I Promise!

When I was young, newly married, and had two small children at home, I was a busy, self employed, entrepreneur who often made promises to my children I couldn’t possibly have kept.

Although my intentions were well meaning and good, I never really considered the implications of what I was promising to two hopeful, dependent, but naïve kids who spent a lot of their young lives with broken hearts as well as promises. They learned all too well old Dad really did not mean what he said.

One day, when my son was about six, my promise to attend a very important school play was met with an untimely business meeting that seemed much more important to me at the time. The next morning and after the evening before when I offered up my excuses to my son for missing his play, my wife and I called to our children to come to breakfast. Our little girl came, but our son did not answer.

Upon investigation to our son’s whereabouts, we found a note in his room pinned to his bed that simply read “Dad does not love me. I have run away. Love” and he signed his name. After learning from our older daughter that she had helped our son pen the note, we also learned he had run away to his best friend’s house which was two blocks away. Relieved, but hurt from the implications I had somehow failed my son, from that moment on, I vowed to either never promise something I couldn’t keep, or keep all the promises I made to my children.

Since that day some twenty four years ago, I have kept the commitment of that personal vow. It has made a grave difference in our children and my relationship. It took a while, but they know today that when their Dad promises them something, they can trust what he says.

Marriage vows are a whole lot like the promises we make to our children. When we make those vows of promise when we are young adults, we really don’t always consider the implications of what they mean. We are often, like children, naïve about the ceremony and its ramifications.

When it comes to living out the promises of our marital vows, we too often allow other things we think are more important get in the way of our commitment to one another. Sometimes, it is the commitment to our jobs that conflicts with our marital commitments, sometimes we just spend more time with our friends instead of our spouses, and at other times, the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.

Regardless of the good intentions we may have, we can come to the place in our lives where, like my son, we may feel like that special person in our life no longer loves us, and we may want to run away from out commitments. Not all stories end with the happy ending my son’s story ended.

He could have gotten seriously hurt when he ran away. If that would have been the case, our relationship could have been permanently and irretrievably broken. It wouldn’t have mattered what my real intentions were or how committed I would have vowed to be. It is the same with marriage. They can become permanently and irretrievably broken, regardless of our intentions and commitment level.

In the United States, broken marriages happen to almost fifty percent of all marriages. It doesn’t matter where you live, marriages can and do get irretrievably broken. When they do, you may actually no longer love one another. If that is the case you find yourself in, and you feel your marriage is irretrievably broken, you may need legal help to end your marriage. Contact us right now and we will help you find a divorce lawyer in your area who can help answer all the legal questions you might have concerning divorce.