Why Being Single is often better, or why commitmentphobes like it

Why Being Single is often better, or why commitmentphobes like it

(Warning **** this is not the original because I deleted the original posting by mistake so this is unfortunate and not so glamorous replica).

I am not certain why everyone is obsessed with being relationships, and I can understand why so many men are considered to be commitmentphobic, because I have been often as well – commitmentphobic.

It's not that I do not imagine that life would be more wonderful in a relationship....but I also imagine that life would be more wonderful if­ I had a bit more money; it would be more wonderful if I didn't have a few excess pounds. I wouldn't mind if I had a new car. I wish law school would have taken me back even though I never really wanted to be a lawyer, more like, I just really liked the show Law and Order.

Where was I?

Oh yes, fantasizing about being in a wonderful relationship.

I can certainly say that I have been in love. I know someone that currently makes fun of me and says I am incapable of loving and that all my experiences have been shallow, but I think this assessment is completely unfair, especially when it's coming from a man that refuses to date any woman older than 33 because he does not want to deal with the possibility of “wrinkles” on that woman too soon, or later on. (Yes, clearly he has the right ideas about relationships. Oh, and he is currently 35). As I was saying, I have certainly been in love and at the time I truly believed that I was in love, even if I was deluded, with the person I was dating with at the time.

{This is unfortunately where I lost the blog and now I will attempt to re-write it]

I mention the idea of having a new car, or losing a few pounds as an example how one generally fantasizes about having things one does not currently have. 

I think that the idea of perfectionism comes from not being able to find perfection, because it does not exist, and this in turn relates to commitmentphobia: that one can never find their ideal mate because it is not possible to find an ideal mate.

What we realize in our lives is often a feeling of aloneness and it is this feeling that propels us to wish to be in a relationship. Before I completely forget where my tangents took me in my first blog posting, I will say that when I first started dating online a few years ago, initially men would discuss with me quite in depth a fantasy relationship with me. They would never actually ask me out on a date nor really try to get to know me. In fact, on the whole, most of these men I found to either be unhappy in relationships or perpetually single. I feel that their online reach to me was simply to use me as a pawn in their fantasies. These conversations and relationships were mostly entirely online, according to their initiative, and more often than not, based on this idea that at some point in the future, we would get together for a torrid romance. Whatever the reason I had for entertaining these men, I believe that this type of behaviour was indicative of a larger epidemic.

From my position, which I believe sincerely, I was only humouring these men. For one the attention was flattering, and I was genuinely curious how far they wished to take these delusions of “our relationship”. I of course knew better. Perhaps on some level, I enjoyed them bringing me into their fantasy because it was better than TV. At the same time, I still find it disturbing about the state of people's attitudes towards relationships, in general. 

The fact that these men never actually approached me for a real date or to make their fantasies become reality, and that they often contacted me years later, is when I started to think that there is a relationship between commitmentphobia and perfectionism. I would often allude to the fact that I thought these men were just putting me into a role for their fantasy but they did not wish to give any of the ideas credence. Some of these men still contact me today, every few months, years later, scheming and admitting that no one has yet “filled their heart's desire” and that I was the closest they could imagine fitting this “role”. It is clear to me that no one person could actually full fill their needs. And unfortunately I can understand this.

How can we solve this problem of aloneness that comes from being single?

There is a modern belief in the Existential Dilemma, or an “existential angst”, that we are perpetually alone no matter what we do. I think it can be applied to what individuals experience when they feel the need to extend themselves and seek out a relationship – they're trying to fill in a void.

After many years of getting into relationships for the wrong reasons, I decided that in order to be happy in a relationship, I first truly had to be happy with myself.

As I mentioned in my first posting (which is now in the land of internet deleted black space), when I was younger, I decided to marry my 2^nd boyfriend. I was terribly unhappy at the time and he seemed to fill in this void. We could not be disconnected and we had what could be considered a “co-dependent” relationship. (Just for the record, I now do not think being in a co-dependent relationship is all that bad. In fact, I think it's essential). But,  at the time, I felt like he was too dependent, I could not live my independent life, and that the problems were insurmountable. Of course I realize now that being so young when we were together, I did not have the tools to solve our problems. 

