The Promises I Promise To Promise (part deux)

Last time, I gave you five promises, and I owe you five more. Like I said last week, marriages have become lost its luster and it might be because couples have lost their desire to keep the fire burning. I can admit that I lost my fire, and it showed because I lost the best thing that ever happened to me. Now that I've had some time to regroup and think, I'm prepared to make the promises that I couldn't make before. Click here if you want to review the previous five, but here we go with the last five...

“I promise I will do my best for our child.”

I can speak to the obviously large challenges that come along with this, and what I can do is appreciate the importance of making our son a priority in our lives and doing everything I can to love, teach, and raise him into an adult we can be proud of. You can read all of the books you want, talk to all of the parents you want, and be as prepared as anyone could be, but one can imagine there are endless unique challenges that every set of parents face. When I make the promise to The One that I will do the best I can and figure it out together along the way, that’s exactly what will happen.

“I promise I will accept and love you fully.”

We all have flaws. We all have insecurities. We all have things we want to change about ourselves. We cannot expect to like every single little thing about our spouse, but what we need to do is promise that we accept all of their traits, and love them to their very core, just the same.

“I promise I do not love you for your beauty.”

Yes, of course you should love someone’s beauty. Yes, of course you should be physically attracted to the person you are with. Yes, of course you should love making love to them. But all of these things are very different than loving someone for their beauty. My mother always said to never fall in love with someone for their hair, teeth, looks, or money because they can lose all of it. When marriage is part of the conversation, when true love is part of the conversation, all of these things take a back seat to who this person is at their very center. In their heart, who they would be if everything that made them beautiful got taken away. If it did, would you still love the person underneath it all?

“I promise I will not let myself go.”

Is this a contradiction to the previous point? I think not. There is an important distinction to be made between someone who reaches old age, and someone who figures “hey, I’m married now, I can stop trying.” Of course bodies and appearance change as we age, but the point here is to not become a giant lump on the couch just because you’ve gotten yourself a husband or wife. It is important we continue to live a healthy lifestyle. To eat right. To take care of the only body we have in this life. To show the man or woman you love that you will still put in effort for them and not become too comfortable. Just because you are in a long term, committed relationship, does not mean that your partner deserves a lesser version of you.

“I promise I am in this until the end.”

Scary, isn’t it? The rest of your life. Death. Possible illness. Forever. Hell yes, it’s scary. To be honest, it scares the living daylights out of me. I am watching my parents age, and it kills me to think that we are all looking out into the same future. It is not always romantic or glamorous or beautiful, but for them, they still have each other. It is reality. It is love. It is commitment, and it is marriage. When you pledge the rest of your life to someone, that is exactly what you’re doing. I think this is so far outside of our realities that it’s almost not an ‘actual’ promise we feel like we are making. 20 or 30 years down the road, who knows what the future will bring? We may have to cross that bridge when we come to it, but I know one thing, I want to cross that bridge with her. When you marry someone, you are making the promise that you will be crossing any bridges you reach together. You will do it whether you are walking side by side holding hands, or whether one of you is pushing the other in a wheelchair. You will cross each bridge you find along your journey with the quiet confidence that your partner is going to be stepping onto the other side with you.

How can they be sure you will be there? Because you promised them, and that should mean something...

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