He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (38 page)

Praise yourself for every success, no matter how small. If you fall short of your goals, try again. If you’ve always been unable to make wholehearted commitments, there is no reason to believe you will suddenly be able to take on the whole world. If your small choices overwhelm you with anxiety, back up and try something smaller. As your successes accumulate over time, challenge yourself to take on
slightly
more ambitious commitments. Don’t torture yourself with unnecessary pressure, but keep building slowly.

LEARN TO SAY NO

Commitment isn’t just about saying yes and accepting another person, situation, or thing. It’s also about saying no and being able to walk away, understanding that you might lose the option to return.

None of us want to lose options if we don’t have to. Giving up anything is painful. However, always keeping your options open can be monumentally unfair to people who are counting on you. Not only does it keep others from getting on with their lives, it keeps you from moving forward with your own.

RECOGNIZE THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE ANXIOUS DOESN’T MEAN YOU IMMEDIATELY HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

As you start making commitments, no matter how small, you will discover something that many already know: Many people get a case of the jitters after making any kind of commitment. The bigger the commitment, the greater the jitters. When you buy a house, buy a car, get a dog, rent an apartment, get engaged, get
married, or have a baby, you may get nervous. This doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong house, car, dog, apartment, mate, or child.

Also keep in mind that the same reactions can occur when you decide to say no and walk away from something in your life, whether it’s quitting your job, selling the house, or leaving your spouse. The problem is that often we interpret our apprehension as a sign that what is going on is terribly wrong. So if you are anxious about having said yes or no, wait an appropriate period of time to see how you feel before you start acting on all your impulses.

STOP ACTING OUT YOUR CONFLICTS BY RUNNING AWAY

When we are unhappy or dissatisfied with a situation, a person, or a decision, sometimes it seems as though the only way out is to run away or to do something similarly outrageous. As humans we have been gifted with the ability to communicate with one another. Use that gift.

DON’T SCARE YOURSELF BY THINKING TOO FAR AHEAD

People would never be able to make commitments if they thought about the possible ramifications, implications, complications, and permutations that a decision can bring over the course of a lifetime. If you project everything you do into the future, you’re bound to be overwhelmed. None of us can be sure of what will happen tomorrow, so it’s senseless to think ahead to the year 2012. The best we can do is to keep our intentions good and make the best decisions possible moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, and pray for the best.

MAKE A COMMITMENT TO BEING PRESENT IN ALL OF YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

Sometimes it’s a lot easier to maintain distance in our relationships. Even with our closest friends, we may be more comfortable
holding back what we feel, what we think, who we are. Perhaps we play roles. Perhaps with some friends we are always the adult, with others we are always the child, with still others we are affectionate clowns or elegant sophisticates. While all these roles may represent aspects of who we are, they don’t represent the complete picture. By keeping little parts of ourselves hidden from others, we are creating distance and putting limitations on our capacity to connect and experience intimacy.

MAKE A COMMITMENT TO BEING FULLY ACCOUNTABLE IN ALL YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

If you say you are going to call, call. If you make a lunch date, keep it. If you promise to visit, do so. With everyone you know, become totally reliable. Don’t always give yourself a hundred and one ways out of every situation, no matter how trivial.

Obviously sometimes conflicts arise, and even the most important plans sometimes need to be changed. But this should be an exception in your life, not the norm.

STOP FALLING IN LOVE WITH POTENTIAL

If your model for love and commitment is based on longing and inaccessibility, you have to start thinking about what it is you are doing and what it is you really want.

We think all of us need to be especially aware of a tendency to commit to situations that could be perfect, someday, if only…. For too many people, the primary method of avoiding commitment is to become enmeshed in commitment fantasies that get played out in relationships that never, ever become settled, steady, and even. You may have convinced yourself that if you could just get your partner’s attitude to change even a little bit, the relationship would become the one you dream of. It’s painful to come to terms with the ways your behavior may be self-defeating. But if you want change, you have to work on yourself, not your partner.

