing what you say you will, and being dependable are essential for creating personal credibility.
- Respect: Keeping your word not only shows that you respect other people, it helps improve their respect for you.
- Trust: Finally, dependability is essential to developing a trusting relationship.
When you make a promise to your spouse or say you’ll do something for your spouse or family and then you don’t keep your word, you’re letting your spouse down and hurting your marriage. Keeping your word and following through on your promises helps to reinforce the trust that your spouse has in you.
Not keeping your word tells your spouse that you simply don’t care, whether or not that’s actually true. It makes your spouse feel unloved or unimportant as if they aren’t worth the effort, and it probably makes you feel bad too.
Why People Don’t Keep Their Word
So why do people break their promises and not keep their word? There is a multitude of potential reasons behind this and it differs for every individual.
Difficulty Depending on Others
Some people minimize their need for others, which may result from early childhood experiences where there was not a reliable caretaker available. People who experience this tend to learn to take care of themselves, avoiding reaching out to others for help because they may not know how to depend on someone else.
Chaotic Upbringing
Another reason interdependency may be difficult for some people is that they were raised in a chaotic household. There was no consistency and a poor (or no) model of a mature marriage was all that was available, so they may not fully understand the nuances of what it means to be able to count on each other.
Inability to Say No
Some people don’t know how to be honest and say no. They’re people pleasers who are worried about how others view them, so instead of explaining honestly why they can’t do something, they say yes and then don’t follow through.
Control Issues
Still, others have issues with feeling controlled. Doing something that someone else has asked them to do leaves a sour taste in their mouth, especially if there are already other problems in the relationship. To stop feeling like they’re being controlled, they just don’t do what they said they would.
Recap
Problems depending on others, early experiences, trouble saying no, and control issues are just a few reasons why people may struggle to keep their word.
What Happens When You Don’t Keep Your Word
Regardless of the reasons for breaking your word, it’s critical for both spouses to be able to depend on each other. You both need to follow through on your promises without being constantly nagged or reminded to do so.
Not keeping your word means your partner will lose trust in you, damaging your marriage and leaving you at risk for divorce.
Not being a person of your word is also damaging to you personally. When you’re a dependable person, this tells you, and everyone around you, that you have character, integrity, and that you can be trusted.
Think of the legends and heroes from movies and books—part of the reason they’re heroes and legends is that they upheld their integrity and stayed true to their word. They were people who could be counted on no matter what.
How to Keep Your Word
None of these potential issues means you or your partner can’t learn how to be a person of their word. With practice, diligence, and learning to think about your partner’s needs ahead of your own, you can be the kind of partner that your partner needs. If your partner also has issues with being dependable, your good example can inspire them to work to be the partner you need too.
Here’s how to start working toward keeping your word:
Be Honest
Don’t say you’ll do something if you can’t do it. Be upfront and honest, even if you feel like you might be letting your partner down. It’s much, much worse to break your promise later.
If you realize that you can’t keep your promise, tell your partner as soon as you can and explain exactly why you’re unable to follow through. Make this sort of situation the exception, not the rule, especially as you’re working to build trust.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Again, be honest about your reasons.
Don’t Make Excuses
Don’t say, «I didn’t intend to _____ (forget/hurt you/not do it, etc.),» or «I forgot,» or «I didn’t have time.» Excuses are meaningless and are often a cover for the real reason you didn’t choose to follow through. Simply apologize and reiterate that you will keep working toward being a dependable partner.
If you changed your mind and don’t want to keep your promise, you need to be honest with your spouse about why you think you made the promise in the first place and why you can’t now follow through.
Combat Forgetfulness
If you broke a promise because you’re often forgetful, consider using some of the high-tech ways to be reminded of things you said you would do. You can receive email alerts, popup reminders from your calendar program on your computer, and get text or voice reminder messages on your cell phone.
You can give your spouse permission to remind you, too, with the understanding that you won’t consider the reminder to be nagging.
Be Considerate
Think about how it feels to you when someone doesn’t come through for you or keep their promise. Think about how every time the person does this, your disappointment and trust in them deteriorate more. Is that the kind of person you want to be? Put yourself in your spouse’s shoes.
Dig Deeper
Explore and understand why you don’t keep your word:
- Do you need counseling to work through some childhood problems?
- Do you possibly need treatment for ADHD or some other mental health concern?
- Is there another, perhaps more profound, problem in your marriage that you’re handling by being passive-aggressive?
Give Yourself Some Grace
Realize that there are situations that are beyond your control. For instance, you promised you’d take the kids to the park so your partner could have some alone time, but your boss says you must stay late.
The real problem is when you (consciously or subconsciously) choose to break a promise, not when life happens and the choice is taken away from you.
Recap
If you’re trying to be better about keeping your word, you can: be honest, avoid making excuses, try to remember, consider other people, and address personal issues. When the unavoidable interferes with your ability to follow through, give yourself a break and try to do better next time.
Making Positive Change
If up until now you and/or your partner haven’t been very good about keeping your promises, make it a goal to improve. Ideally, you can work on this together, but even if you simply work on changing yourself, you will likely eventually see improvements in your spouse and relationship as well.
