He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (8 page)

We have interviewed a fair number of men and women who told us that they were able to sidestep their commitment anxieties because they started thinking about a divorce at the very same moment that they began planning the wedding. But when it became more complicated, when children became involved, or joint property, suddenly they began to feel that there was
no way out
. Here are the most common periods when the claustrophobic fear of being stuck rises to the surface.

No Way Out! The Commitmentphobic Points of No Return

P
OINT
O
NE
: O
NE
D
ATE
, N
O
M
ORE

Some men and women become unhinged after a good first date, particularly if they feel “more” is expected of them. Unable to relax and allow a relationship to grow, they immediately envision a committed future stretching out in front of them. So they panic.

P
OINT
T
WO
: A
FTER
S
EX

To many of us sex means intimacy, intimacy means commitment, and commitment means forever. There are those who rarely allow a relationship to develop beyond a brief sexual connection. They are certain their partner assumes ongoing sex represents a permanent bond. Sometimes they assume the same thing.

P
OINT
T
HERE
: W
HEN THE
E
XPECTATION
I
S
R
EAL

When two people have been going out for a while, there are expectations. Friends, family, the world, and your partner expect you to get married. This is the most common point at which people begin to get scared.

P
OINT
F
OUR
: T
HE
M
ORNING
A
FTER

A fair number of men and women don’t react as if the commitment is real until after the wedding, after the couple moves in together, or after the romantic honeymoon haze has faded. That’s when they get anxious and/or depressed.

P
OINT
F
IVE
: T
HE
M
ORNING
A
FTER THE
M
ORNING
A
FTER

This fifth point of no return can occur years into the relationship or marriage. It usually coincides with an event that is associated with “no way out”: the birth of a child, the purchase of a home, a fortieth birthday, the arrival of grandchildren, the onset of menopause. Each of these important markers can elicit panic: “If I don’t get out now, I’ll be stuck forever.”

Whether the fear happens in the first hour or in the twentieth year, the need to create distance and shake these unpleasant feelings is frequently intense enough to overlook any feelings of love one may hold for a partner. Getting away becomes the only priority. The fear may be real or imagined, reasonable or unreasonable. It doesn’t matter. The key lies in perception.

WHY SHOULD THE IDEA OF COMMITMENT BE SO THREATENING?

Some people might argue that fear of commitment is built into our genetic code, that in the human jungle the mere act of caring for and accommodating to a full-time partner is a threat. After all, it means slowing down, lowering defenses, and becoming less alert to the possibility of danger. The fact is that commitment is scary for a lot of reasons, all of which need to be acknowledged and examined.

First is what we see as the primary conflict—what we feel when commitment threatens our basic and powerful need to feel free. There are those who would even take this a step farther and question whether or not permanent commitment is healthy or even normal. These people question whether humans are meant to form permanent unions with each other. While thinking about this is provocative, there is probably no satisfactory answer to the
question of whether people, like swans, are designed to mate for life. And we are not about to argue the merits of marriage versus a single life.

Forever is scary. Commitment—whether in the form of marriage or not—represents an enormous responsibility. Once we commit ourselves, we owe something to another human being. Someone else counts on us, depends on us, relies on us. The notion of this extra burden is frightening. But there is a difference between having commitment fears and being downright phobic.

WHAT THE WORLD TELLS US ABOUT MARRIAGE AND OTHER COMMITTED RELATIONSHIPS

“Four years of therapy has shown me that because of my mother’s experiences I regard traditional marriage as a trap.”

—SARA, thirty-six

“What I’m afraid of is no mystery to me. I have a brother who is seven years older. When I was about twelve, he got married. His wife immediately became pregnant. By the time I was sixteen, the twins had been born; he had four kids and he was twenty-three years old. When I would go over to help baby-sit, I would feel so sorry for him. It was a madhouse, and he was trapped in it. I vowed it would never happen to me.”

—JEFFREY, forty-five

“My mother waited on my father hand and foot. She never had a minute to herself. Every second she was either taking care of me or my brother or chasing around making our father happy. She couldn’t even read a book without his asking her to get up and get him something. I love my father, but I don’t want that kind of marriage. If I get married, it’s going to be to a man who doesn’t expect me to be an appendage.”

—LISA, thirty-two

We hear about marriages everywhere—on television, in the news, standing on supermarket lines as we glance at the tabloid headlines. We are surrounded by couples we know—parents, family, friends. Looking at these relationships, we have witnessed tension, anger, and sometimes pain in addition to love. As we have
looked at marriage, whether it be media portrayals or real life, how have we been affected?

Let’s take television marriages. The Ricardos seemed to be having fun, but was this the kind of honest relationship that we wanted for ourselves? Lucy and Ethel were forever hiding the truth from Ricky and Fred. Besides, we all know that the real life of this television couple was even more dysfunctional than the one we viewed on the tube. We may have enjoyed watching the oh-so-normal Cleaver family, but how many young men grew up wanting to be like Ward, and how many young women honestly thought that June was having a perfectly nifty life? We probably looked at couples like Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver and Mr. and Mrs. Brady and thought their lives were boring and dull. The kids had all the fun.

Contemporary television couples such as the Connors or the Huxtables seem to be having a nicer time together, but don’t the Huxtables ever do anything without their children? And does anybody actually want a life like Roseanne Connors? Think about the happy television couples like the Keatons on
Family Ties
, and think about the couples from hell like the Bundys on
Married with Children
. Have television marriages made you more or less wary of commitment?

