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Does it sometimes feel like men are afraid of commitment?
Well, in this brand-new video, I’ll share with you 3 of the main reasons why a lot of men are afraid of commitment and what you can do to turn things around by circumventing those fears.
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Matthew:
Why won’t men commit? Them scallywags, scoundrels, rapscallions, sons of bitches.
Jameson:
Is this a serious intro or do you want . . . What do you want to do?
Matthew:
No, I want to keep this. We put a post on Instagram asking men, “Why don’t you want to commit?” Here are some of the comments that men made. Travel.and.treasures said, “I’m scared of losing my freedom,” which is a very apt comment from travel.and.treasures. Adrian says, “Loss of independence and loss of self-identity over time.” Harish says, “I always feared that the other person will completely take away my me time.” What did I say when you were going to move in, babe, I was afraid of something. I was like, “But what am I going to do when I just want to listen to my podcasts?” Is that what I said?
Audrey:
You won’t get time to listen to your podcast.
Matthew:
But what about my podcasts? And you said, “You can still do that. It’s fine. Sit in your little sad corner and listen to your podcast.” Danis says, “The fear of losing out to a better relationship yet to come by committing fully to this person.” “If she will stay with me in bad times, for example, less income from the business.” Lots of different reasons.
It’s funny, we had written a kind of format for this video here. Three reasons why men are afraid of commitment. And of course there’s more than three, but we were like, if there were three really big ones, what would they be? And the comments we got from men in response to that post on Instagram exactly correlated with what we had for this video. Here goes three reasons why men are afraid of commitment. And in each case, what can you do to circumvent that fear.
Before we go any further with the video, and trust me, there’s going to be some amazing male psychology in this video, I wanted to make sure that if you want to skip straight to the practical thing that you can do to get more commitment from someone, you open up a new tab in your browser right now, and type in GetTheFreeTraining.com. I have a video there waiting for you that’s completely free to watch, but it gives you something very specific you can do to get more commitment. Now, back to the video.
Number one, the fear that I will make the wrong choice. Now, this is a fear born out of the feeling that the stakes are so high. And of course they are high. The choosing of a right partner is one of the most important decisions that we will ever make. And we are indoctrinated with that. People are indoctrinated with the idea that this is incredibly special. Marriage is so special. It’s so important. It’s so big. And even if you have been told over and over again that marriage is scary, then the idea of marriage being scary and a giant commitment and something that can go horribly wrong raises the stakes yet higher because you’re terrified that this already really difficult and scary thing is going to be made hellish if I make the wrong choice.
So when we think about who’s going to be our confidante, best friend, our lover, our roommate for the rest of our life, that feels like a very big decision. And that can create a kind of decision paralysis. This idea that I can’t make a decision in case I get it wrong. Or what if another person that’s better comes along? There’s that optimization that can find its way into our love lives in a really unproductive way. Always thinking there might be someone better, someone more attractive, someone with even more of the qualities I want. Even if the person that I’m with has some great qualities that I want. And that keeps us in this perpetual state of self-doubt, of not trusting our own decision making.
So what can you do about that? I think one of the really interesting pieces of psychology around relationships is that to me the myth is the idea that love at first sight, love at first sight is this great myth that we’re supposed to meet someone, know that they’re the one, and then we invest in them because they’re the one. And I think that often it works the other way around. You meet someone, yes, they have a lot of the qualities that you really want in a person. Yes, there is some initial chemistry. But then they become the one by what you invest in them and by what they invest in you. You create something special because you build it together.
The problem is, if you’re so fixated on worrying about whether someone is the right person, you never actually invest enough to get past the tipping point of feeling like you’ve got something incredibly special on your hands. And questions early on in dating that are to the effect of “What are we, where is this going long term, are we in a relationship?” Can sometimes immediately raise the stakes of a situation in a way that stops someone from investing to begin with.
So how do you get around that? I think of it like bringing someone in through the shallow end of the pool, where they can
paddle and get their feet wet and just get acclimatized to the temperature of the water. They can feel the benefits of a relationship. They can experience the feeling of being close to someone. I’m not suggesting by the way that you do this in the context of not being exclusive.
