Now to me…I wouldn’t. I’d say that someone just forgot, is all.
My opinion is that breaking a promise is something you do knowingly. And while promising to do something and forgetting to do it, still doesn’t fullfill the promise, I do think it’s a good, valid reason.
Now if a person remembers (or is reminded) and then still doesn’t do it…or changes their mind, then yes, it’s breaking a promise they made.
But not forgetting. I think that breaking a promise is something that is purposefully done. Not accidently. To me, breaking a promise requires purpose and intent.
However, that’s just me. What do you all say/think?
But what’s worse an, intentional mistake or just a careless one? After making a promise and then just simply forgetting it shows that you’re not dependable. But then again the intentional breaking might be done with malice.
I’d say fogetting a promise is not breaking a promise but still it’s just as bad.
What about forgetting your child’s baseball game? What about forgetting about your best friends wedding (when you have a part)? What about forgetting about your own wedding?
There must be some limit to your viewpoint right?
I have ex-friends that tended to forget about a lot of stuff. Part of the promise is to assign enough importance to it so that you don’t forget.
It depends on the promise. There’s “I promise I’ll call you when I get home”, and there’s “I promise I’ll give you that kidney next week.” Forgetting to call can be forgiven.
You make a promise, you are responsible for keeping it. You don’t keep it, you broke it. Honest forgetfulness might a mitigating circumstance, but you still broke your promise.
When a promise is given, it communicates that you are taking the issue or action at hand with exceptional sincerity. It assures the receiver of the promise that “it shall be done”.
By forgetting, you have communicated that you take promises lightly and a promise from you isn’t worth anything.
By not forgetting and still not fulfilling a promise, you indicate the same as above.
This is, of course, my opinion. I’m a little old fashioned when it comes to “my word is my bond”.
Oh, sure.
I find myself agreeing with what Draelin said.
It really depends.
By the way, this topic, I just realized could be seen as a throwaway to something I did…Ha. It wasn’t, but WAS the topic of an ugly scene I saw a few moments ago where a girl let her boyfriend have it for forgetting to take a photo of himself and send it into a new reality show. Hrmmm.
While I didn’t say anything, I took the boyfriend’s side in thinking that maybe it wasn’t so bad. Heh.
Yes, promising an inconsequential action will lessen or eliminate the offended party’s reaction to the broken promise. However, the broken promise, regardles of how meaningless it is, does reflect on you as a person.
I wouldn’t promise for anything inconsequential anyway…
Well, if the guy promised something to her, then he promised something to her. And then broke the promise.
I am also one who doesn’t take promises lightly. I don’t just toss them out and forget about them. Saying that you promise something is an oath to follow through. To forget about it shows you didn’t assign it the importance you should have given the matter. It’s not absolutely unforgivable, depending on circumstances, obviously, but it should still be addressed and dealt with. Especially if it happens often. Some people use “promise” without knowing what it means.
If the guy didn’t promise, no big deal if he forgot. I am loathe to side with histrionics, and I myself wouldn’t react that way, but the girl is hurt by a broken promise. It’s nobody’s business what the promise was for, or who deems it “important”, it was obviously important to her.
I would not consider it a broken promise if one was prevented from fulfilling it by forces completely beyond one’s control. Forgetting does not fall into that category.
While it’s reasonable to consider intent, it doesn’t change the outcome. If your neighbor hits you with his car while exiting his driveway and breaks your leg, you’re certainly going to have a different view of him depending upon whether it was from carelessness or from intent to injure you, but either way you have a broken leg and a neighbor that you can’t trust to not hit you with his car. If someone promises to mail your rent check, and forgets to do it in time and you get evicted, you still are out of a place to live. The fact that he didn’t mean to overlook it doesn’t change that. The promise was broken.
And as others have said, just because the promised action is or seems unimportant doesn’t mean the promise isn’t a promise. It may mean it doesn’t really matter to the promisee, but that’s a different issue.
Think of it this way: quite often, a promise doesn’t really mean anything other than “I won’t forget”. When you say, “I promise I’ll be there in time”, or “I promise I’ll bring the book I borrowed from you with me tomorrow”, what are you really promising, if forgetfulness doesn’t count as breaking the promise?
A person who regularly forgets their promises is unreliable. It’s as simple as that.
Well, by the letter of the law, a broken promise is a broken promise, regardless of the reason why the “terms of the agreement” were not fulfilled. But I agree in spirit with the OP, that a promise broken because of forgetfulness and a promise broken by conscious choice are two different animals entirely. The latter is much worse. Consider these two scenarios:
A good friend has offered to pick you up at the airport late on a Sunday night. You get there and there’s no sign of him. You wait around an hour, try his cell phone – nothing. You end up taking a $50 dollar cab ride home, and you wasted an hour waiting for the friend to show up.
The next day you talk to the friend. he says:
“Holy %$#! Aw, man, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot! I got distracted that afternoon, and then my parents called… it flew right out of my head. Aw, jeez, I feel like crap. How can I make it up to you?”
or
“Oh, yeah, that. I was going to pick you up, but my buddy at work got me tickets to the game, so I went out with him instead. Hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle. Hey, to make it up to you, I’ll treat you to dinner tonight.”
Friend #1 gets forgiveness and some good-natured razzing from me. He’ still a good friend. And given how badly he feels, I’ll bet there’s no way he’ll forget to pick me up next time.
Friend #2 gets an incredulous response, and is probably not a “good friend” thereafter.
So, sure they both broke their promise to me, but I’d treat the scenarios very differently.
A promise not kept is a promise broken. I don’t take kindly to “Oh, I forgot” as an excuse. If you’ve promised to do something, the least you can do is write yourself a note so you remember to fulfil the promise. If you can’t be bothered to to do that, you aren’t up to the responsibility of making the promise. When I screw up and forget about a promise I made, I apologize and make good on it if the promisee wants me to.
I’ll cut a great deal of slack for a promise *forgotten * if there’s some extenuating circumstance, such as a personal emergency that blew all previous commitments out of the water. An unplanned trip to the doctor (file server meltdown, panic call from parents 1000 miles away, etc.) takes precedence over your agreement to pick up yogurt (mow the lawn, review paperwork, etc.).