He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (13 page)

“Then for several years there was nobody special, which was okay with me. I complained about not meeting the right men. You know, the usual—the men I liked didn’t like me enough to want to get married, and the ones who wanted to get serious, I wasn’t that interested in for the long haul. I went out with a great many men, but never for more than a couple of months. For one reason or another I rejected almost all of them.

“Then three years ago I met Philip, who was everything my mother ever dreamed of—successful, bright, the right religion, stable. He was divorced—his wife had left him—and he wanted to get married again. Well, I fell head over heels, but it turned into a sort of a repeat performance of the man I had lived with. After a year or so I got less interested.

“I remember one day visiting his parents; his mother is a very quiet little person, and his father is very structured. Everything in his parents’ house has a place, and nothing ever moves—except his mother, who doesn’t sit still…. She runs around picking things up. She doesn’t even let you finish drinking a cup of coffee before she is there whisking away your dish or cup. It’s awful. Anyway we were coming back from there in the car and this incredible anxiety attack swept over me. I imagined that I was Philip’s mother, and he was his father. And I thought, that’s what my life is going to be like—boring, with a place for everything. I found myself thinking that I understood why his wife had wanted to get away from him. I didn’t want to spend my life with him, trapped in that car, going back and forth to places he wanted to be. I knew that if I married him, it would be a big mistake. There are a million women who would want him. I just wasn’t one of them. I didn’t end it right away—I sort of eased out of the relationship. It was pretty painful at first. We still see each other, but just as friends.”

Regina says that at the beginning of all her relationships she has been very receptive. But as they’ve progressed, she has put up boundaries and created barriers.

“I don’t like feeling pressured. I would tell Philip that I loved him, but I wished he would leave me alone. I’m happiest and most comfortable when I’m in a steady relationship with someone
whose love I can take for granted but who doesn’t expect me to be available all the time. I don’t want to be with someone
every
weekend—no matter how much I may care about him. I like being alone. I like being free to do whatever I want. I like the security of a committed relationship, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend all my spare time with someone. I try to make that clear to any man I date.”

Regina says that within the last year she has given her relationship history a great deal of thought.

“Now it all starts to make a great deal of sense. The years when I should have been looking for someone who was marriage material, I was more interested in having a good time. Having a good time was my way of avoiding commitment. Then later, when I finally decided I was ready, even then I gravitated toward the wrong guys. And in Philip’s case I probably could have had the whole shebang, but I didn’t want it. People keep telling me to find an ordinary man and get serious, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m not attracted to ordinary men.

“Of course as I get older, it gets more difficult to meet attractive men. Many of the men I’m attracted to now want younger women. When Philip and I split up, I had to face the fact that I might never get married. At least not in the traditional way I anticipated—house, kids, dog.”

Regina says that her family, particularly her mother, is very upset that she hasn’t settled down, and that she is bothered by this because it makes her feel like a failure.

“I’m more upset about upsetting my mother than I am about anything else. She keeps telling me that she’s worried that I’ll be growing old alone, but I don’t know what I can do at this point. I admit that I’ve got conflicts. On the one hand, I’m frightened at the idea of never having anybody, but that doesn’t mean that I want to settle into a boring marriage just to get married. That’s even more frightening. Of course it’s lonely having to do everything by yourself, and it gets harder and harder to find friends to do things with you. But if truth be told, I’ve never liked anyone enough to want to spend that much time with him
or her
. Male or female, I don’t like feeling hemmed in by somebody else. I like my space, my privacy, my life.

“I have a friend who says I guard my territory, and I think
that’s true. I don’t know if I can change. I don’t even know if I want to change. When I was young, I thought I would have to get married to get economic security. Now I don’t think so anymore. I’m doing very well financially, and it might threaten some men. But the issue of children is different. I keep thinking that I still have a little time. Maybe I should try to adopt a child, but I don’t honestly know if I could handle a child.

“I always say I’m lonely, but last week an old friend from college came and stayed with me for a weekend. Now, I really like this woman, and she was no trouble. But it made me crazy to have somebody else around. I couldn’t take it. I was so happy to see her leave, it was frightening. Just two days with another human being—taking up closet space, using the phone, watching TV, making coffee—and I got very uncomfortable. I thought,
What would I do if I had a man with me all the time?
The idea is terrifying. Would I be any better with a child? I’m not sure. Being accountable to someone else has always made me angry. I guess you could say I like my freedom.”

MARRIAGE JITTERS

Eric, a thirty-four-year-old market analyst, is currently experiencing anxiety attacks at the idea of formalizing an engagement. When he was younger, he expected that his anxieties about commitment would vanish when he met the right person, but so far that hasn’t happened. Right now he is trying to decide whether or not he should marry Doreen, the thirty-two-year-old woman he has been dating for the last five years. He says:

“A year after Doreen and I met, I lost my job. She was wonderful about it. She cooked me dinner almost every night so I wouldn’t go through all my money. She typed my résumé. She listened to my troubles. She understood when I said I couldn’t afford to think about marriage until I was making a living. I guess my dependency gave her some kind of expectations, because now that I’m finally making a living, she thinks it’s time for me to start acting like an adult and marry her. She’s probably right, but I’m still not ready.

“I know I can’t expect her to stay with me much longer without
marriage, but if anything, that pressure is making it harder for me to make a decision to go ahead. Everyone is angry at me. My mother is furious because she likes Doreen and she thinks I’m treating her badly. Doreen’s family keeps telling her to break it off. Her friends and my friends don’t shut up about the marriage issue. The only one who understands is my father. He tells me to take my time and wait until I’m comfortable with my decision.”