Trust is one of the major foundations of a good marriage too, which means that being a dependable partner who always keeps his or her word can mean the difference between a successful and a struggling marriage.
If you are still struggling to keep your word, or if past let-downs have eroded the trust in your relationship, it might be time to seek professional help.
Talking to a couples therapist can be a great way to understand your issues and explore new ways to rebuild trust and intimacy in your relationship. A therapist can also help you explore why you don’t keep your promises and what you can do to get back on track.
A Word From Verywell
Don’t expect to change overnight, but if you keep working at keeping your promises and address any of the potential issues noted above, make sure you’re always honest with your partner and supporting each other. That’s when you’ll start to experience just how beautiful an interdependent relationship can be.
Having and being a trustworthy partner is a priceless gift you can give each other. And you’ll feel good about yourself, too.
It’s important to keep your word at any age. But as you mature, your experience tends to make you a role model for those around you. Your words carry years of knowledge and growth! So you already know that words are powerful, and that to build trust, earn respect, and build influence, you need to keep your word: do what you say you will do. Be an honorable person.
How to Keep Your Word and Build Honor
Common ways people don’t honor their word
Everyone knows someone whose promises disappear on the breeze—you know, the person who says they will come to the party, but no one expects them to actually show. We’re all allowed a few free passes for when things come up or we genuinely forget, but a pattern of dishonorable behavior leads to mistrust and disrespect. Keep watch for these common ways people don’t honor their word:
- They promise to call, but forget or flake.
- They don’t show up for a personal or professional meeting, or they show up late.
- They offer to help with something (moving, setting up a party, working on a project), but disappear at go time.
- They don’t keep sensitive information to themselves.
How you can keep your word to build honor
Keeping your word builds honor and trust. When you honor your word, you’re more likely to make and keep friends, and you’re more likely to be impacted positively at work, such as through greater responsibilities and autonomy. The best news is, there are many ways to honor your word beyond just doing what you say you will do. Here are a few:
- By being reliable, you’ll be more likely to be trusted in personal situations and counted on in professional situations.
- When you are authentic, you honor your persona by sharing your true self with others instead of hiding behind false pretenses.
- By being punctual, you show others that you value their time.
- When you follow through, you do what you say you will, and you do it well.
- By keeping confidentiality, you show that sensitive information is safe with you.
- You can be honest without being unkind, which means exercising tact with your truth and knowing when it’s best not to say anything at all.
General tips to become a more honorable person
Beyond keeping their word, most honorable people have certain traits in common. Not every trait will be easy for everyone, but they are learnable, and practice makes perfect.
- When you are a good sport, you know that you won’t win at everything all the time, and you show grace and positivity when someone else wins. You might even congratulate them!
- Everyone has flaws, and you are no exception. When you accept people’s flaws, you will not constantly focus on where others are falling short&dmash;and you can work on improving your own shortcomings.
- Show compassion when someone needs help or feels low, and see how you are able to build them up. If you’re not able to help, maybe you could introduce them to someone who can.
- If you do something for someone, don’t expect anything in return, and especially don’t hold it over that person’s head. All relationships should be a give and take, but few are tit for tat, nor should they be; who wants to keep that score?!
- When you have a strong belief system, you know exactly what you stand for. Gravitate toward what’s right and away from what isn’t, especially unscrupulous or unkind behaviors.
By keeping your word and building honor, you will earn big in your personal and professional relationships!
About Kay
I’m Kay Hunter, Orange County image consultant for men and women over 40. I transform mature professionals, active adults, and seniors into more successful and confident versions of themselves. By expressing yourself through style and fashion, you’ll get that boost of confidence, visibility, and value you need to get to the next level. Enhance the joy of living—because great style is ageless!
At a young age, most of us are taught the importance of integrity. We are told that a person who has integrity is honest and consistently adheres to strong moral and ethical principles and values. But people who have integrity also keep their word—to others and themselves.
If you have integrity, you stand by your commitments. You do what you say you will do.
So, do you have integrity?
How to Tell if You Have Integrity
If you aren’t sure you have integrity, answer the following questions. Even if you feel sure that you are a person of integrity, answer them anyway. (You might be surprised at what you discover.)
Do you stand by your commitments?
Do you keep your commitments to others?
Do you keep your commitments to yourself?
Can people trust that you will do what you say you will do?
Do you trust that you will do what you tell yourself you will do?
If you are like most people, you have a lot of integrity when it comes to commitments you make to others. You stand by those commitments.
Also, if you are like most people, you lack integrity when keeping commitments made to yourself. You aren’t self-integral.
The Problem with Lack of Self-Integrity
You may think it’s most important to keep your commitments to others. Indeed, that’s essential if you want to be a person of integrity and have others consider this as one of your positive traits.
However, having integrity with yourself is just as important—maybe more so. A lack of integrity with yourself leads to many other problems.
For instance, when you tell yourself you will do something, and then you don’t keep that commitment, you lose trust in yourself. Your word to yourself becomes worthless. As a result, your self-esteem and self-confidence plummet. Without self-integrity, you stop believing what you tell yourself.
