I sat in a conversation with some people very recently, and right there in the middle of the conversation, two people had the opinion that marriage is one of the hardest institutions there is.
And as I thought about it, I realized that they were not so far from the truth.
Marriage is such a beautiful thing, but it takes a lot of hard work and intentionality to keep it so.
When people decide to treat their marriages with kid’s gloves, they begin to experience marriage as a “hard” thing.
Marriage thrives on trust, love, and the commitments made to each other.
Couples must deliberately follow through on commitments to each other if they want to succeed in their marriage.
When your husband makes a promise, you naturally expect him to follow through his promise.
But what happens when those promises are broken more often than kept?
Let’s begin by considering reasons why your husband will break his promises to you in the first place.
7 Reasons Why Your Husband Keeps Breaking His Promises
1. He Might Be Overcommitting
Overcommitting often comes from a place of wanting to be everything to someone.
Unfortunately, humans are not wired to be able to achieve this task, we cannot be everything to someone.
No matter how much we care about meeting the expectations of our loved ones, we are limited, and we cannot do anything beyond our limitations.
If your husband keeps breaking his promises to you, it is most likely he is overcommitting trying to do beyond his capacity.
This pattern becomes a vicious cycle where he makes promises to prove his love or worth, only to break them and feel guilty afterward.
This goes to show that you can have good intentions, put in the effort, and still do it wrong.
If you want to do something and do it right, stay within the scope of your capacity.
2. Lack of Organization or Time Management
Success almost never happens by accident.
It happens through intentional planning and efforts.
Some people who make promises actually do want to keep them.
But if they lack time management or organization, they may only discover that all the time has gone by, and they’ve not achieved what they intended to.
And with the way people are really busy in today’s world, juggling multiple responsibilities may be really challenging for your husband.
Even when he has every intention to keep his word, if he doesn’t have the necessary skills to manage his time effectively, he might consistently fall short.
For instance, when he promises to spend more time with you or help out more around the house, but then work deadlines or other obligations get in the way.
3. Fear of Confrontation
You know this is actually funny.
Imagine your husband only accepts to do things for you because he is scared of you or trying to avoid having a confrontation with you.
I find it funny, but it’s actually not supposed to be.
Because it also shows that your husband likes to avoid conflict rather than deal with them.
I may not know why this is so in your marriage, but I know for sure that it is a bad deal if you’re trying or working to keep your marriage healthy.
This also toys with your husband’s integrity and reliability.
Because if he finds it easy to put his integrity on the line just because he is trying to avoid conflict, then he really doesn’t care about being a person of integrity.
This case may occur in your marriage if you both have a track record of escalated conflict and poor communication.
4. Stress
You know how someone can want to do something but becomes really overwhelmed and exhausted before it’s even time to do the thing.
Life is truly full of pressures from work to financial concerns to family responsibilities.
And it hits differently as an adult.
When your husband is overwhelmed, his capacity to keep promises might be severely diminished.
Even simple commitments will begin to feel like insurmountable tasks when he’s dealing with high levels of stress.
Stress affects not only his emotional well-being but also his ability to think clearly and manage his time effectively.
In this situation, it’s not that he doesn’t want to keep his promises; it’s just that he’s stretched too thin.
5. He Might Not Understand the Importance of the Promise
Another reason your husband may break his promises is that he might not fully understand how important those promises are to you.
Because he’s said he will do something, you have included it in your place and are actually expecting it.
Meanwhile, he didn’t even pay attention to what he said.
You take his promises seriously and bank on it while he doesn’t think about his words or takes his own promises seriously.
Now that’s you having the trouble of misalignment and disparity of perception in your marriage.
And what hurts you is not the fact that he broke the promise,
What seems like a small, casual agreement to him might carry much more weight for you.
This disparity in perception will definitely result in broken promises simply because he doesn’t realize the significance of his commitments.
6. Habitual Behavior
There are people who are just unreliable, they just cannot follow through on commitments.
When they tell you they’ll do something, you can as well begin to make a substitute plan because you are sure that they will not deliver.
And this behavior is reflected in every area of their lives: work, relationship, etc.
If your husband is a person as such, it will be very difficult for him to keep his promises to you.
Sometimes, this may be a subconscious habit borne over years of being around unreliable people or years of failing on promises over and over again.
For instance, if he grew up in an environment where broken promises were the norm, he is most likely to adopt this character.
He might not even consciously realize that he is making promises he won’t keep.
And the fact that he doesn’t maliciously break his promise doesn’t stop it from causing serious damages to the marriage or water down its effect.
7. Emotional Disconnect
I feel like it is generally easier to fulfill promises to someone who you are connected to.
Take for instance, you made a promise to someone you were in a relationship with, and you both broke up before you even got to fulfill the promise.
You’ll begin to feel like there is no point staying through that promise or fulfilling it.
That’s how it gets with your husband.
If your husband made a promise to you when everything was rosy, if a situation arises in the marriage that causes an emotional strain, it will become more difficult for him to fulfill his promise to you.
This is one of the reasons couples must fight hard to keep their connection in marriage.
Once there is an emotional disconnection in marriage, it gives room for many other troubles that could be easily avoided.
If your husband is breaking his promises to you due to lack of emotional connection, you both should work towards reigniting the fire in the marriage and every other thing will naturally fall in place.
Broken promises in a marriage can be deeply painful and lead to feelings of mistrust and disappointment.
And whatever the reasons are, it does not make it easier or lighter.
But knowing the reasons helps you to know where and how to begin to address the issue.
You also know what needs to change and what needs to be introduced to allow for reliability in your marriage.