What To Do If Your Boyfriend Keeps Breaking His Promises

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Nothing is worse than when your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, even though he says he won’t ever do it again.

And you know that he will because he lies over and over and over. And you have been there for every one of them.

Are you sick of it? Do you wish, more than anything, that, because your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, there might be something that you can do to change things?

I get it. Who wants to be with someone who won’t do what they say they will do?

Things To Do If Your Boyfriend Keeps Breaking His Promises:

Here are 5 things to do if your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises so that you can deal with it and decide the next steps.

#1 – Don’t Take It Personally:

First and foremost, I would encourage you to try not to take the fact that your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises personally.

People who are liars are liars. They lie indiscriminately. They lie about where they have been. They lie about the color of the sky. They lie about what they had for dinner.

People who lie are often very insecure about protecting themselves, their reputation, and their place in the world.

When your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, it has nothing to do with you it is about him.

My client’s boyfriend repeatedly promises to join her and her mother for their Thursday night dinner. And, every week, he has an excuse not to. Eventually, my client started taking it personally, believing he would come to dinner with her and her mother if he loved her.

The reality is is that her boyfriend broke his promise not because he disrespected her but because he wasn’t comfortable, for whatever reason, with going out to dinner. Maybe he didn’t like her mom or was intimidated by her. Maybe he didn’t like the restaurant. Maybe softball always happens on Thursdays.

Whatever the reason for his lie, it was never about her that I knew for sure.

#2 – Call Him On It:

An important thing to do when your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises is to call him on it.

The key part is HOW you call him on it.

I would encourage you to talk to your boyfriend after the lie occurs. My client’s case is when she gets home from another dinner with her mom without her boyfriend.

I would encourage her not to attack but to stay calm and clear. Last week, you promised that you would have dinner with my mother. You broke that promise tonight.

If you can stay calm and not launch into accusation mode, you will likely get through to him. If you attack him, he will get defensive, make excuses, and maybe even blame you. If you calmly state a fact, what can he do? After all, he knows that he broke his promise to you.

#3 – Don’t Get Passive-Aggressive:

This is very important. If you don’t call your boyfriend on his breaking his promises, it is essential that you can’t act hot and cold instead.

Passive aggressiveness is the best way to make no progress in a disagreement. Why? Because being passive-aggressive only makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Let’s say my client came home from dinner and ignored her husband. Let’s say she got changed, turned on the TV, and answered his questions with one-word answers. Let’s say she went to bed, sleeping in the guest room this time. Let’s say in the morning; he got no breakfast.

Sure, my client was showing her boyfriend that he had upset her by breaking another promise and deserved to be ignored and treated with contempt. But doing that only gave her boyfriend the upper hand.

When they finally did discuss what happened, the conversation would be as much about her reaction to what happened as to the fact that he had broken another promise. He would be happy to deflect what he had done and focus on her bad behavior.

The discussion would dissolve into a fight, and nothing would get resolved because both of them would be focused on each other’s bad behavior instead of focusing on the cause of the issue that her boyfriend keeps breaking his promises.

So, be direct. Stay calm. And, by no means, get passive-aggressive.

#4 – Accept That Things Won’t Change:

I hear from my clients that they don’t understand why their boyfriends don’t change.

After all, their boyfriends know that they are upsetting my clients, and they recognize that they need to do things differently and promise to do so. So, why can’t they follow through and do so?

Because they don’t love you? No!

Their boyfriends can’t follow through because they are making their promises to make them happy, to stop them from being angry at them. They are breaking their promises because what they have promised is not necessarily something they want to do. They make the promise at the moment to keep you happy.

No person will change their behaviors unless they actively want to. If your boyfriend is going to change, he will have to be the one to want to do it. Until then, no matter how many promises he makes to you to keep you quiet in the moment when the time comes, he will, more likely than not, break that promise. Again.

So, don’t wait around for things to change. Know that they most likely won’t unless he wants them to.

#5 – Walk Away:

I can’t state it enough if your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, it is okay to walk away.

I know that it might seem like some of these broken promises aren’t a big deal and that you can rationalize his behavior, but the truth is that you can’t trust or rely on someone who breaks his promises.

And trust is the key to any healthy relationship. Without it, the relationship is doomed.

Can you imagine spending the rest of your life with someone who you can’t believe what they say? How about being with someone who wasn’t there when you needed them because they broke their promise? How about knowing you can’t count on them to help you when you need help?

That doesn’t sound good, does it? Everyone wants someone they can count on, who they know has their back, and who will be there when needed.