GIVE UP THE MYTH OF THE RIGHT PERSON AND THE PERFECT RELATIONSHIP

Those of us with unresolved commitment conflicts often meet people we think could be “perfect.” These right choices are almost always notable because they are fantasy choices—people themselves unwilling or unable to commit and therefore posing no real threat.

One of the great myths of our culture is that if a relationship is right, it will be easy to make and sustain a commitment to it. Yes, even though we’ve never met them, there may be some fortunate couples for whom everything is always magical, but for most of us mere mortals, that’s not the case. No matter how perfectly suited any two people are to each other, it’s not easy. Instead of trying to find the perfect relationship, work at making your relationship the best it can be.

DON’T GIVE AWAY THE THINGS YOU REALLY NEED

It’s one thing to be picky. It’s another to compromise on your true values or true needs. These are important issues that will come back to haunt you. Don’t, for example, play into roles, traditional or otherwise, unless that’s who you really are. Trying to be anything you are not, whether it be a Madonna sex symbol or a Ward Cleaver husband, distances you from yourself and from your partner. It’s important that you maintain your own authenticity. Be clear about who you are before you negotiate any partnership. If you betray your sense of self, you will only end up filled with resentment.

STAY AWAY FROM UNAVAILABLE PARTNERS AND UNSATISFYING RELATIONSHIPS

Getting involved with the wrong partners is the single most effective way of avoiding commitment. Everyone knows that, right? Well, if everyone knows it, how come so many of us have wasted so much time in this kind of fruitless effort?

There are three ways in which someone can be unavailable for commitment—emotionally, circumstantially, and geographically. Falling in love with someone who is unavailable is very easy to do. It keeps you fully absorbed, makes your senses tingle, and fires up all of your romantic fantasies. The best clue to recognizing an unavailable partner: He or she is always a little bit out of reach.

In the interest of saving you endless hours of pain and confusion, let’s take one last look at some of the most common types of unavailable partners and the ways in which these relationships play out.

The Classic Commitmentphobic

Let’s start with the obvious. Men and women with serious commitment conflicts are unavailable. No matter how sensitive they may appear, no matter how seductive and loving they may sometimes be, no matter how interesting, no matter how deep, and no matter how much they may need to be loved, they have commitment problems. And people with commitment problems tend to advertise them up front. Depending upon age, the classic commitmentphobic typically will have a romantic history littered with ex-lovers who have been embraced and then pushed aside.

Often classic commitmentphobics will make a point of saying that they have problems with “love,” “commitment,” or “trust.” They may talk about needing space, hating to feel pressure, wanting to keep things spontaneous and unpressured. They may explain that they hate expectations, they may warn you not to fall in love, they may even hint that you will never be “the one.” While doing this, however, they will also be involving you in their lives, in their hopes, and in their most inner world. This is very gripping material. It’s the stuff of psychodrama, not to mention soap opera. It’s romantic, it’s passionate, it’s frequently obsessive. However, it is not committed.

How do you know a commitmentphobic when you meet one? Simple. You pay attention. For example:

• How many relationships has he or she ended and why?
  The classic commitmentphobic has typically walked away from love several times. A person’s history is the single most important determinant in how he or she will behave with you. If the underlying conflict that ended past relationships revolves around the issue of commitment, there is no concrete evidence to say that it will be different with you. So be warned and be wary.
  

• Does this person openly discuss commitment ambivalence?
  The rule: When someone tells you that he/she is aware of personal commitment conflicts—no matter what kind of language is used—believe the words you hear. These attitudes and feelings are not going to disappear overnight. No matter how adorable, desirable, supportive, or intellectually stimulating you may be, it is highly unlikely that you will have the wherewithal to transform another person.
  

