He's Scared, She's Scared: Understanding the Hidden Fears That Sabotage Your Relationships (7 page)

For example, Paul is a schoolteacher. That means he has a definite set schedule. But as Paul explains it, he is able to tolerate his job because he is home every day by three-thirty and has long vacations and many holidays. Also, he has never stayed with any one school district for more than two years.

Brittany is an art director for a large company. The conditions of her job are such that, despite her long hours, she has no set arrival time, is free to arrange her own schedule, and is able to leave the office for long stretches in order to work with clients. Even so she resents it when she is expected to be a part of general scheduled meetings at the agency where she works.

You can see that what is most appealing to people like Paul and Brittany is self-employment, or work situations that allow a great deal of flexibility.

If you are conflicted about commitment—any kind of commitment—you’re not alone. Here is a fact: The vast majority of us, to one degree or another, are afraid of commitment.
We all feel some conflict about it
. Despite this, some people are able to deal with their fears and forge lasting, meaningful, and loving relationships. But many others find themselves repeating self-destructive and unsatisfying patterns of relating, and they don’t know why.

CHAPTER TWO

Commitment Fears and Commitment Fantasies

A COMMITMENTPHOBIC RESPONSE

“Just the idea of agreeing to be with another human being for the rest of my life makes my heart pound. Sometimes when I’m with my girlfriend, I feel as though somebody is about to cut off my air supply and that my survival depends on my getting away.”

—SCOTT

Obviously Scott is not in any real physical danger from his longtime girlfriend, but he has anxieties and fears that he doesn’t understand. He is unable to be realistic about his relationships, he is unable to take things one day at a time, and he is unable to make reasonable and carefully thought-out decisions about his personal life. He hates living alone, but whenever he gets close to being fully committed, he focuses on “forever”; this triggers physical and/or emotional reactions that seem uncontrollable. We call this response commitmentphobia.

Commitmentphobia is a claustrophobic response to intimate relationships. The dictionary defines
claustrophobia
as a fear of enclosed or narrow spaces. To a commitmentphobic that’s what a relationship symbolizes—an enclosed space in which he or she may get stuck. Commitmentphobia comes with all the classic phobic symptoms:

• Headaches
  

• Gastrointestinal disturbances
  

• Nausea
  

• Nervousness
  

• Excessive sweating
  

• Chills
  

• Intense anxiety
  

• Palpitations
  

• Hyperventilation
  

• Labored breathing
  

• Suffocating sensations
  

• A general sense of dread
  

As most of us know, these are all “fight or flight” responses—the body’s way of mobilizing itself against a threat. And it is how people with severe and active commitment conflicts respond when they feel they are involved in a romantic situation that bears the trappings of permanency. The brain sends a message to the body: “I’m terrified.” And the body sends a message back: “Danger! Get OUT! NOW!”

You don’t have to be in any real physical danger for the body to mobilize its defenses. If you perceive something as a threat, then the body reacts as though there is indeed a very real threat. “Give me liberty or give me death!” it cries. “Fifty-four forty or fight!” “Not another nickel to the King!” Whether you know it or not, your body has gone to war.

Why war? What’s so scary that such drastic action is called for? And who is the foe? For someone with a genuine commitmentphobic response, the foe is the relationship itself. It’s the loss of freedom that’s frightening. If on some very visceral level you equate commitment with the loss of freedom, then commitment may be anxiety provoking or even truly terrifying. Your body gets prepared to help you escape. It will respond to that relationship the same way it would respond if you were a claustrophobic trapped in an elevator, an airplane, a crowd, or a closet.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF FEAR

Of course not everyone experiences his or her fear of commitment in the same way. Fear can range from severe to more subtle. For example:

•
Overwhelming panic
is the best way to describe reactions that are both immediate and intense. The minute the relationship gets “tight,” fear sets in. These men and women can’t help but recognize what they are feeling.

Adam, a forty-two-year-old photographer, describes the feeling: “With every woman I’ve been with I’ve experienced that moment of terror when the relationship suddenly hits the place where I’m no longer a guy trying to get a woman to like me. That’s the point where everything turns around—instead of being the pursuer, I’m the pursued. The woman likes me and is making noises like she’s thinking of marriage, and I feel like I’m being hunted, and I’m screaming for air. I always find a way out. Usually I have to make some excuse, like I’m moving to Alaska for six months. I try to get out without hurting anyone. Impossible of course. Someone is always hurt, but I have to do it. There is no other way.”

Meg, also forty-two, says that she experiences a similar reaction: “Several men have asked me to marry them, and each time I say yes, I stop breathing. The last one was two years ago. I had just turned forty, and I remember thinking,
Go ahead, marry him! Make your parents happy! It won’t be
so
bad. You can have a child right away, and then when the child is fourteen, you can get divorced. You’ll only be fifty-five—you can still have some life left
. But I couldn’t do it, because after I said yes, I became phobic about everything—trains, buses, cars. One night I made him walk home with me from Penn Station to Eighty-sixth Street because I couldn’t get into any vehicle with him. I completely lost it.”

•
Anxiety
ranging from mild to intense is the way many men and women with commitment conflicts describe their feelings. This group rarely feels outright panic, and the symptoms of fear, or phobia, may be so subtle and so seemingly disconnected from the relationship that at first they are only vaguely aware of what’s
taking place. But when the anxiety hangs around long enough, they become acutely aware of their discomfort. Sometimes this type of anxiety translates into actual physical symptoms, such as headaches, stomachaches, or back pain. Often the symptoms don’t emerge until after a commitment has taken place.