How about your friends in the real world? Do any of them have inspiring marriages? Do you look at them and want what they have? Do you want their conflicts and their anxieties? Do you truly want their brand of togetherness? When you watch them making decisions, do you envy their commitment or are you appalled by the number of compromises each partner has to make? What’s the end result? Do your friends give you a positive or a negative view of commitment?

Then there’s your family. What kinds of messages did you receive from them when you were a child? Were your parents happily married? Were they happy but disgruntled about the economics of marriage, the sacrifices of marriage, and the compromises of marriage? Was your father burdened and trapped by a dreary job? Did your mother feel hemmed in by the suburbs, or the city, or the country? Did either or both of them make compromises that they resented? Did you hear about it? How about fidelity? Were they in any way running away from each other?
Were they bored? Did life at home seem dull and unsatisfying? Did they do things as a couple? Or were they avoiding each other and hiding out in separate activities?

How about your grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives? What examples did they provide? Sometimes we form certain opinions from observing the parents of friends. When you visited friends’ homes, do you remember what you thought or felt about their parents? In short, when you were growing up, what kinds of messages did you receive about commitment?

What about other messages you might have received from the world at large? We’ve all heard the statistics about the soaring divorce rate. We know that these statistics reflect couples who aren’t getting along. We know that couples quarrel about money, sex, religion, cultural differences, and child raising. They quarrel about in-laws, housekeeping, and vacations. They quarrel about who’ll do the dishes and whose turn it is to take out the garbage. It’s difficult not to have been affected by all this.

We can’t help but react to what we read about couples struggling with the economics of maintaining a family. We’ve seen women carpooling and racing to work; we’ve seen husbands holding down two jobs. We’ve seen middle-class families with young children crowded into small apartments because that’s all they can afford. This is powerful stuff. Hasn’t it made us stop and think about whether we really want a permanent commitment and all it might entail?

At any age, based upon all these messages, you may remember having settled on certain attitudes. If you are a woman, did you decide you wanted a traditional marriage or did you want to maintain a career? Did you vow that you would never relinquish your independence? Did you want a life like your mother’s, or did you want something different? If you are a man, did you decide early on that you never wanted to be saddled with all the financial burdens of marriage, or did you dream about making enough to support hordes of children? What about today? Are you a woman who is thinking about the reality of keeping a job
and
doing the major share of housework and child care? Are you a man who fears you will never, ever make enough money to be able to send one child through college?

How have all of these messages influenced your feelings about
commitment? Do they make you nervous, fearful, and wary? Or have you decided that they don’t matter, because when you finally make a permanent commitment, it will be different? In other words, do you deny that you have commitment conflicts? Or do you know that you have conflicts, but still hope that when the time is right, they will magically disappear?

DENYING COMMITMENT FEARS

“I don’t understand any woman who says that she’s afraid of commitment. I want it more than anything else. I would get married in a minute.”

—LORI, thirty-four

Lori describes her parents’ marriage as “deadly.” She says her father rarely says anything to her mother that is more meaningful than “pass the potatoes,” and hides behind the TV, refusing to pay attention to anything his wife has to say. When Lori was twenty-two, she was married to a man she describes as “extraordinarily unfaithful.” The marriage lasted only a few years. Since that time Lori has had only one other serious relationship, and that was with a married man. Lori does very little to improve her social life; if anything, she tends to spend a great deal of time alone. The men she finds attractive always seem to be involved elsewhere. Despite this, Lori is adamant about her desire for long-term commitment. We find it difficult to accept Lori’s statements about what she says she wants. We think that she can’t help but have a fair number of conflicts she is failing to examine.

For example, written into just about everyone’s memory is the statistic that says that fifty percent of all couples end up divorcing. Now, think about it. If someone told you that everytime you crossed the street, there was a fifty-percent possibility that you would get hit by a car, chances are that each of your pedestrian outings would be clouded by anxiety and trepidation. At the very least you would increase your precautions, carefully looking each way, cautiously assessing the cars, the traffic lights, the crosswalks. That makes sense. Yet a large percentage of single men and women, knowing the divorce statistics, knowing—sometimes firsthand—the kind of pain involved in failed marriages, say that they
are very anxious to find a permanent commitment and that they feel no fear whatsoever. That doesn’t make sense. Considering what we all know, doesn’t it seem reasonable that all of us should be at least a little bit nervous about commitment?

A great deal is written these days about denial and the effect it can have on our lives. In psychology denial is defined as an unconscious defense mechanism that we use to allay anxiety by negating important conflicts or unwanted impulses. People in denial are refusing to look at some of the conflicts and problems in their lives. This is a way of protecting ourselves from pain, particularly when that pain gets in the way of living. But denial is also how we stay stuck. If we don’t look at the truth in our lives, if we don’t honestly examine our conflicts and our fears, then we are denying our experiences, and we don’t have a basis from which to make constructive changes.

Women, in particular, have a wide variety of reasons to deny commitment anxiety. They are sometimes under extreme family pressure to settle down, make a home, and produce grandchildren. Even as toddlers they were given dolls and dollhouses and homemaking paraphernalia. It seems to be assumed that marriage and family is something all women are supposed to want. No wonder women who feel the slightest ambivalence bury it.

RATIONALIZING AWAY OUR COMMITMENT CONFLICTS

Like denial, rationalization is a defense mechanism. It is a method that people employ to make unreasonable, or irrational, behavior appear reasonable. In other words we use it to explain away behavior that doesn’t always make sense—sometimes even to us. People who refuse to examine their commitment conflicts often find themselves acting out these conflicts. Typically this produces some strange behavior. Rationalization is often an essential tool in explaining this behavior away. Here’s how this works: