Some years ago when he coined the term “pre-commitment” to describe couples that were exclusive but not yet committed, it was a helpful distinction, but the question remains – “What is commitment?” The larger picture though, is that he sees a lot of confusion about the status of today’s relationships. Whether or not you agree with David’s semantics, the distinction he made between a commitment and a promise was helpful for the above conversation. If a potential partner doesn’t keep promises, I would question their ability to keep commitments, as they are definitely related. In short, a promise is something you say, and a commitment is something you do. “I promise to be exclusive in our relationship.”Ī commitment is both a FACT demonstrated by behavior and an ATTITUDE consisting of thoughts and beliefs. “I promise to pick up your dry cleaning and not forget this time.” However, there is an important distinction:Ī promise is a verbally stated future intention to perform a specific act. The general consensus was that when you make a promise you are making a commitment. When he asked other relationship experts for feedback on the “commitment versus promise” distinction, most felt that it was just semantics and there is not much of a difference. That distinction seemed to help her make more sense of things. In their conversation, it occurred to David to make a distinction between a “Commitment” versus a “Promise.” The woman and her boyfriend had made a promise to each other within the context of a relationship that was not committed. committed relationships, and she agreed that it was a pre-committed relationship, but insisted that they had made a “commitment” to each other. Commitment versus Promiseĭavid Steele, author of Conscious Dating, recently had a conversation with a woman who told him that she had just broken off a “committed” relationship.Ī few questions later he learned that she had been dating this person for a year, they were not living together, and the reason she broke it off is that he “cheated.” In this article I hope to shed some light on this question if you struggle with wondering the status of your of relationship. We live in a time when the marriage rate is going down, the co-habitation rate is going up, and the majority of first-born children are now born to unmarried parents. The question of when a relationship is committed is a source of much confusion and debate.
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