Choosing To Love Examines The Impact That A Fear Of Commitment Has Upon Intimate Relationships. It Sets Out Patterns Of Relating That Typically Play Out Where One Partner Is Afraid To Give Fully To The Other.
  Choosing to Love examines the impact that a fear of commitment has upon intimate relationships. It sets out patterns of relating that typically play out where one partner is afraid to give fully to the other.

  It provides concrete steps through which a person can deal with the fear, and choose more conscious and satisfying ways of being in a relationship.
It also addresses the confusion and hurt experienced by the other partner as they seek to understand the changes in attitude and affection by the one shying away from deeper contact.

  The book outlines the stages that a relationship goes through when one partner has a distinct fear of committing. I call this the predictable plot:

1. Hot pursuit of the woman, often characterized by the rapidity of the man’s advances;
2. The turning of the tide, where the previously enthusiastic approach begins to fade, and the man’s expressed need for distance begins to emerge;
3. The yo-yo phase, where the man alternates between being attentive and avoidant;
4. The end, where it is usually the man who breaks off the relationship;
5. Encores, where – after the stated close of the relationship, the man returns seeking re-engagement, and a repeat performance of involvement.

The book then identifies and examines the triggers for a man’s fear, and the features of a fear-dominated relationship. A man afraid of commitment will avoid as much as possible anything that seems to him to represent long-term intimacy.

A fear-dominated relationship is typically characterized by the following features:

• Ambivalence, where the man’s level of involvement in the relationship fluctuates and he is unsure how much he wants to be fully in it.
• The duration of fear-dominated tends to be fairly short – how short or long being determined by his partner’s patience and capacity to tolerate his distance and uncertainty.
• Prohibited areas – emotional or physical - where the man will not allow the presence of the woman.
• Caveats on closeness – the reasons he gives for not being able to participate more fully in the relationship (for instance, work or unfinished business with a previous marriage or partner).
• Unreliability, or being difficult to pin down, is a message from the man that he is unwilling to give his all to the relationship.
• Flimsy excuses are the deficiencies in the woman which he gives as his rationale for leaving or limiting the relationship.

The emotional toll of successive involvements in short-term and/or superficial relationships can be very high for a man with at least some integrity and some insight into the hurt his actions cause the women he has been with. There are four things a person needs to change their habitual patterns:

• Dissatisfaction with the outcome of his past behavior.
• Awareness of what the problem really is – he will have been telling himself that it is that he has not yet met the “right” woman.
• Choice – he will have to have some options for alternative approaches or courses of action, if he is to do something different.
• A decision to do things differently is necessary if any change is to occur.