Janice, a thirty-six-year-old woman, was recently married for the second time. She told us, “In my first marriage I was uncomfortable and nervous all the time. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin. But I blamed that on my first husband. Within weeks of this marriage I started to feel the same thing. I can’t blame my second husband. He’s not doing anything. I just feel the walls closing in on me.”

Anthony, an accountant, says that although he has never felt actual panic, he is aware of his anxiety. “I know I’m nervous about commitment because I get this anxious feeling in my stomach whenever I let anything get too close. The first time it happened, I was going out with this woman at work, and I thought I had the flu. I felt sick for close to four weeks. Whenever I would go to the office, I would feel sick. When I went home, I felt better. Finally I figured it out. I don’t think it was the woman’s fault. I just got anxious when she was around. Eventually we broke up, and then two years later, when I started seeing another woman seriously, the same thing happened. It’s a real problem.”

•
Controlled fear
is the feeling expressed by those men and women who acknowledge their conflicts and who are attempting to lead their lives in a way that compensates for their feelings. Although she is only twenty-four, Debra, who describes herself as the queen of self-help, says that for the time being she has arranged her life to accommodate feelings such as this. She says:

“Right now I’m totally commitmentphobic. I’m afraid, and I know it. I don’t want to get involved seriously, and I don’t want to make any promises. Looking at different relationships and different married couples, I see that I don’t want to be trapped in that little box. It’s too stifling.

“I had a difficult childhood, and I’ve had to work a lot of stuff out. I’ve read just about every self-help book published, and I attend a twelve-step program designed for children of dysfunctional
families. I have to be careful not to be attracted to men with a lot of problems. Because I know me, I know that if I see someone more than a few times, I get involved. Therefore I just won’t go out with anyone more than three or four times. I like to date, I like men, I’m just very realistic about what I want, and I don’t want commitment, at least not for a long time. The decision not to be in a relationship feels good to me because for the first time in my life I don’t feel as if I have to be with someone. I always thought it was expected of me, and I would try even though I wasn’t comfortable with it. I like men, but no real promises and no real intimacy—that’s what I want. And I don’t want any man to try to talk me out of it.”

Kevin, thirty-six, says that he has also come to terms with his commitmentphobia:

“I know that I will never be able to be with somebody forever. My compromise: I date only women who feel the same way I do. I don’t let it get too intimate. I figure maybe someday down the line I’ll be good for limited commitments. But for now, after a half-dozen devastating experiences in which everybody was hurt, I keep it simple and detached. It’s working for me.”

•
Hidden fear
is the only way to describe the reactions of those men and women whose history clearly indicates that they are avoiding commitment, even though they have no conscious awareness of what they are doing. These men and women are so terrified of commitment that they rarely, if ever, consider becoming involved with anyone who would present them with the opportunity to confront their terror. Because they are attracted to partners who are unavailable or pulling away, unless they accidentally stumble into a committed relationship, they have no idea of the depth of their anxiety. Karen, a forty-year-old musician, says:

“My whole life I wanted to get married and have children, but with every man I went out with, it was the same thing. Something was wrong with every one of them—either they were married or they were petrified of intimacy. I had a couple of relationships that took me a long time to get over. Anyway one of these men, someone who broke my heart about ten years ago, suddenly turned up in my life again. Now he wants to get married—and I’m not so sure.

“I’ve learned how to live alone, and it seems like a lot of trouble to be with somebody all the time. I have to admit it, now that he’s around all the time, I feel that he’s pressuring me. I like him, but I don’t want him around so much. I feel angry, and I want to scream at him to just get away from me. This is amazing because I fantasized about him every night for years, and if he weren’t here, I might dream about him again. But when I’m with him, I have chest pains. This might be my last chance to have a family, and I worry that I should grab it, and him, while I can, but I can’t stand feeling this way.”

James, forty-four, insists that he has no awareness of any fear and would be thrilled if he could meet the right woman, but his history says otherwise. He tends to go for long periods—sometimes years—without going out with anyone because his feelings are often focused on women who, for one reason or another, are not interested in pursuing a relationship with him. There have, however, been two women who were available and responsive with whom he tried to live. Both times the relationship ended because he “felt miserable.”

“I think it was the women in both cases. They both did things I couldn’t stand. One of them kept a dog who would always try to get in the bed. She had the dog before I moved in, but I didn’t know that it bothered me. The other one played music in the morning that I couldn’t stand. In both cases things about the women made my skin crawl. I couldn’t take it. I felt as if I had to get away, or I would explode.”

IT’S ONLY FRIGHTENING WHEN IT FEELS LIKE FOREVER

“It’s the lifetime thing. That’s what scares me. The lifetime thing. Whose idea was that anyway?”

—JOHN, forty-two

It’s a mistake to believe that someone who is afraid of commitment is by definition afraid of relationships. Men and women with commitment conflicts can be loving, they can be tender, and they can be involved. That is, until the relationship in question looks like it might develop into a “lifetime thing.” When permanency is
introduced into the equation, fear surfaces. Remember that permanency means different things to different people. Some hypersensitive individuals feel threatened as soon as the first or second date if they believe that “more” will ultimately be expected of them; others may not feel stuck for years.