But what I am saying is when you are with someone, you can say to them, especially if they’re showing resistance to a relationship, you can say, “look, I don’t know where we’re going to be in six months. I don’t know if you are going to be right for me ultimately, and you don’t know if I’m going to be right for you. I could leave you. Who knows. But what I know is that I like you enough, and I think that this is interesting enough that I want to actually give it a shot and see where it could go. But if you are not on the same page as that, if you’re not willing to do that with me, then there’s no point in me continuing to give my time and energy and attention to this.”
And what that says to someone is, “Hey, we’re not signing a contract for the rest of our lives right now. Either of us have a way out if we want. It’s okay if later on,” you can even say that to someone, “It’s okay if later on you decide that it’s not right for you, but it would be such a shame if either of us decided that having not actually given it a real shot.” That allows someone to commit to the situation right now, to the relationship right now, without thinking that that means they have to make their mind up for their whole future.
Of course, later down the line, you’re going to want to see progression. But right now, what it does is it gives someone the opportunity to actually experience how amazing this relationship is in a way that can actually have them tipping over into, well, this is it. This is the thing that I want, but I only got to that realization by actually giving my all to it. And the only reason I gave my all to it is because the person I’m with lowered the stakes of the initial decision.
The second male fear around commitment is that I will lose myself. Now, this comes in many forms, losing ourself can feel like just losing all of our time. It can feel like losing the activities that we really enjoy doing. The hobbies that we love doing, the friends that we love seeing, even just the me time as it was put in the Instagram comments to that post, the time that I spend, as I put it, listening to my podcast. But what about my podcasts? It’s the moments that we have with ourselves that we are afraid. See this couch here. What you don’t know is this room, I call it the Japan room. It’s like a little room that I’ve got kind of in my Japanophile heart. I’ve created it in the image of some of the Japanese influences that I really like.
In the mornings I like to wake up and I like to just sit on this sofa, not with my shoes on Jameson, but I just sit on this sofa and I got my laptop and my little coffee and my journals and I just work away and I have my little routine, Jameson, you know, it’s my little eccentricity, my little things that I do. And I try and wake up really early, so that Audrey can’t interrupt that time. And so sometimes that means me waking up at 5:00 AM so that I have a good two to three hours where I can just be here on this sofa and do that. If she wakes up early, if she’s like, “I can’t sleep,” and she comes out, I think, “What have I done?” That’s my little time. I don’t want to lose that. You know?
So we all have those things, and we are afraid that someone’s going to come in and they’re going to take those things from us. They’re going to take who we are from us. I know some of the men in the comments wrote about the masculinity that they felt they would lose if they lost control over making certain decisions in their life, if they felt like somebody else was suddenly calling all of the shots, if they felt like they had to go and ask permission for everything from that point forward, or I know a lot of men are afraid that they’re going to get into a relationship where the other person is the one who is very much in control and the man suddenly starts pandering or trying to supplicate to this person because they’ve made her so important and put her on such a pedestal that they then lose themselves in that situation. So it’s just easier not to get into the situation in the first place.
We’re all afraid on some level, men and women, by the way, but we’re all afraid that there’s some essential part of ourselves that we will lose in the process. Now, what can you do about this? One of the most generous and beautiful and calming things you can do for somebody is to first listen, listen to what’s important to them. What things do they really enjoy? What little routines do they have that are important to them? Audrey could have come in and she could have just laughed at that little routine I have in the morning that I do, she does laugh at it as a matter of fact, but she also respects it. And she’s like, “I know that’s your little time for yourself. I know you don’t want me anywhere near you when you’re having that time.” She laughs at me, but she also gets it. She’s like that, “I get it. I get it. You need it. You need it.”
And if I feel she’s respecting that for me, then I don’t worry that I have to guard it. I know, ah, we are guarding it together because my happiness is her happiness. It could be time with his friends. It could be that you know that he needs time with his friends. And so you actually encourage that time with his friends. You actually, “Go do that. You haven’t seen them all week, go hang out with them. You should go and see this person, go have fun.” Giving him space. You go do your stuff so that he can go do his stuff.
