Do I Have A Fear Of Commitment? Or Am I In The Wrong Relationship? |
- Am I scared of commitment or is it the wrong person?
- How to tell if I don t like him or if I just have commitment issues?
- How do you know if you have commitment issues in a relationship?
- Is it normal to be scared of commitment in a relationship?
I don’t know if I love him. I don’t know
if this relationship will last, or if I want it to. It’s my first
long-term relationship (we’ve been dating for two years), and when I
express my
doubts to my boyfriend he tells me it’s all a normal part of being in
a long-term relationship. He says no one ever really knows if they’re in love,
and no one ever really knows if a relationship is going to last, and that
nerves and doubt are all normal. He thinks I’m afraid of commitment.
Am I just afraid of commitment? Or am
I in the wrong relationship? How are you ever supposed to know the
difference?
A: As a former
(still-kind-of-recovering) commitment-phobe myself, I can’t tell you how much I
empathize with this question. It’s hard for anyone to decipher what The Line is
in a relationship, the point at which staying with a person tips into the not-worth-it territory. And it’s doubly hard when commitment itself acts as a
filter, distorting how you view the situation. Are your expectations too high,
or are you settling for something because it’s better than the alternative? Is
this just what life is like? Is this what relationships are like?
Your boyfriend is (half) right; it is
incredibly normal — especially in your first relationship — to wonder whether
everyone else has these kinds of doubts, and how much credence you should give
them. Rest assured, if there were obvious answers to your questions, you would
have already found them.
From the
outside, it seems like both things — a fear of commitment and a
less-than-perfect fit with your partner — are at play here. Let’s start with
the more urgent one, your current relationship. I’m not telling you that
you must break up with this guy (although I do spot a handful
of red flags from a few short paragraphs), I am simply suggesting
that how you feel about this relationship and the ways you
describe it do not sound all that jazzy. All relationships are
underwhelming from time to time. There are days and months when all of
us get bored with our partners. That’s totally fine, it's frustrating.
You, however, didn’t mention a single
positive thing about your current partnership. Most people, when they write to
me about whether they should end their relationship, throw things
at me about their partner’s goodness, begging me to understand that it’s not
easy to leave. “She makes me so happy.” “I don’t know what I’d do without
them.” “He and I have so much history; I can’t imagine my life without him in
it.” The words you used about your relationship included “anxiety,” “dread,”
“doubts,” and “freaking out.” That is… not great.
If
you set out to describe your ideal relationship in three paragraphs, I highly
doubt it would resemble what you wrote here. Now, this letter is merely a
snapshot of your life. This isn’t the day-in, day-out. This isn’t everything.
On top of that, as I said before, relationships are cyclical. Maybe when you
wrote that letter every word was The Absolute Truth, but you don’t recognize
yourself in it today. But I want you to hear something: Doubt is normal, and questions are normal. Misery is not.
People do know that they are in love. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am in love with my current boyfriend and that I wasn’t ever in love with my first boyfriend. When I traveled to Rome recently, did I fleetingly wish that I was single so I could find a handsome Italian to start a life with? Yes!!! Duh!!! However, at no point did I wonder, “Do I really love my boyfriend?” If, after two years together, you still have questions about whether you love your boyfriend — and it sounds like your boyfriend might too, based on his responses? — that strikes me as a red flag.
That’s not to suggest he sucks
or that you are broken. To me, it’s a sign that this is not a
good fit. Which is sad, sad, sad. But staying together is not going to mitigate
that sadness. Unfortunately, the only remedy for that particular heartache is
to separate and let your lives grow in different directions, to let your hearts
fill up with good, easy things that don’t come laden with doubt and anxiety.
Now, let’s get to the second part of your
conundrum — commitment phobia. Staying with someone for two years seems like a
commitment to me, so even if you are scared of making
long-term decisions (a reasonable fear, in my opinion), you seem to be doing a
pretty dang good job of pushing through. My concern is this: Please only push
through the fear for things that are worth it. Because, yes, maybe moving in
with someone will always feel a little itchy, but it shouldn’t feel like grief.
I’m not saying I didn’t mourn the “loss” of single, independent Sophia when I
moved in with my boyfriend. I did! (All of sudden I’m never going to have my
own room ever again? What the hell kind of deal did I make?) But those feelings
represented maybe 5% of my emotions around moving in together; the rest was
like a high-pitched dolphin squeal of excitement. A sleepover every night with
this person I’m so into? Hell yeah!
Commitment is frightening
— we can’t know the future, but we’re tasked with making choices about it
regardless. It’s like picking what’s behind doors No. 1, 2, or 3, but instead
of a car, a goat, or money, it’s versions of your life. The stakes feel very
high! As soon as you choose something, you’re stuck. That isn’t strictly true,
of course — life has infinite possibilities still in store for all of us — but
committing to one thing often feels like losing out on others.
There’s one big question in front of you now. What do you want your life to look like? Does long-term love matter to you? Is commitment something you actually desire? The answer does not have to be yes. Some people find they don’t actually want the things we’re all taught to want. Some people practice nonmonogamy for those reasons; some people don’t have long-term or exclusive partners at any point.
If you find that you do want commitment,
but that you are frightened of it, I want to reassure you that someday, someone
will come along who will make it so clearly worth it. It will
still be scary, and even kind of sad, because commitment to one option so often
means that you can’t choose other, also-cool options. But it will also be exciting.
There are no right or wrong answers regarding what you do next. There are only clues as to what might make you feel happier or better about the direction of your life, and those are worth listening to. When are you happy? When are you miserable? What do you dread? You don’t need to stick with something simple to prove you can. You’re allowed to say, “I tried this, and it isn’t what I want.” And that’s heartbreaking, but it’s also rather brave.
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