Promises, vows, commitments.

It’s what makes us supposedly feel “secure”.

When someone says, “I love you and I will love you forever,” it triggers off so many emotional, physical feelings.

But you should never say that to anybody.

You can’t promise anybody you’re going to love them forever, that you’re going to be loyal forever, or that you’re going to be by their side forever.

Nobody has the right to ever promise that to anybody.

The only thing you can do is be 100% faithful, loyal, and real with somebody in that present moment. If you stay 100% faithful in that moment, 100% connected to that moment, then the forever will take care of itself.

Life changes every single day. You don’t know how you’re going to feel in ten years, or 20.

Now, I’m not saying that people can’t commit to one another or commit to creating their lives together because that’s certainly something you can do.

But you can’t promise somebody that you will never do something. It’s not right. You’re also setting yourself up for failure, and if you set yourself up for failure, guess what’s going to happen.

You’re going to fail, dude.

And you’re going to take someone down a road that they don’t deserve to go down.

A friend of mine recently met this woman who lives in another country. They “fell in love”, and then he promised her that he’d be loyal when they were apart.

That loyal promise lasted about a week.

There’s nothing wrong with my friend. He has every intention to be with this person, every intention to be loyal. Except the problem is other things came up.

In life, things happen. Things come up all the time.

In a committed relationship, never promise your partner anything but this:

I will be 100% open, honest, faithful, and committed to you every single day. I will be honest and let you know how I feel. In that way, we can work on this relationship and as we work on this relationship, we’ll work on the relationship to the best of our abilities. We’ll respect and honor each other and we’ll be open and honest.

You notice I’ve said that a few times about being open and honest in the moment, because if you’re open and honest you don’t ever have to promise anything to anybody. The relationship may not work out, but if you’re open and honest the whole time, it means that the relationship had a chance and it wasn’t based on promises.

Every time you promise a woman something, you’re flipping her fantasy switch. Every woman has a fantasy switch that was created by their grandmothers and Walt Disney, all telling them how, one day, a man is going to promise his eternal love to her.

This man that she’s never met before, he’s going to be as honorable as her dad. He’ll be the man that she’s been dreaming about, the one that she may marry and have kids with one day.

Right.

Men: Be careful with your words and be more careful with your actions.

The reason why we have such great friends in life and the reason why our friends are always there for us is because we never make promises to our friends. We’re open, we’re raw, and we’re honest.

So our friends’ expectations are nothing more than just enjoying our company.

But for some reason, we don’t do that with out intimate relationships.

We make so many promises to them.

But if you look at every great relationship in your life, you made no promises, you were just present with that person; you were just there for that person.  And when you couldn’t be there for them, you were honest about it.

When a friend of mine comes over and they’ve got shit they need to get off their chest and I’m not in the mood for it, I’m going to tell them honestly, “Listen man, I don’t want to be your dumping ground tonight, I’ve got my own stuff going on and I just can’t be there for you tonight.  But I can be there for you tomorrow if that’s okay.  If this can wait then you’ll have my full attention tomorrow.”

Your friend won’t go home upset, they’ll just be happy that they’ve got an honest friend.

We don’t seem to disappoint our friends like we do our lovers.  Maybe that’s because so many of our relationships are based on fantasy and expectations.

We should learn to treat each other as we treat our best friends.  Maybe our male and female relationships will actually start to exceed more than fail.

Men tend to promise women so many things. Women tend to buy into that fantasy.  And then women harp on that promise that was never delivered.

“He promised he would take me away and then didn’t.”

“He promised he would never fool around with anybody else.”

“He promised he would always be open and honest.”

Why don’t we just get to know each other without promising?

Why don’t we just get to know each other like we got to know our friends—without fulfilling a fantasy, without expectations, and without wants and desires based on the insecurities of our past relationships.

That sounds like the beginning of a healthier relationship.

That sounds like a relationship based on truth and authenticity.

And that sounds good to me.