So, walk away if you have to. The broken promises might not feel like that big a deal now, but if your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises repeatedly, that does not make a good boyfriend.

If your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, I am so sorry.

I am sure that his breaking his promises has done a number on your self-esteem. I am sure that you feel responsible for his behavior and, if you are being passive-aggressive, that you might not be behaving the way you would like to in response.

So, it is time to take action. Remember not to take the broken promise personally. Calmly talk to your boyfriend about breaking his promises, and never be passive-aggressive. Know that unless they want to change, they won’t. And embrace the fact that it is ok to walk away.

You want to be in a relationship with someone you trust, and if your boyfriend keeps breaking his promises, you will never trust him again!

Why So Many Women Fall For Damaged Men

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It doesn’t seem logical that so many women for damaged men.

I mean we are smart, we are wise, we are self-confident, we should know better. Right?

However, for a variety of reasons, when it comes to certain men, all of those strengths can melt away and we are left at the mercy of men who can suck us dry.

Knowing why we tend to fall for damaged men is the key to understanding why we do it so that we can stop doing it! NOW.

#1 – Father issues.

Did you know that women who have a healthy relationship with their fathers tend to grow into healthier, happier and stronger women?  Unfortunately, for many of us, those healthy relationships just weren’t established over the course of our lives.

If you are one of the lucky ones, I am guessing that you might not be reading this article. If you are one of the rest, like me, then you know what I mean.

For me, my father was absent. He was one of those dads who worked a lot and left the child care to my mother. He was around but not present. And when he was present, he was very sarcastic. Whenever I told him a goal or accomplishment, he put me down saying I wouldn’t be able to do it.

My parents divorced when I was 13 and he found a new wife, who hated me, and moved to Australia. Since then, he has repeatedly chosen his wife over me which, in combination with the sarcasm, left me feeling abandoned and unloved. It was the same for my sister.

Since then, my sister and I both have been in a series of relationships with unhealthy men. We are drawn to men, like our father, ones who we believe can fix and hopefully make up for the pain that our dad caused to our psyche.

For me, in particular, I have a habit of choosing men who lie. They lie about anything, literally. As a result, I can never trust them and that leads to a downward spiral in the relationship that always left me heartbroken. I did this over and over until I finally accepted that my relationship with my dad was what it was and that I didn’t have to bring that baggage into my relationships.

So, how is your relationship with your father? If it isn’t a good one, it might explain why you fall for damaged men.

#2 – Make believe.

Think about to every rom-com you have ever watched. You know the ones where the girl and the guy find each other in the end, all set to live happily ever after.

Now, how many of those movies involve a damaged guy getting the girl in the end? Every one, right?

Think of Dirty Dancing good girl Baby falls for the smooth, bad boy Johnny. In The Breakfast Club, Claire falls for the rebel Johnny. In Grease, Sandy falls for Danny. In Lost, Kate for Sawyer. The list goes on and on.

As we all know, we are strongly influenced by what we see on TV and in the movies. From a very young age we are exposed to relationships that are idealized and performative but not necessarily attainable. As a result, we are constantly seeking out something that doesn’t exist.

In these movies, we see the good girl meeting the damaged, bad boy, reforming him and making him fall in love with her as a result. How romantic!

Unfortunately, this story is just movies and TV. Women so want to fix their men but you can’t fix someone unless they want to be fixed. So, women are left there, holding on to their damaged man, believing that if they just love them enough, everything will work out. And it doesn’t, most often.

So, do you use TV and movies as a model of what you believe your relationships can look like? If yes, then you might be turning towards damaged men in an effort to mirror what you see in media.

#3 – The challenge.

I don’t know what it is about human beings but we always need to be challenged, especially in relationships!

Be honest. How many times have you been in a relationship with a guy and said that he was too nice,boring, or that he was boring or that he didn’t challenge you? And how many of those relationships are you still in?

The thing about bad guys is that they are a challenge. We see them as damaged puppies who just need the love of a good woman to make them whole. And we women love to take on challenges like that.

I can’t tell you how many of my clients reach out to me because they are in toxic relationships that they can’t get out of. Without exception, as they tell me their story, they indicate that their person came to them with some issues, some red flags, that they ignored because they wanted to believe that this person was their person and that, with enough love, they could fix them.

As a result of ignoring those issues, my clients are stuck in relationships with damaged men who can become emotionally absent and/or abusive. People who have unprocessed issues can be prone to anger and violence and, unfortunately, the person who is often on the receiving end of that anger and violence is the partner.

So, take a look at your inclination to pursue damaged guys. Is it because of the challenge that he might present to you, the drama that might make things spicy?

