Fear Of Commitment

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What is the issue about the “fear of commitment” in love relationships that has almost become a cliché?

Well, it goes something like this. You become involved in a romance, and then either one or both of you want the relationship to get more intense with perhaps even marriage as the goal. But at the same time, either or or both of you have anxiety concerning the involvement you both say you want. Of course, this can certainly be extreme ambivalence at its worst. Now, underneath the ambivalence is often the unspoken idea that when the relationship becomes too important— when the emotional investment becomes too great—then you’ll change your mind, or that the person you’re falling for will turn out to be entirely different as you get to know him or her better, or that while you love this closeness, intimacy and companionship you’re not so ready to give up your freedom, and that you will ultimately be the one to hurt your partner. Or worst yet, that you will be rejected by him or her, for the same reasons.

If this sounds familiar, just know, that it’s a very normal occurrence during courtship to back off a little bit. This is a psychological dance, where each of you will do the thinking you need to do in the time you need to do it. If the relationship is right, you will then slowly become more at ease with the idea of commitment. If not, you will move on, hopefully to someone else with whom a committed relationship will eventually fall into place. It’s a rare couple that doesn’t experience a little bit of doubt when growing a relationship.

Ex-spouse Remarrying

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No matter how well you’ve gotten over your former relationship, it’s very possible to experience some unexpected feelings of regret when you learn that your former partner has remarried or is going forward in a long term relationship.

Anger, guilt, and loneliness are some of the common reactions to learning that your ex has or will remarry. This may happen regardless of the degree to which you’ve adjusted to your divorce or separation previously.

Your ex’s remarriage represents the final statement that the relationship is over (unless , of course, you share children—then there will probably always be some connection). Don’t beat yourself up for having these feelings, accept them as appropriate sadness. This may be a final stage of mourning, even if the person is someone whom you no longer desire.

If you accept the feelings, they’ll probably pass quickly. But if they don’t, consider that those feelings may provide you with a clue that you own life in not in order.

The grief you are experiencing may be telling you that what you held as an option perhaps without even realizing it, no longer exists. After you accept those final feelings of grief and let them pass, there’s no place to go but forward.

Emotional Illusions

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Just as optical illusions often make things appear to be a different size than they are in reality, the same is true for emotional illusions, for example, how often do you tell yourself that something that’s occurred is a catastrophe when in reality it is simply just a disappointment or an inconvenience. That’s an example of where an emotional illusion can lead to rage, depression, anxiety, or other negative emotions.

Another form of emotional illusion is called infatuation, which is merely a strong initial attraction toward another person, but you fully believe that those feelings represent true romantic love.

So just as in many other illusions, infatuation and true romantic love are almost indistinguishable by the one who feels them. Often the only way that you can tell them apart, is to see how long they last and whether they increase or decrease as you get to know the other person.

Remember, our emotions bring out both the best and worst in us. But by realizing that they are often error prone we can allow ourselves to experience them while cutting our losses.

Eating Disorders

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There are people whose lives revolve around food, who dislike their bodies, who compulsively diet and weigh themselves, or who diet on one day and binge the next. Some actually feel that only “willpower” stands between the body they have and the figure of a model. If this sounds familiar, then it’s possible that you have an eating disorder. Also, you might be telling yourself that if only you could get thin— once and for all— you would finally be happy with yourself and your life.

Here is a quick check list of eating disorder symptoms: eating when you’re not physically hungry; feeling out of control around food; spending a lot of time thinking and worrying about food and fatness; constantly searching for the latest diet; and feeling negatively about your body and out of control around food (such as losing weight on a diet and then gaining back all the weight you lose and maybe even more). Purging food and fasting without being under medical supervision should also be of major concern.

The key word here is control. When you are out of control; you may feel guilty, helpless, self-indulgent and even ugly. Therefore, your task is to get the help you need to firmly regain control of your eating. When you do this, you may even find that you are finally in charge of the rest of your life as well.

Visitation Time

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Many divorced or separated parents struggle with how to make the most out of visitation time with their children. You may have heard the cliché “Zoo Daddy”. It refers to a divorced father having visitation privileges, and who stereotypically takes his children mainly to places such as the park, an ice cream place or some other standard fun spot on visitation day – more out of a frustration over how to spend the visitation time, than enjoyment of these places or his child. If you are a non-custodial parent, you have a special set of problems that you probably weren’t aware of when your family was intact. Chances are you didn’t anticipate them even, if you were the one to initiate the marital breakup. To avoid being a ‘Zoo” or “Disneyland Daddy” make your children as much a part of your new life as possible given the limitations of time. You’ll find that the climate can become a lot more relaxed, and visitations will seem less like a chore if more time is spent on normal everyday activities. This way you will give them a realistic view of you, your life and how they fit into it. Also the kids will actually find it easier to readjust when they go home to their custodial parent.

Surviving An Affair

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Suppose you’re in a committed relationship such as a marriage and you discover that your spouse or partner has at one time had an affair, which now is over. Would you experience this as devastation? Or would you accept reality and forgive your partner?

If you think that you would automatically end the relationship, consider this – numerous studies over the past ten years have found that ended affairs have had much less to do with the current and future quality of an existing marriage, or other long-term relationship that had ever been previously thought.

The consensus of these studies is saying, that if your marriage relationship is now going well and the affair is over, regardless of what your marriage contract was – and most of them do call for monogamy – there isn’t really that much of an affect that the affair itself will have on your marriage or its future, as long as both partners can let go of the hurt and anger that the affair generated.

So research says forgive your partner, and the effect will be only the one that you the discoverer allows it to have. It may not be the easiest thing to do, but in the end it maybe the most rational.