Let’s say you tell yourself you will start exercising every day, and you will begin tomorrow. But when tomorrow rolls around, you find any number of excuses not to exercise. By the end of the day, “exercise” isn’t an item you have checked off your to-do list.
As a result, you feel lousy about yourself. When you realize that you didn’t do what you told yourself you would do, your mind offers a constant stream of negative self-talk. You never do what you say you’re going to do. You have no backbone. You are lazy. You aren’t committed. You’re doomed to be fat and out of shape.
And then you look for ways to feel better. You don’t say to yourself, I’ll go exercise right now. No…instead, you think, I might as well not even bother…not happening…no way, no how. I’ll just watch Netflix and eat pizza.
In other words, you give up…
Your Level of Commitment
You give up because you lack trust in your ability to follow through. Each time you say you will do something and don’t, you feel worse about yourself. Therefore, it makes sense that you would want to avoid that awful feeling—not to mention the knowledge you failed…again.
The other reason you give up involves your level of commitment to whatever you said you would do. If you don’t follow through, you aren’t committed or committed enough.
Period.
Your Life Indicates Your Commitments
Look at your life. It’s an indication of your commitments. You are committed to the things you see and do.
If you see squalor. You are committed to squalor. If you see stacks of bills you need to pay, you are committed to late bill payment. On the other hand, if you see a neat and tidy home, you are committed to neatness and tidiness. If you have no bills to pay—and no debt—you are committed to prompt bill payment and only spending the money you possess.
Let’s say you tell yourself you want to exercise every morning right after you wake up. Yet, you hit the snooze button four times before getting out of bed and then have no time to exercise. You are committed to snoozing, not exercising.
If you claim you want to read before bed but watch television each night until it’s time to go to sleep, you are committed to your television watching habit. You are not committed to reading.
If you say you want to develop a healthy eating habit, but you eat a massive bowl of ice cream every night after dinner, you are committed to eating ice cream—not to eating a healthy diet.
Habits Come from Commitment
Your habits are the things to which you have committed. You do them consistently and by rote.
Maybe you have the habit of meditating daily. That’s a commitment you made to yourself and kept. If you have the habit of journaling every day, you are committed to that habit, too.
But the examples used earlier—exercising, reading, eating a healthy diet—these are not habits because you aren’t committed to them.
You have the habit of not committing to the things you claim you are committed to. And that means you lack integrity with yourself.
Break Your Habit of Breaking Your Word
So, how do you break your habit of breaking your word? First, decide who you want to be. Then be that person every single day.
I used to hit the snooze alarm three or four times every morning. I told myself I really wanted to get up earlier and have a morning routine that included exercise, meditation, and journaling. When I was still hitting snooze several years later, it was apparent that I wasn’t committed to getting up earlier or the morning routine.
Then I decided I would be the type of person who gets up when the alarm rings.
The next day, the alarm rang, and I habitually hit the snooze button. As I rolled over in bed, I thought, *I am no longer a person who hits the snooze button. I am a person who gets out of bed when the alarm rings.” I turned off the alarm and got up. And I’ve been doing that every day since.
Who do you want to be? A person who exercises daily? A person who eats a healthy diet? A person who reads daily?
Decide. Commit.
Then be that person. As a result, you will see your commitment come to life. And you will become self-integral.
Don’t Negotiate with Your Mind
Another way to develop more integrity is to stop negotiating with your mind. Consider the affirmation Tony Robbins recommends: Now I am the voice.
Decide what you will think at any given time. Shut down the “Habit Voice” in your head that wants you to continue what you have been doing. It’s the voice that says, “It’s okay…you don’t have to exercise today. You can do it tomorrow.”
Only, that’s what it tells you every single day.
Stop listening! Don’t just ignore the voice; it will only get louder. Instead, dismiss it. Then think a thought of your choosing.
Your mind likes habits. It sees them as safe, which means any new thoughts or behaviors are unsafe. Thus, your self-talk will always tell you to keep things as they are.
When your mind says, Let’s not do that today or *But you could just do ___ instead,” remember it is your Habit Voice talking to you. Dismiss it. Put your attention on what you have committed to do instead. Affirm aloud, “Now I am the voice!”
Also, remind yourself who you want to be. Say aloud, “I am a person who does ____, and I am not going to do just that right now!”
Then, do it. Keep your word to yourself. Be self-integral.
Integrity: As Good as Your Word
You’ve likely heard the saying, “You are only as good as your word.” While you could argue that there is more to integrity—or your character—than keeping your word, it is an important piece.
Words have enormous creative power. Whether you speak to others or yourself, your words create. Each time you say you want to do something, you start the creative process. When you keep your word, you put energy behind it. You make an affirmation of action.
That’s why self-integrity causes transformation even if the action is as small as exercising daily, getting up with the alarm goes off, or reading before bed.
If you keep your word to yourself even once, you know you can do it again. And the ripple effect creates transformation in you and your life.
Do you struggle to be self-integral, or do you keep your word to yourself consistently? Tell me in a comment below, and, please, share this post with someone who might benefit from reading it.b55
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