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ORIGINAL: lovingpet

Relational commitments are sterner stuff than a contract, a business arrangement, or any other such thing that is enacted upon cold, nonliving entities.  I have feelings as does my partner.  Some of this sounds incredibly cold (not speaking to any particular post).  If I am not content. If I find another path.  If I feel trapped.  If I am being hurt.  There is something common to all of this.  "I".  Where's the we? 

Sometimes commitment to another is inconvenient.  Sometimes it is unfulfilling for an undeterminable period of time.  Sometimes it is hard.  Sometimes it actually means that real and deep wounding occurs.  I bear up under these things and keep my end.  I cannot make such a decision for my partner, but have to trust that those words were not void and carried meaning for him/her as well.  Regardless of another's decision, I chose to love, care, and be there for that person for a lifetime and beyond and I will do so and their decision has no bearing on that.  If we come out the other side together (as a couple), then there is a time when difficulties pass, comfort increases again, we fill each other to overflowing once again, it all comes easy, and we begin to help each other heal from those dark times.  It is a very long view.  It goes against instant gratification.  It is commitment.

lovingpet 

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW

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I am wildly traumatized by the idea of significant relationships being transitory. Of course, one could get all philosophical and speak of time as relative blah, blah, blah but, seriously, were I to think that a truly partnered relationship was time-limited, I would not be in it; I wouldn't consider it a spousal or truly partnered relationship. I am not judging the validity of transitory relationships for others if that is their choosing, I am viscerally and emotionally reacting to the idea of lack of permanence.
I hold love with the utmost gravity and also with the most bright joy and awe and once I grow to love someone, were they to go away, a piece of myself is gone. That is an agony I'd prefer to avoid as much as possible; my preference is to love permanently and deeply.

I think that this is a  misconception of what it is that creates permanence in a relationship -- that it is an unenforceable promise, which really has no 'bite' since we are incapable of knowing the future and are -literally- IMO, swearing a false oath which we cannot assure can be followed through on, that makes a relationship 'permanent', rather than the work between the participants that gives a relationship its 'holding power'. It seems to me that there is a profound flaw in the concept that we are doomed to spend the rest of our lives without committed relationships if we won't give a promise that has no substance to start out the relationship.

To me, what makes a relationship committed is the -ongoing-, moment-to-moment nurturing of that relationship. It isn't some promise that has no way of being enforced... it is the continuing will of the participants, who come into the relationship with the understanding that each moment that they share is precious, will never be repeated in the entire universe, and that it is the abiding desire to nurture what they have created that makes a 'relationship'.

I've found, in my own experiences, that sometimes we ignore the small signs of incompatibility early in relationships, perhaps with the thought that if we can just get the other person or people involved to "promise" that they'll hang in forever, those incompatibilities will somehow magically fade away. Then, we are surprised... shocked, even... when time passes and the incompatibilities become more pronounced rather than fading away, and resentment starts creeping silently into the corners of the relationship, where it waits like a silent thief, waiting to steal any brief joy of reprieve.

If it is the day-to-day work of sustaining a relationship that makes it strong, then why not just -do it- without the unenforceable vow?

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ORIGINAL: lovingpet

While I am the first one to agree that there is a such thing as abuse within relationships, and some of it severe enough to constitute the breaking of the vows in and of itself and thereby absolving the abused party of any further responsibility, I have experience enough to know that things can get very dramatic when people are frustrated, bored, or uninspired.  Abuse, in my mind, is very specific (still containing all the many manifestations that are recognized but in a more narrow construing).  In cases of abuse, the OFFENDER breaks the vow.  Of course, the trick to successful abuse is to have the other person believe things are falling apart because of him/her.  By all means, it is time to go.  Now I have seen relationships successfully reestablished after long patterns of abuse and they thrive to this day.  It is rare, but it can happen.  It takes two.  It ALWAYS takes two to make a relationship work.  I know of what I am capable within a given relationship, then I can speak to that.  I can only take at face value what the other person says.  It's a faith thing.  It's a self direction thing.  I have A LOT of control over whether I can work through the problems in a relationship.  I don't have ALL the power.

