The BIG question of commitment
You often hear that people are ‘scared of commitment’ and a broken relationship can be attributed to a ‘fear of commitment’, but what does that really mean?
As the ‘consumer generation’ we’re faced with so many choices: where to live, what to do as a career, how to spend our free time, what to eat, etc. We’re used to having multiple options about nearly every aspect of life, and when we impose this way of thinking on our relationships, it’s no wonder that we find it hard to make decisions.
Past generations would choose a life-long partner from a handful of eligible people in their local area. But today we have hundreds of potential options, we meet new people all the time and with the internet the opportunities are endless. Yet the amount of choice we have seems to make meeting that ‘special someone’ harder rather than easier.
Keeping our options open
We tend to put off making big decisions about our relationships; after all it is probably the most important decision we’ll ever have to make. And with all the potential relationships on offer, we like to keep our options open. You can imagine the following thought process:
“I don’t know whether the relationship I’m in now is ‘the one’, and even though I’m happy enough with the person I’m with, I’m just not sure if the feelings I have for them match up to the way I imagined I would feel when I met ‘the one’, and therefore I don’t want to decide that this person is ‘the one’, if two or three years down the road I meet ‘the actual one’, and so I’ll just wait and see what happens…”
The trouble is, not making a decision can actually have as big an impact on a relationship as making a decision. A clever research group in America has even come up with a theory on commitment – it goes a bit like this:
Sliding vs. Deciding
Couples who ‘slide’ into a relationship are much more likely to break up further down the line, or be unhappy in their relationship than those who have ‘decided’ to be together. This is because making a firm decision about a relationship helps to increase the dedication that couples feel towards one another, so that they start to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘us’ rather than ‘me’ and ‘I’. Higher levels of dedication mean that couples are more willing to think about their future together and sacrifice things for one another.
Couples who slide into a relationship without making a clear decision to commit may start to feel trapped by the constraints around them. These can be external constraints such as family and mutual friends. The deeper they go into a relationship, the harder it becomes to leave (i.e. becoming involved sexually, moving in together, having a baby, getting married). In a committed relationship, this only strengthens the bond between couples. But when a person hasn’t made a clear decision to be in this situation, it can lead to a sense of restlessness.
Often we put off making a decision about a relationship until all external factors are in place, or we think that when we meet ‘the one’ it will be so obvious that we won’t have to make a decision to choose that person. But the truth is that in all relationships love is a risk: I either choose to love you and be with you, or I choose not to. Indecision brings uncertainty in a relationship.
It makes sense really doesn’t it? We need to make a definite decision about our relationships if we want to see them grow. It’s only by deciding to be in a relationship that we can build the commitment needed to maintain it and see it truly flourish.
Is your relationship ready for the long haul? Find out here
Written by Lindsey Sisk. Posted on 24th June.
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