Driving back from our whirlwind holiday vacation visiting family, the Hubs and I had tons of time to talk. And boy did we talk about EVERYTHING. After all, it took almost 12 hours to get to my parents in Florida thanks to Christmas traffic, not to mention going back to NC to see a few different people.

At one point, I was even reading articles from women’s magazines out loud to my driving husband. Thanks Marie Claire and Women’s Health for having such riveting information that even my husband was interested! (There’s a great article in last month’s Marie Claire about Chinese bachelors out numbering women by millions. Great reporting! You should check it out).

Anywho, given the fact that we were quickly approaching the New Year, we of course discussed our resolutions as well (which you can read about in yesterday’s post). But then Hubs said something interesting.

We were driving along and I said, “Should we add weekly date nights to our resolution list?” We had talked about doing it before and were doing pretty well until his study schedule went bonkers in the late fall. Eventually date night turned into more of, let’s watch a little TV and count that. But a real date? It’s been a while.

His response to my question? “No.”

What do you MEAN no?!? I didn’t understand. But then he simply replied, “That’s not a resolution. That’s a promise.”

What is the difference between a resolution and a promise? I wasn’t too entirely sure off the top of my head. I thought about making something up that would be insightful and then writing about here, but I figured let’s cut the crap and go straight to our dear friend Webster.

According to the dictionary:

Promise (n, v) : a declaration that something will or will not be done.

Resolution (n)  : the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose.

So one is ensuring that something will be done and the other is just the mindset that you’re going to do it. No wonder people don’t stick to their New Year’s Resolutions! If you can’t get past saying, “Well I want to do this” and get to the commitment part, then you really have nothing at all.

I’m glad hubs puts such a high priority on our time together enough to say that it’s a commitment rather than just something he wants to do.  Hopefully we can transition our other resolutions into the commitment phase as well.

Are you making resolutions or promises this year?