I'm not typically one to point to the media for reasons that people have misinformed perceptions of how relationships are supposed to function. However, I can think of numerous examples in which men and women are stereotypically pitted against one another in a battle over commitment. Committed relationships are often (though not always) painted as the holy grail of relationships that women will chase relentlessly and twist themselves into insane people to find. Commitment for men, on the other hand, is portrayed as relational kryptonite and something that men avoid and twist themselves into emotionally aloof and romantically dysfunctional people to avoid.
My annoyance about these exaggerated portrayals of men and women in romantic relationships is not so much their inaccuracy. Rather, my malfunction with them is that they take something that is so very, very simple and make seem more difficult than juggling chainsaws.
Here's the simple reality of all of this ridiculous commitment nonsense: Commitment is one person's plan to keep hanging out with another person. When two people are committed to each other, that means that they each plan to keep hanging out with each other.
When we think about it this way, suddenly commitment isn't something that we have to have an intense, anxiety-ridden conversation about. Rather, it's something that becomes very plain to see. If at the end of a date, your potential-partner says "I'd like to see you again. I'll give you a call in a few days to make plans". If after that, he calls in a few days to make plans and then you do those plans - well congratulations, you have commitment!
Okay, yes, I'm oversimplifying this a bit - but just a bit. Commitment really is that simple. What is less simple is knowing what that commitment means. In other words, what we really want to know is exactly how long our potential-partner plans to continue planning to hang out with us. What we want to know even more than that, though, is whether our potential-partner's plan to keep hanging out with us also includes plans to escalate our relationship, become more emotionally intimate, choose to not date other people. Those are big questions. And we are reasonable to want the answers to them.
Before you decide to embark on a stressful, dramatic state-of-the-relationship conversation (as us academic folks like to call these talks), consider this: often without words, our partners will communicate both their level of commitment and their plans to increase the intimacy in the relationship. If they call, come by, regularly work to be a part of your every day experience, that's commitment. And from that kind of commitment comes talking and sharing and emotional closeness and intimacy.
On the flip side of obvious commitment, however, is an obvious lack of commitment. If your potential-partner is not behaving with you in a way that gives you confidence that they have the intention to see you in the future, or to move toward greater intimacy, that's also informative. In that case, you may want to have a conversation about it. My recommendation, however, is not to have a huge, dramatic talk full of demands and ultimatums. Rather, simply say "I would like to keep seeing you and hanging out with you. Do you have plans to continue seeing and hanging out with me?". If he says yes, and you have no reason not to trust him, take him at his word and carry on. If he says no or that he isn't sure, now you have a choice to make (which yesterday's blog post will help with).
The point I'm trying to make is that figuring out whether someone is committed to us is a simple task that we frequently make needlessly complicated. When we take something simple and over-complicate it, we turn the relationship into bad, hard work and that can thwart our efforts to grow closeness with another person. Keep making plans. Keep keeping those plans. Let closeness grow from the time and talk that you share with another person. Enjoy.
Happy Valentine's Day. :)
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