Help for commitment-phobic men & women

This page is for you - the men and women who are hearing a lot of complaining from your partners about your fear of intimacy and your inability to commit.

Relax: This page is not about putting more guilt on you. Making you feel guilty only results on increasing the sense of pressure you feel... which means you have even less of the mental "space" you crave... which makes it even more difficult for you to make up your mind!

Let's look at things from your perspective:

Your partner wants you to make a commitment to the relationship. You feel pressure, and you balk.

You feel that it is normal to feel uncomfortable making important decisions under pressure. But your partner feels this is just a cover. Your partner sees you as trying to wriggle out of making a commitment.

The problem is, it's hard for you to figure out what is really happening. You simply can't tell whether or not you actually have committment phobia. In fact, when you're under the grip of fear, you feel you have very valid reasons to be wary of commitment.

What happens is that you become extremely sensitive to the problems in the relationship, to the risks involved... With those feelings, avoiding commitment feels to you like a very rational reaction.

Look at the paradox you're facing:
The better your relationship is working, the more you have to face your fear of commitment. Out of fear, you may sabotage what could be your best relationship.

Now, this is a delicate situation. What are you going to trust: your perceptions, or your partner's?

You do need space to figure this out. But the sort of space I'm talking about is not the kind of endless postponements that drive your partner crazy. It is the mental space of looking within yourself to find out how you truly feel.

This is not about doing something to please your partner. This is about taking care of yourself.

The antidote to fear is to find a broader perspective.

See also:

- Individual counseling

- A proactive perspective on commitment issues