made to be broken?

a friend once taught me: "never make promises that you can't keep".

but what if, there we are, diligently keeping all our promises, when the promises made to us are constantly being broken? wouldn't that put us at the losing end? wouldn't that make us the sucker?

points to ponder for the week: is it justifiable to NOT keep our promises to those who are constantly breaking their promises to us? or should we stick to our principles of keeping promises, even though the rest of the world are breaking them left, right n centre?

pros of breaking promises:
1) get back at them for breaking THEIR promises to us (tit-for-tat, butter for fat. u kill my dog, i'll kill ur cat!)
2) they'll know how it feels like to have promises made to them broken
3) we get to say the things most expected of us and which sounds nice at the moment, without having to be responsible for our words later. it is after all, just words..... (guy: "would u marry me?" gal: "sure, ok". but 1 week later... guy: "let's decide on a date to meet the parents". gal: "wat? hey, i was just agreeing for fun, it's not like i mean it of anything!")
4) can't be accused of being untrustworthy, coz they were the ones who broke their promises to us first (if u can, so can i! dun be double standard har!)
5) get the satisfaction of telling ppl just what they are to us, without having to actually tell them (see, i can't even be bothered to keep a simple promise made to u. so u should know where u stand)

cons:
1) it'll eat at our conscience, in total contrast to those promises breakers, who don't have an ounce of conscience
2) we'll be no different from them!
3) other ppl will lose confidence in us n will be known as 'not a gal/guy of her/his words', even tho we only break our promises made to promises breakers
4) spoils relations (even tho' i really can't see the point of having good relations with promises breakers anyway!)