Do You Have Commitment Issues in Your Relationship?

Being involved in a new relationship can be one of the happiest, most exciting times of your life. Getting to know a new partner, spending time together, and discovering the joys of a deep, loving relationship truly makes life worth living. And you’ll likely remember those days forever.

However, if you struggle with commitment issues, these joyous times are marred by actions that reveal you’re unsure of how to handle yourself in the relationship.

Beware of these signs of difficulty in committing:

You refuse to say, “I love you.” You’ve strongly felt you loved someone but couldn’t bring yourself to tell her. You secretly wonder what it will mean if you reveal how you truly feel. You decide it’s better if you don’t tell her. After all, you feel fear when you think of sharing your honest feelings. Maybe you’ll lose power in the relationship if you’re “for real.”
You date more than one person simultaneously. No matter how much you care for one partner, you typically see someone else “on the side.” You don’t really know why you do it. You date multiple people even if the first person you’re dating thinks the relationship is monogamous.
You argue or create drama to avoid closeness. You find reasons to disagree and generally create drama in a relationship when you’re getting too emotionally close. The same thing happens if you believe your partner is getting too close to you. It starts feeling pretty scary when you feel the closeness.
- After all, what will they expect next from you? Will they discover who you really are and leave you? You fear intimacy. If you create some drama, they’ll back off.
It’s okay to stay in a relationship that’s going nowhere. Remaining in a dead-end relationship is something you commonly do because, after all, you don’t really want it to go anywhere anyway. It’s just fine with you if the relationship stays at the same level indefinitely.
- You actually prefer that the relationship doesn’t grow and progress. This way, you don’t expect much and your partner doesn’t demand much from you, either.
You refuse to go to the next level. When you date someone, you usually avoid taking the relationship up a notch, whether it’s monogamy (agreeing not to date anyone else) or getting engaged. It’s just not the right thing to do right now. Why is it such a big deal? Things are great now. There’s no sense trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
- In reality, you’ve found yourself at this very place before with some really great partners. You can predict where it’s going to go from here.
Making excuses helps you avoid discussing the relationship’s progress. Whenever your partner brings up the subject of taking the relationship further, you make excuses for why “it’s not a good time” to discuss it or go to the next level. Why can’t you just have things continue the way they are now? Why waste time and effort on talking about “it?”
You prefer to live together as opposed to getting married. You especially like living with someone who doesn’t expect much from you but just lets you do your own thing. It’s nice to have someone around when you get home from work or feel lonely without having to commit to anything else.

f any of these scenarios sound familiar to you, you very likely have commitment issues. It would be helpful to consider getting some professional guidance to help you figure out what you really want from relationships and how to go after it.

You can resolve any commitment issues you have, if you so choose. Your relationship will prosper when you confront and resolve your fears about relationship intimacy and commitment.