Commitment Phobics: Love and Fear Cannot Exist in the Same Space

Mention the words “commitment phobic” in casual conversation, and often times you’ll find people complaining about men. For a long time that may (or may not) have been true. Regardless, commitment phobia has been a puzzle of relationships for a long time. Is commitment phobia exclusively a male phenomenon? I will give you three guess and the first two don’t count. The answer is “NO”. 

Time was when a woman graduated high school, her only goal was to get married and have children. But with the 60s came a big change — women became movers and shakers in a world previously dominated by men. These new gains meant new attitudes, even in the areas of love and marriage. Thirty years later, the question is: Did the revolution turn the former societal expectation on its head? Not really. Even today — in the 21st century — the notion that women should marry and have children still exists. This gives rise to an even larger question: Can societal expectations and the new ‘freedom’ women discovered decades ago, co-exist without wreaking havoc between men and women?

In Audrey Chapman’s book Seven Attitude Adjustments to Finding a Loving Man, she mention four types of women who fall into the commitment-phobia category.

There’s the Pity Party-Goer. She’s always whining and complaining, setting herself up in relationships that couldn’t work so she can keep proving to herself that relationships don’t work. She’s got a self-fulfilling prophecy going on and she believes it. So she just selects people that are going to keep reinforcing it.

Then there’s The Boomerang. She keeps leaving and returning and leaving and returning to the same failing relationship, and she does it for a period of years. But that’s her way of avoiding commitment.

The next one is The Detective. She is in constant search of the perfect man, the best man, the macho man, the gorgeous man, the professional man, the well-dressed man and the man with the slamming body — and he’s got to fit that entire criteria or it doesn’t work. If she meets a man who is well endowed, has a nice body, is professional, makes good money and seems to be attentive and kind…but has one false eye, she doesn’t want him.

And finally the Picky Picker. She finds a suitable man and then picks him apart piece-by-piece. He doesn’t drive the right car, he doesn’t make enough money, he’s bald, he’s too short, he has too much belly. In the end, no one meets her stringent requirements.