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Who would you be if you didn’t believe your stories of hurt and fear?
How would you live if you could trust love to make a difference?
Andrew Colliver
Do these scenarios sound familiar to you?
A man who changes addresses so often that friends keep a page in their address book just for him. A man whose resume reads like a gig guide. A man who pursues a new woman in his life ardently, but no sooner has he declared his love for her than he is suddenly unavailable to her. A man who has tried many women but never quite found “the right one”. A man who continually speaks of his need for “space” or “privacy” away from the woman.
All these behaviours are signs of a person who has a fear of commitment in relationships.
The fear of commitment is a state of anxiety produced in a person at the prospect of being intensely or intimately involved with any one person, group of people or life situation over an extended period of time.
Choosing to Love examines the impact that a fear of commitment has upon intimate relationships. It sets out patterns of relating that typically play out where one partner is afraid to give fully to the other.
It provides concrete steps through which a person can deal with the fear, and choose more conscious and satisfying ways of being in a relationship.
It also addresses the confusion and hurt experienced by the other partner as they seek to understand the changes in attitude and affection by the one shying away from deeper contact.
The book outlines the stages that a relationship goes through when one partner has a distinct fear of committing. I call this the predictable plot:
Hot pursuit of the woman, often characterised by the rapidity of the man’s advances; The turning of the tide, where the previously enthusiastic approach begins to fade, and the man’s expressed need for distance begins to emerge; The yo-yo phase, where the man alternates between being attentive and avoidant; The end, where it is usually the man who breaks off the relationship; Encores, where – after the stated close of the relationship, the man returns seeking re-engagement, and a repeat performance of involvement.
The book then identifies and examines the triggers for a man’s fear, and the features of a fear-dominated relationship. A man afraid of commitment will avoid as much as possible anything that seems to him to represent long-term intimacy.
The most common of these triggers are:
Sexual contact, where after courting the woman and “winning” her, he is finished with that conquest and must move onto the next. The waning of romantic love, where a man is addicted to the sensations of falling in love, but once this fades and reality settles in, he is off again to seek those sensations. Marriage, clearly because it is asking for commitment. Pregnancy and the arrival of children. Buying a house or doing significant renovations – such “nesting” behaviour is a sure sign that things are getting committed and permanent. Work pressures, where a man feels stressed and burdened, and the relationship is one more item that the man feels bound by.
A fear-dominated relationship is typically characterised by the following features:
Ambivalence, where the man’s level of involvement in the relationship fluctuates and he is unsure how much he wants to be fully in it. The duration of fear-dominated tends to be fairly short – how short or long being determined by his partner’s patience and capacity to tolerate his distance and uncertainty. Prohibited areas – emotional or physical - where the man will not allow the presence of the woman. Caveats on closeness – the reasons he gives for not being able to participate more fully in the relationship (for instance, work or unfinished business with a previous marriage or partner). Unreliability, or being difficult to pin down, is a message from the man that he is unwilling to give his all to the relationship. Flimsy excuses are the deficiencies in the woman which he gives as his rationale for leaving or limiting the relationship.
The emotional toll of successive involvements in short-term and/or superficial relationships can be very high for a man with at least some integrity and some insight into the hurt his actions cause the women he has been with. There are four things a person needs to change their habitual patterns:
Dissatisfaction with the outcome of his past behaviour. Awareness of what the problem really is – he will have been telling himself that it is that he has not yet met the “right” woman. Choice – he will have to have some options for alternative approaches or courses of action, if he is to do something different. A decision to do things differently is necessary if any change is to occur.
The book then outlines eleven steps to developing more enduring and functional ways of relating in an intimate relationship, and leads the reader through these in a pragmatic and effective manner.
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[© Andrew Colliver](http://www.andrewcolliver.com.au/)
