Fear of commitment in the couple: causes and solutions

Where does the inability to commit come from? Why do we sometimes run away from the possibility of starting a stable relationship? Fear of abandonment or invasion are the emotions that this problem hides.

Teresa comes to see me in my office some time after they separated. She is 38 years old and complains that the men with whom she has relationships, and who are in the same situation as her, acknowledge that they get along very well with her, but they do not take a step beyond her. They don’t quite commit to the relationship as she would like.

This is what just happened with Luis: they went out, they had fun together, but when Teresa suggested that he get a little more involved in her life, for example that she join the dinners with her coworkers sometime, he didn’t come back. To appear.

I hear complaints of this type very often, especially from women, but also from some men. It is the constant complaint in therapeutic consultations and, of course, also in chats “among friends”.

Fear of romantic commitment: why does it happen?

But is it really so? What do men understand when women ask them to be more involved in their lives? Why do they react in the opposite way from what they expect, that is, moving away? When women realize this “lack of commitment”, they sometimes resort to certain techniques to “catch” the man who, aware of these pressures, flees. And the consequence is that both men and women suffer more.

As a couples therapist I know that, behind this “lack of commitment” and this “complaint” about the apparent distance that the other puts, what there is is fear of suffering.. We are going to try to clarify this question, giving some guidelines that help to see what is hidden behind these attitudes, of these understandable attempts to prevent pain.

The fear of commitment is neither more nor less than fear of what love implies, of the challenge it imposes on us. Generally, if the woman complains of a lack of commitment, the man protests because he feels pressured. This complaint about the lack of involvement is due, in most cases, to the fear of abandonment. And the resistance to surrender responds, in general, to the fear of being invaded.

Fears that feed back

They are complementary fears, which reinforce each other, in a vicious circle that can lead the couple to a crisis and perhaps to a separation. If they don’t understand what’s going on deep down, they can get to this situation that neither of them wants.

The first thing is to understand what love consists of. What puts ourselves at stake. How much and how what the other does and says affects us. And because. Not even the most intense and happy relationship saves us from feeling helpless. On the contrary, because the fear of loss is also stronger. And it can dye with somber colors any gesture of the other that is not exactly what we expect.

The other is really “other”, not a mere appendage or prolongation of ourselves, and for this reason the least of their gestures can hurt us. And it is possible that we call “lack of commitment” an attitude that we are actually perceiving as an alarm signal, as a “danger of abandonment”. But it is not “the other” who has sent that signal, but the very intensity of the relationship, which revives very deep feelings.

Every time we fall in love, all the emotions that were recorded in childhood come back to the present, not only the happy ones but also the moments in which we have felt fear, frustration, too rigid controls…

The case of any couple: Juan and Ana

I remember the case of Juan, because it is very representative of the problem that we are trying to clarify. “Ana invades me with her requirements. He manipulates me in such a way that I have even stopped going to work meetings, so he doesn’t get angry.. If I do something she doesn’t like, I feel like she’s a bad person. I have been conceding, conceding, and now I am also angry.

Any act of Ana was interpreted by him as manipulation, and she felt as abandonment whatever Juan did. Living together became so difficult that Juan decided to leave home for a while. Curiously, now that he was alive, he had only changed his car for the model that Ana liked the most, with which he was stating that the supposed “manipulation” was more his problem than his wife’s.

Causes: traces of the past

Juan went on to tell me that his mother had asked him several times, in an imperative tone, when he would return home. Juan’s reaction was to get entangled in endless explanations and justifications. I pointed out to him that, at 40, he didn’t need to justify himself like that and that he could set a limit. “But how do you want me to do it? She is my mother, ”he told me.

Thus, scenes from his childhood arose, and through them he was able to express old feelings that he kept frozen with respect to his mother. How much she controlled him, how she believed she was the absolute owner of the truth, and how he worked to please her.

That situation had made him hypersensitive to manipulation., he saw everything through that lens and his relationships suffered. When he sensed that the demand was excessive, she would walk away. She steeled herself against what could make her suffer.

The fear of invasion is basically the fear of ceasing to be oneself.

A conflict of roles

This situation is experienced mainly by men, because traditionally they have been assigned the duty of taking responsibility for the material and emotional well-being of the “clan”. The concern to fulfill that role can invade to such an extent that one is afraid to stop being “oneself”. What Ana perceived as a “lack of commitment” was an attempt to defend a space where she did not feel that fear. Juan had reached a blind alley: he could not do what he wanted or what his wife wanted.

But there are ways to get out of that alley. The path that I propose is to learn to tolerate the displeasure of the other, to set limits and dare to say “no”. To achieve this, it is necessary to accept that no one is omnipotent, something that is difficult for most men. And it is not an easy job, since setting limits to the other implies recognizing your own.

How to redirect the relationship?

Juan and Ana were able to get back together when he was able to support his own desires without affecting her fear of abandonment. If he had to go to a business dinner, he would go, but he learned to transmit it so that Ana would not receive it out of her own fear. He now gave the message in another way: “You could pick me up after dinner and we’ll go have a drink.”

Ana learned for her part not to always interpret Juan’s attitudes as “lack of commitment” and to explore what was happening to her. The fear of abandonment generates so much anxiety that it does not allow us to value our experiences. Since I can’t bear the idea of ​​separating, I demand more and more “commitment” showing that my delivery is absolute.

However, the surrender of those who fear being abandoned is never “absolute”, because it is based on fear. A fear that seeks to calm down through possession and control over the other. There is true surrender when the other is accepted as it is. The fear of abandonment is combated by developing self-confidence and dialogue with others.

Openness and trust are contagious attitudes. If each one is capable of looking at what is happening inside, he will also be able to open up to what is happening to the other. The first commitment of love is the commitment to what we feel, and true courage is in looking for the keys to our fears.

Reinforcing commitment

If we love someone, why do we sometimes have a hard time committing? If someone loves us, why does he seem reluctant to commit? Maybe he can’t because of his fears, or we prevent him because of ours. We offer below a series of keys, which will allow you to identify those fears that put up barriers to commitment and will help you to clear them.

1. Identify your feelings

Try to detect how you feel about your partner and also about your family, your friends and your coworkers. Do you feel slighted, left out, or not loved enough? Or maybe trapped, pressured or not free enough to express your own wants and needs?

2. Face fear

Get close to those fears and face them. Start this first movement with the certainty that it is there –in fear– where the root of the problem lies. Both fear of commitment and fear of the other’s lack of commitment. Surely it is an “old” fear that reappears, harming your affective relationships.

3. Review your past

Try to remember moments from your childhood when the same sensations that disturb you now have disturbed you. Try to evoke scenes from your childhood when you feared being abandoned. In that you have felt too watched, too subjected to paternal or maternal control, or of another figure of reference.

4. Relive your childhood

Focus on these scenes. Observe yourself in the past, reliving those situations. How did you react to the fear that your mother did not love you enough? Did you perceive a “lack of attention”, and that is why you feared that she would abandon you? Or did you lock yourself in an iron shell to defend yourself from what you felt was excessive control on the part of your father or mother?

5. Change some attitudes

Ask yourself if those old reactions are present in your current relationships. See how they are similar, think if it is not the same “movie”. The script is written by your basic fears. Change it by imagining other scenes. Learn to express different attitudes towards your partner, now that you know the origin of your fears and you sense the probable cause of theirs.

6. Share your fears

Try to recognize the symptoms of those fears that threaten the health of the relationship. Share them with your partner, instead of repeating, like a tracing, the reactions of your childhood or your adolescence. Help your partner identify their fears and what causes them, and share them with you.

To know more

In George Weinberg’s Why Men Don’t Commit (Ed. Urano), the male fear of commitment is seen as a myth, showing why men sometimes run away from a relationship. Loving each other with open eyes (Ed. RBA, Integral), by Jorge Bucay and Silvia Salinas, invites us to think about the meaning of being in a relationship. In Amar o depender (Ed. Granica), Walter Riso teaches us that delivery and commitment do not imply dependence.