Commitmentphobia is the term used to describe a person who deeply fears relationship commitment. It is more often associated with men, but women may also suffer from commitmentphobia. According to Weinberg (2003) in Why Men Won’t Commit: How to Get What You (Both) Want Without Playing Games, “Your man sees his freedom as hard won and as a measure of his virility. He feels that his masculinity depends on his remaining unburdened. For him to give up his lifestyle completely for a woman may be his ultimate nightmare.” The commitmentphobic develops an exaggerated fear of being confined. This fear begins to show itself once he enters a close relationship where there are long-term expectations and responsibilities.

The commitmentphobic may come on very strong in the early stages, buying bunches of roses, bringing his partner to expensive restaurants, and constantly telling her how wonderful she is. In fact, he may go so far as to tell her she’s his ideal mate, the one he has spent his life searching for. Perhaps there is some mention of previous failed relationships, but of course his past partners were to blame for all the problems. The relationship may develop quickly and there may even be talk of marriage or settling down together.

Suddenly though everything changes when the woman has been won over. Once she has lost her heart and feels this is the man she wants to be with, he suddenly grows colder. His attention begins to diminish and he gives contradictory signals. Maybe he refuses to meet the woman’s family. Maybe he tells her he needs space. He may say she is making too many demands–like attending her sister’s wedding, or meeting her best friends–though she feels this is a normal step when two people become a couple. Despite these disappointments he still tells her that he’s very much in love, and so she keeps on believing that it’s all progressing beautifully.

But now another problem develops. He starts finding major faults with her. There is something he just can’t accept–she’s too tall, she’s into all that spiritual stuff, or she’s not a good enough cook. Maybe she’s just not perfect! But then again he’s so in love with her that these little flaws will surely be overlooked.

Now the woman begins to feel that she really isn’t good enough for this wonderful man. She may have to take cookery lessons, maybe she’ll have to work out at the gym, buy sexy lingerie or do something extraordinary to show him that he wasn’t wrong about her. All her focus is set on winning back the person who seemed to love her unconditionally, who gave her all those incredible compliments, who made her feel so special.

From this point on it all goes terribly wrong. He doesn’t listen to her anymore and doesn’t seem to care what’s going on in her life. He’s not even interested in her mother’s illness. He talks more about needing to change his life, to get away from it all. He says he doesn’t think it’s going to work out. She asks him why but he tells her something vague, like the chemistry is not right. He thinks she’s got the wrong idea about the relationship–it’s really not that serious! Now she really feels distraught. She’s devastated. She believed he really loved her. She must have done something desperate to lose his love. Maybe she needs to change herself even more? Maybe she needs to act more like a wife, to listen more attentively, not to talk so much about her work or her family?

The truth is hard to take, but it’s really the only thing that will save her. In this situation there’s nothing wrong with the woman! Except perhaps that she has focused exclusively on what this man feels about her. With the promise of love and in the face of all those complements she has simply lost her critical faculties. She has been starved of love and intimacy for so long that she simply believed a fairytale and refused to face the enormous flaws when they began to surface. She never realised that her partner was a commitmentphobic. The truth about her beloved is that he cannot commit because his fear of intimacy and of losing control to another is so great that marriage or togetherness can only ever be a fantasy.

It may take a woman a long time to trust her own judgment again when she has been let down in this dramatic manner. It is important for her to focus on her own feelings and to begin to live life from the inside out. In this way she will begin to discern the kind of man who would make a caring and loving partner, rather than be lost in romantic notions of being wooed or saved. Attending a counsellor or psychotherapist may give her guidance and support to unravel her needs and emotions.