I forgot to add a piece of this puzzle that flowed naturally, once again in the first post that I will now repeat) that I believe I am a good problem solver, and this has helped me in life and has helped me in my career. It helps me take care of a household and manage many projects. Being a good problem solver has helped me survive day-to-day. But unfortunately while problem solving is great for what I have mentioned in terms of managing life and a career, it is not good for relationships: people are imperfect; they make mistakes; and they have problems. For me, when I first got into relationships I did not have the maturity to understand how to deal or face these “problems” and since I could not fix them, I merely left them.

Coming back to my marriage with my 2^nd boyfriend, I soon realized that we did not share the same values on a number of fronts and so I left the relationship. This has happened to me on a series of occasions where I just started to feel like I was “putting in my all” and not getting very much in return. I had always enjoyed being alone, and for the most part applauded my independence and self sufficiency. Other people just seemed like an impediment to moving the way I wanted to move through life, and to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, and this boyfriend , now husband, was no different.

(I admitted in my previous post that that I had a habit of probably rushing in too quickly into things and not realizing their consequences. I probably worded it more gracefully previously, but for now, I'll just try to reiterate it as much as possible).

In any regard, although having to re-live and re-learn from my mistakes, I had started to realize that I wasn't quite sure what I was receiving from relationships. It felt on the whole that I was mostly the only person providing any benefit to the “other”. I was tired of being taken for granted and this was usually the reason for leaving relationships, and it still sort of continues today. As you may have read in previous postings I allude to the fact that I now believe this has to do with living in a society that generally does not provide an environment for respecting one another and their individuality or needs, which just seeps into how individuals treat, or mistreat, their lovers or loved ones.

Now in my attempt to bring all these ideas together.

I originally mentioned I believed that the desire to be in a relationship comes from a feeling of aloneness, and only from being alone, do we feel that there is a desire to have someone else with us. And I tried to compare these ideas to the fantasies I may have about all things I lack in life, and now I wish to continuously seek out something to fill that void, e.g., a new car, some weight loss. I tried to say that the never ending goal of trying to seek out “something” or a “relationship” can relate to the idea of perfectionism, i.e., always trying to have something more perfect than what you have now. I described marrying my 2^nd boyfriend in order to fill this void and realizing that it did not fill the void. And then I referred to men who had used me as a pawn in their fantasies who also did not have relationships, or if they were in relationships, they were still unsatisfied and looking to me as a “principle” in their fantasy, when in reality,  I predict that no one woman was satisfactory and this is why I considered them to be commitmentphobic. I also stated that in my relationships, I often found that I was putting in most of the effort and not getting much in return.

Unfortunately if women are complaining that men are commitmentphobic, I hate to mention all the reasons for why I am. The truth is that I did feel like I was taken for granted in most if not all of my relationships; that these men generally had a lack of respect for themselves, and ultimately for me; and at a certain point I decided that I must be happy being alone first before I could be happy with someone else. What ended up happening was that I started to enjoy being alone so much, that it felt hard to truly be happy with anyone! I no longer feel the desire to compromise my needs or enjoyments. I do not wish to clean up after a messy boyfriend. I do not wish to be yelled at for buying the wrong groceries. I don't want to play pool on Fridays, nor watching the Hockey game. And I definitely do not want to go to a 100 acre home in the middle of nowhere and listen to a nouveaux riche family talk – shit.

I am tied between the desire for an other versus my own happiness in being alone. And after having been in a few seemingly bad relationships, I am definitely relationship shy.

I would like to say that I struggle with my own fears of relationships but the truth is, I can empathize where men are coming from more than I can with women who are in a high demand for a relationship. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was raised to feel that I deserve to be respected, like a man, although I am definitely a heterosexual woman looking for a romantic interest, with a man. I am not a man but my friends say I have “man brain” (whatever that means). I suppose I wanted to shed a bit of light into things I have thought a lot about; the relationship between perfectionism and commitmentphobia, and how ultimately we need to live in reality, not fantasies; and how all of these factors have actually made me so much happier not being in a relationship, for much of the time: why being single is sometimes better than being in a relationship. You do not have to have your life impinged upon and used and abused. I am usually actually really happy doing things by myself.......or perhaps these are still my excuses for why I am a commitmentphobe?

I wish that I had not deleted that original post because I think I brought my ideas so much better there, but for now, this will have to do. I will make further edits in 2012 if some of this doesn't make sense, or there are glaring grammatical errors.