Agreements, Promises and Contracts
I was having this long conversation while preparing for some upcoming legal events about the validity and / or enforcibility of contracts in general. You see, I grew up in a world and at a time where a promise was a promise. Full stop. No matter what it takes. And as naive as it may sound, yes sometimes we signed a “contract” but I always believed that it was purely to document what was discussed when the agreement was made, right?
Wrong! Seems to me like people make promises to get some short term advantage, and then they break the promise when a better job / more attractive boyfriend / interesting affair comes along.
I’ve learned some really hard lessons in my life and the hardest was learning that an agreement or a contract is not a promise to do, but a silent justification to not-do. For some people it is the exit strategy when they break their promises. It is their escape clause when they grow bored.
Sometimes when I do counselling I get people who can give me hours of examples of how bad their lovers / boyfriends / spouses are and how perfectly justified they are to break their promises. Can you imagine the look of horror when I ask them to tell me, for example, to rather tell me what they did to save their relationship vows instead of how justified they were to break them.
I’m deeply disappointed with my discovery. It makes me incredibly sad to think that I cannot trust other people any more. If both parties are not of the same mind, any agreement will be a failure.
Now that I am older, I’ve decided to surround me with people who keep their promises. I can live without the contract-breakers.