I will never sit and judge whether someone had good reason for ending a relationship.  If they say they did, then that is enough for me.  I will say that the soaring divorce rates cannot all be such insurmountable circumstances.  I don't see the staying power, and in some cases, the effort to stay.  Relationships are disposable when they aren't quite as fit as they once were.  If my marriage were to end today it would be because it is not particularly beneficial for my husband to be married to me right now.  I am sick, unable to uphold household and career tasks, have significant and unpredictable mood issues due organically to my medical issues.  I am pretty well a drain in every possible way.  We persevere because that was the promise we made to each other.  Right now it is probably the only reason we keep on.  This too shall pass and we will be much better for it.  I would hate to think I was so disposable and replaceable.  We choose to put forth the effort...whatever it takes.  WE do.  I understand that if one of the "we" is unwilling then both wind up defaulting.  That's just it.  I made a very careful choice.  I was in no rush and managed to be objective in deciding to make this vow and accept his in return.

I agree with DavanKael that the vow is so powerful BECAUSE it cannot be enforced in the more traditional sense.  It is the power of the wills of two people that must enforce it.  Someone who is willing to work that hard to make sure we are in each other's lives for the long haul makes my heart go thump thump.  Especially when I equally desire it.

lovingpet

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW

I am curious to hear from people who make or have made these kinds of promises -- who promise "forever", and "always", and intimate that they will never change, and that the person they are with will never change, in their feelings towards one another. I am interested in the self-talk that people do when they are considering making such 'lifelong' promises, for which there can be no guarantee, when a promise intimates just such a guarantee -- something one should be able to count on. So... if you've made promises about loving forever, being faithful forever, or taking care of/keeping someone forever, what thought process goes through your mind, and how do you consider the dichotomy that human beings change, and that relationships mutate, people change and grow apart, and that we cannot always control who we end up becoming attracted to. I am also interested in how those who have succeeded thus far, and those whose relationships, made under such promises, have ended, feel about such promises going forward.

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW

I think, for me, the question that this all boils down to is: Would you consider your relationship to be as strong/valid if there were NO contract, NO promise, NO piece of paper registered with the government, and NO promises, vague or ritualized, theoretically enforceable or not... made in front of witnesses or alone... and if you knew there never would be... BUT you also knew that the person you was completely committed, for the forseeable present, to the communion you have?

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How would know they were committed without these forms of communication?

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW

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How would know they were committed without these forms of communication?

For me, time takes care of that issue. I've been with my current companion for 10 years. Some of the ways we inter-related have changed over time, and yet, we're still companions. We don't have a formal document that defines what we are to one another, and yet somehow we manage to communicate that... and communicate changes in us and in our counterpart that impact our communion. I'd say we're "currently committed" because right now, we have expressed that we are happy being with one another... but I would never ask her to promise that she'll stay that way forever... she may decide, tomorrow, that what we are isn't healthy for her. After all these years, she probably -wouldn't- decide something like that overnight, but it could happen... and I would help her to find her way and sort out our combined lives, and send her on her way without bitterness.

To me, 'relationship' is fluid. It is like quantum physics... while an atom may exist in many places at the same time, one can only -see- it in this place in this moment... and where it has been or where it goes from there... *shrugs* I let time sort out what we are to one another, as it seems that the only way to really determine what a relationship is, and how it is holding up, is in retrospect in any case.

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ORIGINAL: ExSteelAgain

What happens is that one party does change/tire/grow/need space or whatever while the other is still honoring a mutual promise. It is not something that's easy to justify.

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ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW

I think, for me, the question that this all boils down to is: Would you consider your relationship to be as strong/valid if there were NO contract, NO promise, NO piece of paper registered with the government, and NO promises, vague or ritualized, theoretically enforceable or not... made in front of witnesses or alone... and if you knew there never would be... BUT you also knew that the person you was completely committed, for the forseeable present, to the communion you have?