I used to joke about having commitment issues until I looked into what commitment issues actually are.
For the longest time, I thought I was just picky or independent. Or I just hadn’t met the right person yet. Although all of those things might be true, they may also just be the result of my commitment issues.
So what are commitment issues? “Commitment issues” is an umbrella term describing a general pattern of, well, struggling with committing to a romantic relationship, a job, or making any other life-changing decision. This article will focus on my experience with romantic relationships.
What’s your attachment Style?
So to determine whether you have commitment issues and, if so “what kind,” let’s look at attachment styles. There are four different types:
1. Secure Attachment
Individuals with a secure attachment style are comfortable with intimacy, find it considerably easy to trust their partner and can be vulnerable around their loved ones. At the same time, they experience little to no anxiety in relationships in regard to being rejected or abandoned. If you find this relatable, congratulations. You likely have no commitment issues.
2. Anxious-Resistant
Individuals with an anxious-resistant attachment style seek high levels of intimacy and experience high levels of anxiety at the same time. In a relationship, anxious-resistant people often question the relationship and suspect there is something to be wrong. Therefore, they have a hard time trusting their partner, often seek reassurance and might come across as clingy. Anxious-resistant people might also stay single for a long time as their fear of getting hurt, or betrayed, might prevent them from dating seriously at all. If you found this relatable, there’s a chance you might have commitment issues. However not the kind we will talk about today.
3. Avoidant
Avoidant individuals perceive little to no anxiety about rejection or abandonment in relationships—however, they struggle with intimacy. They may experience high levels of closeness as uncomfortable or “suffocating.” They’re often known to be confident, independent and easygoing. Sounds great, right? If this sounds even a little relatable, congratulations, you might have commitment issues. And we will discuss these today :)
4. Disorganized
Individuals with a disorganized attachment style are somewhat unpredictable. They both have issues with intimacy and abandonment anxiety. This beautiful contradiction often leads the disorganized individual to show the opposite tendencies as their partner. If their partner seeks a lot of intimacy, they might feel suffocated. However, if their partner gives them a lot of space and requires their own space, disorganized people often experience high anxiety and become intimacy-seeking, or”clingy.” If you found this relatable, your childhood must have been fun!
Avoidant attachment
When I read about commitment issues, it was something along the lines of: “you are afraid of losing your freedom and making wrong decisions.” Although I found this relatable, I did not perceive this “fear of losing freedom” as a particularly strong emotion. Thinking about being in a relationship usually made me desire a loving romantic relationship, rather than any anxiety. On top of that, when I contemplated whether I had commitment issues or not, or whether I was anxious about losing my freedom, I usually reached the conclusion that I would actually be willing to sacrifice a good amount of my “freedom” to experience a relationship. I think all the securely attached people reading this would, here, point out that entering a relationship generally does not make them think or feel that they’d be sacrificing any freedom.
Yet, my dumb ass did not think of that. Therefore, my love life consisted of a fair share of situation-ships, talking stages, and a few one-to-two-month-long attempts at relationships, mostly ending with me rejecting the other person and subsequently drowning in guilt. If I had informed myself about commitment issues earlier, I might have realized that the anxiety of losing freedom, was much more related to the situation of being in a relationship than to the fantasy of it. If I had informed myself about commitment issues even earlier than that, I might have also understood even earlier why I only joked about having commitment issues but never actually believed it.
Let’s take a step back. Avoidant attachment develops when your parents or other caretakers tend to dismiss you especially when you are asking for help or expressing emotions. I want to emphasize here that the person dismissing your emotions or needs does not have to be a parent. They might be a (previous) partner, sibling, or another family member. In my case, mostly my siblings were dismissive of my needs and wants. As a result, avoidant individuals learn to deal with their problems by themselves, often resulting in high self-sufficiency and self-esteem.
Moreover, avoidant individuals are often described as very fun, easy-going and confident. Friendships with them can be very uncomplicated, to some extent, because they tend to keep people at arm’s length. Also, something I thought was totally not me. Boy, was I wrong! I used to think that I was an open book. I found it easy to share personal information and tell them all about myself, my life story, my thoughts and …feelings? I had no problem sharing all kinds of information about myself, but I had learned to deal with my feelings myself. So, I would tell people all about my struggles, but only after I had already worked through them on my own.
On the rare occasions, I would tell others about my current struggles, I would make them seem as “not that bad”, or would present them more as a notification, rather than something that would be further discussed. This might make avoidant people seem like very strong and independent individuals, which they are, but asking for help might also not be the worst idea ever.
So, Why do I struggle with IntimacY?
I realized that whenever I imagined myself being in a relationship or feeling really close to someone, the picture in my mind was largely characterized by support-seeking. In other words, in my mind, my significant other would have had a rough day or is going through something, and I was to be the trusted person my partner would seek care from. I was the one significant person able to carry part of his baggage. Or it would be the other way around, I would be going through something my partner was the one and only person with whom I could let loose and admit to feeling bad. But where is the laughter? Where is the easy-going banter? Where are the inside jokes?
It does make a lot of sense that, in my fantasy, a romantic relationship would be characterized by the one thing that I was missing in all other relationships in my life. However, the fantasy was static. There was no point in the fantasy where anyone was actually working on themselves or facing their struggles. Instead, the fantasy was a single prolonged situation of “I got you.” As nice as that sounds, in the end, you can ask for help, but the person that has to face your struggles is still you, with or without help.
And then it hit me: I have issues with intimacy because whenever I imagine being close to someone, I imagine my significant other to be very, very dependent on me and to be very, very dependent on them. Dependent to the extent that is not necessarily healthy. Dependent to the extent that would actually make me very responsible for another human being. Dependent to the extent that would, in fact, take a lot of freedom away from me.
Now, If you were able to relate to everything up until the last three paragraphs, this might be more of a personal experience. However, one I wish I had heard of or read somewhere.
So, essentially avoidant people have learned to live their lives very independently. Independently, to an extent where a “normal romantic relationship” might require them to open up about things they learned to deal with by themselves. Further, they might not be comfortable with “having to help” someone. I personally always enjoy giving advice and supporting people. However, I used only to do so when I voluntarily decided to do so and kept this person at arm’s length, as well. I felt more like a counsellor than a close friend. If I had experienced actual closeness to this person, I would have felt as if they would overstep my boundaries, as if they would have dropped some issues on me that was “not my job to fix.”
In other words, feeling connected to another person within a romantic relationship would be defined mainly by help-seeking, something I had not learned to do growing up. Thereby, I tend to perceive helping my partner to be my unique responsibility as their romantic partner, resulting in an unhealthy dependence that would, in fact, take away from my freedom, leaving me uncomfortable in relationships. And that’s how I discovered my anxious attachment style and am now able to continue working through it.