People have anxiety about all kinds of interpersonal commitments. By simple decision theory, saying “yes” to one option means saying “no” to another. Jokes help to alleviate the gravity of this fear in our culture. A man may call himself “commitmently challenged” or “serially monogamous.”
Marriage may be called a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? Fear of the interpersonal intensity that goes hand-in-hand with intimacy can make us wary of getting in too deep. Often, these anxieties surface in the context of dating exclusively, cohabitation, engagement, marriage, pregnancy and/or birth of a child, pro-motion or hire at work, or a medical illness in one of the partners.
Any event which potentially intensifies human closeness can ratchet up corresponding fears of commitment. Starting psychotherapy can likewise pro-duce the very fear which people have in their relation-ships outside of the treatment, thus providing the raw material so helpful to knowing more about this nervousness and providing relief for its pressure.
This anxiety can reflect many different fears. With commitment can come the next phase of developmental life, including raising and providing for a family or starting a business. It can also involve trusting a partner to be emotionally present or trusting in oneself enough to leave one’s family of origin.
In the most intense way, this anxiety can represent a fear of being annihilated, trapped, or lost in ways yet undiscovered. Being committed means being able to sustain one’s own sense of self-worth while simultaneously allowing for and compromising with the values of others. It means allowing for greater flexibility and loss of control than one perceives one maintains with the relative freedoms of independence.