• Does this person have an unrealistic attitude toward relationships?
  At the beginning of a relationship commitmentphobics are often too quickly involved, too responsive, too interested. This kind of behavior may be an indication that you are dealing with someone who is fantasy driven. Fantasy and commitment are not compatible. This does not mean that “love at first sight” never happens. It does not mean that romance is dead. What it does mean is that someone who is serious about finding a committed love recognizes that it takes time to develop, and he or she behaves accordingly.
  

• Is your attitude toward this person overly romanticized and unrealistic?
  If you find that you are spending more time fantasizing about this relationship than living it, be aware that you are being pulled into a commitmentphobic relationship.
  

• Does this person have unreasonable boundaries?
  Does he/she exclude you from areas of his/her life? Is he/she able to share interests and friends? Are there inappropriate limitations placed on the relationship and its growth?
  

• Does this person appear to have problems with commitment in other areas of life?
  Commitmentphobics don’t like to be pinned down in general. They often need a great deal of space and may be unreliable.
  

• Does this person tend to be unfaithful?
  Commitmentphobic men and women are often experts in seeking out or moving on to a new love while still involved elsewhere.
  

Married or Living with Someone Else

A simple fact: Men and women who are living with others are not available because they have primary relationships elsewhere. Even if the participants in these primary relationships hate each other’s guts, live independent lives, or live in separate wings of the house, when two people are sharing the same space, it is a primary relationship. Even if they are together only for the children, for the real estate, for the convenience, or to keep up appearances, it is a primary relationship. Until that situation ends, this is someone who is very unavailable for a commitment.

If we sound a bit harsh here, it’s only because we know how many people have spent years of their lives tied into this kind of convoluted dynamic. So many women, for example, have experienced being used as a crowbar by a man who is separating from his wife, only to be left in the driveway when the job is done. Waiting for someone to leave a spouse is like waiting for Godot. And even if it does ultimately happen, there is no guarantee that your relationship is going to move forward.

Falling in love or getting involved with someone who is living with or married to someone else is a time-tested method for avoiding commitment. It’s also almost always guaranteed to be a painful experience.

Great Unrequited Love

Maintaining fantasies about someone who doesn’t respond in kind is another surefire way of acting out commitment conflicts. From the people we talk to it would appear that both men and women are equally capable of becoming absorbed with these kinds of fantasies. Sometimes the love objects are people with whom one comes into daily contact; other times feelings can be directed toward celebrities or even strangers on a bus. When the one you love is totally remote, it’s an artificial experience. It may be romantic, but it’s not a relationship.

Off-Again, On-Again Love

He loves you, he loves you not. She’s there, she’s not there. He cares, he doesn’t care. She needs you, she wants her freedom. He loves you, he’s not ready. She loves you, she’s not sure. He misses you, he forgets to call. She wants you, she wants to be alone. This can make anyone slightly crazy. Your becoming this way is not only a reflection of someone else’s inner chaos, it’s also a statement about your own ambivalence.

B. F. Skinner used pigeons to prove that nothing is more magnetic, more hypnotic, and more involving than intermittent reinforcement. But you probably don’t need to see his research. You may well be living proof of its power. If your lover’s giving was consistent, it wouldn’t have the same magical powers. It’s the inconsistency that keeps you stuck like Krazy Glue.

Nonetheless the off-again, on-again lover is completely unavailable.

Mr. or Ms. Elusive

It’s clear that “Elusive” likes you. It’s just never clear how much. “Elusive” phones a lot, but not regularly. Sometimes the two of you talk for hours; other times “Elusive” cuts it off after just a few minutes. When you see each other, you have a great time, but then “Elusive” can disappear for weeks or even months. It all seems secretive and romantic. It gives you food for your fantasies and your dreams. You wonder why the relationship never moves forward, but you never get comfortable enough to ask. “Elusive” is always just a little too hard to reach, too hard to find, too hard to keep around, too hard to pin down. In short—too hard to have a relationship with. But, boy, is “Elusive” attractive.