I know that you just want a healthy relationship and that you don’t want to play games. And I get that and totally agree. But a healthy relationship is found in the balance between bad boys and boring. A healthy relationship is one where you feel challenged but you also feel good about yourself.

That person is out there for you that perfectly balanced guy who can love you in a healthy way.

#4 – Low self-esteem.

Unfortunately, many women fall for damaged men are often women who don’t feel very good about themselves.

I have a client who has spent her entire life struggling. She was raped when she was in high school, got addicted to drugs and was homeless. She let herself be abused by everybody in her life in her hopes of being loved.

She did eventually pull her life together and started a successful business. But, in spite of her success, she still didn’t feel good about herself. She did not believe that she deserved anyone other than a damaged man. Why would a healthy man want to be with her, after all?

As a result, she found herself in toxic relationship after toxic relationship. She would continue to degrade herself, trying to get her partner to love her and to treat her well. Unfortunately, so many of the men who she attracted because of her insecurities were also deeply damaged and incapable of making any woman feel good about themselves.

So, my poor client was repeatedly going down this rabbit hole of falling for damaged men because she just did not believe that she deserved any better.

It is only once she started taking a good look at herself and who she was in the world that she started to see her self-worth and make wiser choices when it came to men!

#5 – Fear of being alone.

So many of my clients live in mortal fear that they will never find their person. That they will be left alone and childless and that they will be miserable.

As a result, my clients aren’t picky about who they chose to love and thus they fall in love with unhealthy guys. They figure that some guy is better than no guy and that, at least, they won’t be alone.

Unfortunately, what my clients discover is that being in a relationship with a damaged man is very often worse than being alone. They do have a partner at their side at social events and they might have children but the reality of their lives is much different.

Perhaps their person is abusive. Or perhaps their person suffers from a mental health condition that makes him unable to care of his family. Or perhaps they have trust issues from a past relationship. No matter what the issue, big or small, an issue can have a disastrous effect on a relationship.

So, consider this next time you are leaning towards falling for a damaged man. Are you doing so because of the man in front of you or are you doing it because you are scared of being alone?

It really is amazing how many women fall for damaged men.

Whether it is because of their past issues with their fathers, the influence of media on their understanding of relationships, their need to be challenged or their fear of being alone, women who choose, and stay with, damaged men are destined for a relationship that will not be an easy one.

So, take a good look at the perspectives that you have about relationships do you need a challenge? Do you want to fix someone? Do you need to find your Danny Zuko to be happy?

Understanding what you think you want vs. what you do want is a good way to find the healthy relationship that you seek so that you can be happy, once and for all!

 

5 Ways I Set the Stage For My Spouse’s Cheating

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In retrospect, I know that, in many ways, I set the stage for my spouse’s cheating.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame myself for his cheating but I do know that, in many ways, my actions made it so that our relationship was vulnerable to one of us stepping out.

I have a tremendous amount of regret for the things that I did that made our marriage susceptible to infidelity and I want to share them with you today so that you don’t make the same mistakes I made over the course of my marriage.

Here are 5 ways I set the stage for my spouse’s cheating.

#1 – I took him for granted.

When we first got married, my life was all about us as a couple.

We worked together and played together and life was grand.

And then we had kids and everything changed.

The kids and their activities became the focus of my life. Whatever they needed took priority over anything else. I had wanted to be a mom my whole life and having kids meant all of my dreams had come true.

Unfortunately, I think the arrival of the kids were my spouse’s nightmare.

I am not saying that he didn’t love the kids. He loved them madly. I am saying that my focus totally turned away from him and towards the children and I am sure that must have felt horrible for him.

And, not only did I focus on the kids, I expected him to focus on the kids as well, to make them the center of our family and not us.

As a result, I just expected him to be there when I needed him. I expected him to pick the kids up if I needed him to. To take them away on Saturday mornings so that I could get things done. To coach soccer and to go to races. Etc.

And I am not sure that I ever asked him to do those things I just assumed that he would.

I am hoping that I said thank you for the things that he did but I am guessing that I wasn’t so good at doing that which probably left him feeling unimportant and invisible.

Perhaps, if I had made him more a part of the team instead of this person who would do my bidding, I wouldn’t have left him feeling this way and, when someone else came along who might actually see him, he might have been able to resist the temptation to stray.

#2 – I treated him with contempt.

This is the thing that I regret the most.

I know that, in spite of everything that he did for me, everything that I took for granted that he went along with, with no complaints, I treated my spouse with contempt.

The definition of contempt is the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn. And this is exactly how I treated him.