Having your independence is something that allows someone to have their independence. A huge part of this is listening and a huge part of it is anticipating someone’s needs. Anticipating someone’s desires, what they want, what allows them to feel like them. And when someone feels you are doing that, they feel safe knowing that they can give the best of themselves to the relationship, but they also get to hold onto the parts of themselves and their lives that they really loved when they were on their own.
The third big male fear around commitment. “You are going to f*ck me.” But not in the way I like. Audrey, do you think we can get away with that one?
Audrey:
Yeah, it’s good.
Matthew:
It’s pretty good. There we go. One woman in the room said, “It’s okay, Jameson.” This basically boils down to the idea that we can’t trust the person in front of us. And there are many male fears that relate to not being able to trust somebody. There’s fears around money. What I’ve created or what I’ve built in my life, is that going to be safe or is that suddenly going to be taken from me if things go wrong? There’s fears around having a family that they didn’t want or weren’t ready for. There’s fears around is this person going to change in the course of the relationship, especially once I’ve made a major commitment, are they all of a sudden going to show me who they actually are? Ta-da, here’s who you were with all along. It was all a dance. It was all a jig. Is it going to be that?
Or am I in front of someone who actually is a teammate, who is what they present to me, and who if, God forbid, shit hits the fan, is going to be a person of class and character when that happens. I could write a whole program on how to show this kind of character. I have in fact written a whole program on this kind of stuff called Attraction to Commitment. I’m not here to talk about that today. But this is really deep stuff. Because in the beginning of dating, our character is one of the things that makes people feel truly safe around us like they can trust us. And what are the things that show character? What are the things that show integrity?
It could be as simple as how they see us treat our friends or how they see us talk about our friends. Do we gossip about our friends, do we reveal our friends’ secrets? “My friend said never to tell anyone this, but,” do we do that? Do we talk horribly of our exes and reveal their secrets and things they never would’ve wanted reaching the light of day? Are we someone who contributes? I’m a big believer, Jameson, in paying for dinner on the third date. If you haven’t paid for the first two, pay for the third one. That was kind of the whole essence of the who should pay video back in the day. The whole idea of that was when someone can see that you’re a teammate, they trust you, they trust you, or it could be an offhand comment about the fact that you think it’s mad that people, certain people you know go into a relationship expecting the person that they’re with to fund their lifestyle. They don’t think that’s appropriate. They don’t think that’s respectful to the person they’re with.
It could be a comment about marriage and how you would never want to be in a marriage where the passion wanes or the sex stops, because that’s super important to you. All of these things tell someone, “Hey, who I am today is who I’m going to continue being. Hey, the things that are important to you long-term are important to me long-term. Hey, if things go wrong, I’m going to be a really big and wonderful person in that moment even if there’s hurt feelings. In other words, you can trust me. I’m a person of character.” And when we feel like we’re with a person of character, the stakes don’t feel quite so high on actually moving forward with someone and trusting them.
I think this is such a big subject. I’m really curious to know what you think about it all. The things that I’m saying are not always easy to say. It’s kind of a minefield talking about this stuff. But I believe in being truthful, I believe in being honest, I think we have to be honest about women, we have to be honest about men, we have to be honest about people on this channel. Otherwise, why on earth would you watch? Now I want to give you something else that can help you, because you might be in a position right now where someone already is dragging their feet. Somebody is showing signs that they’re afraid, they’re putting the brakes on something that has an enormous amount of potential. And you may be wondering to yourself, what can I do in a situation like that? How can I actually communicate with this person in a way that can continue the positive momentum we have instead of having them prematurely end a really good thing?
I have a free video training for you. It is at GetTheFreeTraining.com and it is an incredible video that I’ve put together on what you can say to someone who is umming and ahing, not sure what they want, showing that they’re afraid of commitment, showing that they’re not ready. It literally talks you through what you can say to that person to help them move past their fears and continue to a deeper relationship.
Check it out at GetTheFreeTraining.com. This is free. It’s actually taken from my program Attraction to Commitment and it is a really powerful training segment. Did I mention it’s free, Jameson?
Jameson:
Yes.
Matthew:
Oh, it turns out I did. Okay. Go check it out. It’s at GetTheFreeTraining.com. I will see you over there right now. Now, now. Open up a new browser, new tab. Now.
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