Recently Eric and Doreen have started seeing a counselor in the hope of ironing out a few problems that Eric says are keeping him from going ahead. The counselor was Doreen’s idea, and Eric isn’t sure that it’s helping bring them any closer together. Because the counselor is very promarriage, Eric says when he leaves the sessions, he feels too much like the bad guy. In addition he feels this process is pointing out to him all the ways in which he and Doreen are different.

“I only want to get married once, and frankly I’m not sure this is it. I would never tell her that. She’s very kind, very loving, and would make a great wife, I’m sure. But in some ways she’s limited. She doesn’t really understand the kind of work pressure I’m under. And besides, she’ll want a baby, and that presents a whole series of different problems. I’m only thirty-four years old. I’m not in any rush. Frankly if I don’t have a kid for another five years, that’s just fine. But that’s not fine for Doreen.”

In counseling, Doreen agreed to stop pressuring Eric for a commitment and to concentrate on improving the relationship. But they are still having problems because Eric is unwilling to make
any
long-range plans. Last weekend Eric and Doreen had a terrible fight about a vacation that Doreen wants to plan for next spring. To Doreen, Eric’s reluctance to make a commitment to the vacation represents Eric’s refusal to make any kind of commitment. Eric says:

“I hate to admit it, but she may be right. If I can’t spend two weeks with her, how can I think about spending the rest of my life with her? I don’t want to plan a vacation, because I think if I do, she’ll expect even more and more, and we’ll end up right back where we started. I need real space, real time. Sometimes I think that if I just had a year or so to date lots of women, I would get over this and marry Doreen. I was still pretty young when Doreen and I met. Maybe I would outgrow these needs. I can’t be sure.”

The counselor feels that there are many issues behind Eric’s conflict. Eric sees that it is all coming to a head, and he’s frightened about losing the relationship and tremendously sad, but not as frightened and sad as he is about losing his freedom. He also wonders whether his doubts mean that Doreen isn’t the right woman for him. He is convinced that if she were, he would be the first person in line at the altar.

POSTCOMMITMENT ANXIETY

Over the years we have heard a great deal about premarital commitmentphobia, and the specter of the terrified groom is practically a cartoon character. What we hear less about is the man or woman who starts having claustrophobic responses to marriage
after
the ceremony. We’ve spoken to a fair number of women who describe this kind of reaction. Alicia is one of them.

Alicia, a forty-one-year-old designer, has been married for three years. She says that living with her husband is making her intensely uncomfortable, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. Although she always wanted to get married, once she did, she started to get depressed within the first three weeks.

“All I know is that I became very anxious, nervous, and uptight after I got married. I had never shared an apartment with anyone before. When my husband and I were going out, we were always in each other’s apartments, but there were times when he went home or I went home. There was enough time by myself to wash my hair, do my nails, read my magazines, watch television. Those times I had my apartment to myself. Now he’s around all the time, and I don’t like it. It’s not my husband. I love him, I think. But I’m miserably unhappy. What I can’t stand is the feeling of someone closing in on me. I feel as if I can’t get away from him. It’s almost as though he is trying to get into my head. I can’t even think without his doing something that interrupts me. I hate it. I can’t believe that I wanted to get married. This is awful!”

Alicia says that although she is looking for solutions to her predicament, she finds herself becoming depressed at the idea that she is going to have to stay married for the rest of her life.

“When I think that this is it, I become very depressed. I don’t
know what I expected, but I didn’t expect this. There are too few highs in marriage. I love the highs of getting ready for a date, for example. I love the passion of a new relationship. Of course I’m not sure if the joys of being single are worth the lows of being alone, but at least when you’re alone, you have something to look forward to. You have the hope that you’re going to meet someone exciting or do something wonderful. In marriage you know that you’re stuck with the same old person day in and day out. I never imagined that I would get to feel this way. I keep hoping that these feelings will go away, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I would leave, but I’m scared I’ll get depressed when I’m alone.

“My mother and my friends tell me that I’ll get used to this, and that if we had a larger apartment or a big house, I would feel better. Maybe that’s the solution. But suppose it’s not?”

SINGLE AND LIKING IT

Over the past few years we’ve received a fair number of letters from men saying that they had been “killed” in relationships with young women who they feel are lacking what they perceive to be a “normal” desire to get married and start a family. Many men have been so conditioned to believe in the stereotype of a woman who is sitting on her hope chest waiting for the prince that they don’t know quite how to react when women behave differently.

We have been interviewing men and women about commitment issues for about eight years, and when we started talking to people about this, we rarely met women who were
actively
and consciously avoiding commitment. Lately, however, more and more women—particularly women in their twenties—tell us that’s precisely what they are doing. These younger women have come of age in a world that is much more accepting of this kind of preference. The dreaded myth of the “old maid” has been replaced by the enviable life-style of a single woman with a large range of options and choices.

Dawn, a twenty-six-year-old who currently lives in Florida, is such a woman. She says:

“My friends tease me about being commitmentphobic, because most of them are at the stage where they are getting married or
engaged, and it is the farthest thing from my mind. I want to travel. I want to live in different places, I want to see the world, and I want to do this alone. I don’t want to have somebody to take care of me, and I don’t want to take care of or wait for anybody else.”

Wanting to be alone has nothing to do with Dawn’s need to date or be involved with men. She describes herself as a terrible flirt and speculates that her attitude attracts a great many men.

“I date a great deal, and I try to find men I couldn’t form a commitment with. I don’t want to go out with anyone who had all the things that are important to me because I don’t want to have to think about getting married.

“My problem is that my attitude seems to attract too many men. Every guy I date wants a committed relationship. I’m completely honest about my attitude. I start out on date one, telling them how I’m planning to travel, how I’m not looking for a relationship. I even joke about being commitmentphobic. Either they’re stupid or they don’t take me seriously.”