RELATIONSHIPS
Do Men Have a Monopoly on Commitment Issues?
Unfortunately, gender bias in dating isn’t exclusive to traditional gender roles or to your everyday, garden-variety sexism.
Sometimes, it’s about automatically assuming negative relationship stereotypes just because someone was born male or female.
And when it comes to commitment issues, it’s no secret that men often get the short end of the stick.
The Relationship Between Commitment and Emotions
According to a 2022 research paper entitled Testing the Popular Belief that Men Have Commitment Issues, men, on average, are more prone to fear of commitment than women.
Plenty of other studies have attempted to find an explanation for this. Some say it’s because men are scared of being controlled, while others claim there’s more at stake for men since their romantic partners are usually their primary source of social support.
Because men have a reputation for being a lot less in touch with their emotions than women are, it’s easy to assume that they would struggle more with devoting themselves to a long-term partner.
But just as stereotypes don’t always reflect the entire picture, saying that only men deal with commitment issues isn’t accurate. It fails to capture not just the complex nature of how both men and women approach relationships but also exactly why fear of commitment exists in the first place.
How the Past Defines the Future
People who are scared of commitment feel that way for a reason.
Common examples include trauma, fear of failure, and trust issues — none of which discriminates by gender.
There are a lot of women whose experiences have left them anxious or completely unable to commit to a long-term partner or a serious relationship. Either they’re scared of repeating past mistakes or they don’t have a good enough control over emotions to be ready for anything more than casual dating.
So if what causes commitment issues also affect women, it’s safe to assume that women are just as susceptible to these problems as men.
The Lion’s Share of the Blame
To accept the fact that most, if not all, aspects of dating and relationships are relevant to both men and women is to better understand how they work.
Claiming that only men have commitment issues makes it difficult to understand how commitment issues affect relationships. It becomes even harder to find out how to deal with them and build healthy dynamics as a result.
The mindset that only men struggle with commitment can lead to other problems, like men actually becoming predisposed to fear of commitment and women developing unrealistic dating expectations in relation to men.
Women, in turn, also suffer even if they don’t get the brunt of these misconceptions.
Since they are also very much capable of having commitment issues, they’ll need help on how to address them, help they can’t get if most people have chosen to deny their plight in the first place.
Do men have a monopoly on commitment issues? No, they don’t.
Neither men nor women have an exclusive claim to any single facet of love and dating. Both are equally capable of manifesting positive and negative characteristics.
And both are equally needed to build happy, healthy relationships.
