It’s not Commitment that Men are Afraid of
January 6th, 2008 by Kavan WolfeRecently, several of my female friends have been complaining that their significant others are afraid of commitment. Men are not afraid of commitment — well, a few are, but mostly “commitment” is not the real hang-up. So ladies, he here’s what he’s really afraid of:
1. You will stop wanting sex with him, then
2. You will stop having sex with him
3. You will get fat
4. You will stop wanting to go out and have fun
5. You will throw out, or make him get rid of, his favorite shirt, chair, porno, etc.
6. You will ignore him to spend time with the kids, because
7. You will love the kids more than him
8. You will stop getting all dressed, just for him
9. You will become crotchety and bitchy
10. You will stop taking care of yourself
11. You will start ordering him around
12. You will blame everything on him
13. You will try to change him
14. You will make him (explicitly or implicitly) stop hanging out with the guys
15. You will start buying your underwear at Walmart
16. You will stop having sex with him (did I mention that already?)
And why is it that men are afraid of these things? Look around. If you live in North America or Britain at least, you won’t have to look very hard for your answer.
January 7th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Ah, Kavan’s triumphant return. Its all true dude, I dont like committing mostly because i have a nasty habit of never picking up the phone and she reads it as neglect. If i dont commit, i cant be flagged.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Truly pathetic. Especially the porn thing, which is the only commitment man CAN make, in fact.
January 8th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Ladies, this is why you should be crotchety and bitchy from the get go. That way, your perpetually gorgeous (never balding) and always faithful man will not be disappointed when you can’t shed the pounds from popping out his kids.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:05 am
@Kim and Angelika,
I’m just trying to give insight into the common man’s mind. Don’t blame me if you’re not impressed with how this half of the species thinks. The first step to addressing a problem is understanding it, not calling it pathetic.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Please, notice, that I did not call any problem pathetic. I don’t see a problem there, all I see is a man whining about having a relationship and not liking one bit of it, unless there is lots of sex in it.
What I called pathetic is that list of yours. You have very high expectations and I just hope you are as gorgeous and faithful as Kim pointed out you would have to be to impose all those expectations on your partner.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Perfectly reasonable. That’s whay the women disagree.
Oooh boy. I’ll get flamed for that one….
… but bring it on.
You’ll most definitely prove me right about my opinions on the way women think.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Oh, what a vicious cycle. Walmart does suck though.
A girlfriend initially believes that she can overlook the things she doesn’t actually like about her boyfriend (this could be anything from sex to his bathroom wallpaper). Eventually she realizes she can’t, but by then she has made The Commitment. She feels trapped, therefore she feels depressed, therefore about half the symptoms on your list.
A man has two primary examples of women in his life: his girlfriend, and his mother. As the relationship goes on, he sees his girlfriend becoming more and more like his mother. After all, his mother must once have been his father’s girlfriend, until the same thing happened to her. And no matter how strongly a man feels about his mother, he doesn’t want to date her (most men, anyway).
Women are more willing to compromise than men are. The girlfriend feels she is compromising on a lot of things for her boyfriend, so he should compromise for her–hence the favorite shirt, chair, porno, and buddies. When he turns out to be more stubborn that that, her reaction is to stop compromising for him–the going out, the sexy underwear, the dressing up.
A woman also feels that she needs to do more work when pursuing/dating a man than when she has reasonable assurance she’s already got him.
It’s okay. The whole dating world is just fucked up, whether you’re gay or straight.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Men aren’t afraid of commitment; they’re afraid of commitment TO YOU.
July 11th, 2008 at 9:39 am
@Kee, you make good points, but I don’t think you can justify “Women are more willing to compromise than men are.”
@FireZs, you who? Me? Being a straight male, that’s not really my concern.