When he came home late from work and missed dinner, I said that I would fire” him. When he did something, but not the way I wanted him to, I would passive aggressively say something demeaning.

I criticized the way he did everything telling him what he was doing wrong. I didn’t support his dreams and hobbies but brushed them off as pipe dreams that he would never achieve.

There is nothing that will kill a relationship quicker than contempt. Why? Because with contempt comes feelings of anger and resentment. Of self-doubt and low self-esteem. Of not trusting your partner to care about your feelings. Of believing that not only do they not love you but that they don’t even like you.

I wish, more than anything, that I hadn’t treated my spouse with contempt. I wish I had been open and honest and supportive and respectful with and of him.

I am not sure that I have ever treated anyone else with contempt- so why did I treat him that way?

Regardless, when someone else came along, I had set the stage for my spouse’s cheating because when that person treated him well, he naturally turned towards them and the love and respect they gave him.

#3 – I spent more time with my friends than with him.

Before we had kids, my spouse and I did everything together.

We worked together, we hung out with friends together, we travelled together, we had fun together. A lot of fun.

But, after the kids were born, everything changed.

A big reason for this is that our focus shifted  me to the kids and him towards work and supporting us. We no longer shared our days and experiences but rather, more often than not, did things completely separately.

And when you don’t share experiences, it’s easy to grow apart.

I know that over the course of our marriage, I spent more and more time with my friends. We would walk together in the mornings, have play dates together, go to the movies together and go away on weekends. We did the fun and bonding things that I used to do with my husband.

And no longer sharing those things only drove us further apart until there was very little that we shared other than the kids.

We didn’t do this on purpose, and I am not even sure that I noticed that I was doing it at the time, but, in retrospect, I wish that we had made an effort to spend more time together, to stay connected with the things that had drawn us together in the first place.

If we had, there wouldn’t have been space in my spouse’s life when another woman came along to have fun with him.

#4 – I put too much distance between us.

This one is not entirely my fault but it is something that I think caused a significant rift in our relationship, one that set the stage for my spouse’s cheating.

When our kids were little, my spouse decided that he needed to do two things hike the Grand Canyon and go back to school for his master’s. To do those things, he needed to leave me alone with the kids. Over and over and over.

I was angry when he did these things but, over time, I started to realize that, in many ways, it was easier when he wasn’t around. There was no disruption with his comings and goings and I was free to do things where and when I wanted to do them.

As the years went by, we found ourselves spending less and less time actually living together. His work led him to Canada where he lived for six months. Later, I had to move away, temporarily, with my son who was having some issues at school.

These things separated us for months, making both of us feel lonely and abandoned. As a result, he was vulnerable to someone coming along who was there, present, and who wouldn’t leave him feeling alone.

#5 – I didn’t tell him how I was feeling.

The number one thing that I didn’t do that set the stage for my spouse’s cheating is that I didn’t tell him how I was feeling.

In the moment, I probably did not really understand how I was feeling. I was just going through my days, trying to keep my head above water, organizing everything that was our crazy family life. But, I know now, that I was miserable and a big part of that was because I was so disconnected from my husband.

I had loved him madly when we got married and I was so excited that we would get to build a life and a family together. As the years went on and we became increasingly estranged from each other, I was sad. Very sad and lonely. I missed him and the couple that we were.

But I wasn’t able to express those feelings at the time, maybe because I didn’t see them but more likely because I was scared. I was scared that, if I spoke the words out loud, it was cause some kind of implosion in our lives, an implosion that I did not think that I could quite handle.

I think that I was also worried that I would lose him. I assumed that, if we could just get through this period of time, we would be able to find our way back to each other. But I was wrong.

Not only didn’t I tell him about how I was feeling, I also spent tons of time talking to my friends about how miserable I was. About the things that we did and didn’t do together, about our disconnection and our long absences. They knew how I was feeling, but he didn’t.

As a result, when he cheated on me and ended our marriage, none of my friends were surprised. I was but they had seen the writing on the wall for a long time.

If only I had talked to my husband, maybe when someone else came along who could talk to him about how they were feeling, to connect around those emotions, he wouldn’t have moved towards them and away from me.

So, there are 5 ways that I set the stage for my spouse’s cheating.

I hope they give you some sense of what not to do in your marriage so that it does not end badly.

Again, I don’t blame myself for what happened. After all, I was in the same relationship and I didn’t stray. But I know that I have a large part of the responsibility for what happened in our marriage and its demise.

I mean, who wants to be taken for granted, treated with contempt, abandoned and not communicated with?

I know I wouldn’t. And he didn’t too!

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