Commitment Issues: What They Are, Why They Happen, and What You Can Do

By Katie Caygill Pocock (MSc. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, BSc. Psychology with Neuroscience)

Do you find yourself feeling excited at the first stages of dating, enjoying the whirlwind and looking forward to the future, only to step back once things get real? Does the idea of committing to someone make you feel anxious, afraid, or overwhelmed?

Commitment issues can make it difficult to move forward in relationships, even when you really do want something long-term. Having a fear of commitment isn’t exactly the same as attachment avoidance, but your attachment dynamics do play a role in how you feel about commitment – in a more complex way than commitment = avoidance.

In this article, we’ll explain the psychology behind commitment issues, why fear of commitment isn’t just the same thing as attachment avoidance, and how to overcome the fear of committing.

What Commitment Issues Actually Are (and What They Aren’t)

A fear of commitment is sometimes called “gamophobia”, but neither of these are diagnoses themselves. The DSM-5-TR does leave space for a Specific Phobia diagnosis to be about any object or situation, but this must involve “marked fear or anxiety” that “causes clinically significant distress or impairment”¹. In most cases, a fear of commitment is unlikely to meet criteria for a Phobia diagnosis.

When most people talk about commitment issues, they’re referring to a specific pattern of behavior of avoiding serious relationships, whether or not they realize they’re doing it.

Someone who’s afraid of commitment might end relationships when they get too serious, only date casually, or avoid dating entirely. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to date casually, or not at all, but an inability to communicate not wanting to commit can leave other people feeling hurt and confused. If you do want to date seriously, but fear of commitment is holding you back, you might be feeling frustrated and guilty.

We often associate commitment issues with an avoidant attachment style, since this already comes with a tendency to avoid closeness – but what does the research say?

Commitment Issues and Attachment Style

Attachment avoidance inherently involves difficulty with commitment, as keeping attachment relationships at arm’s length serves as a protective mechanism – “if I keep people at a distance, then it won’t hurt as much when they inevitably leave me.”

According to a Canadian study, students with higher attachment avoidance scores carried mental “scripts” for relationship failure². They already anticipated that a lack of commitment and negative relationship events, like dishonesty or inequality, would cause a relationship to fail – before the relationship even started. Why commit to something when you believe it’s doomed to fail?

Although this is typical of attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety can come with its own difficulty with commitment. Reflecting on mixed results from previous studies, researchers proposed that anxiously attached people both want and value commitment, but they can be so worried about the relationship that it makes them less likely to commit to it, resulting in confusion and uncertainty around truly committing³.

The 3 Things We Need to Commit, According to Psychology

Rusbult’s Investment Model of commitment theorizes that three factors contribute to commitment in relationships⁴:

• Satisfaction – how happy you are in the relationship, compared to what you expect or how happy you might be single or in another relationship.
• Dependence – how much you rely on a relationship to fulfill your needs.
• Investment – the significance of the resources put into the relationship that would be lost if it ended.

In a study of almost 12,000 people, Rusbult’s Investment Model predicted most of the variation in commitment, which, in turn, predicted the likelihood of a breakup⁵.

This means that difficulty with commitment isn’t always down to the individual – it tends to be about the relationship itself. If you’re not happy, not relying on the relationship to meet your needs, or not investing much, you might be more likely to feel non-committal.

This is often the case, according to attachment specialist at The Attachment Project and licensed clinical social worker Paula Sacks, LICSW:

“A lot of people are very happy being single, they don’t want someone telling them what to do, they don’t want to get into a commitment, they don’t want to be parents. And if they can’t articulate it, partners start analyzing, ‘oh, it’s not me, they have commitment issues’. But I think, in reality, when you start making excuses for somebody’s behavior, you’re not always correct.”

Wanting to Stay vs Feeling Stuck

Although all 3 contribute to commitment, it’s possible to have some that are high and others that are low. For example, you might be unhappy in a relationship, but you’ve invested heavily in it – you might have bought property together, jointly adopted animals, or had children, for example. You might also be very happy in a relationship, but avoid relying on the other person for emotional support so as not to build dependence.

This means we might commit for very different reasons. There can be a sense of feeling stuck when satisfaction is low but investment is high, and it might feel like we’re committed to our obligations within the relationship without really wanting to stay in it. If you or your partner are questioning your commitment, it can be helpful to think about which of these 3 might be missing.

Take the following example, for illustration purposes:

5 Signs of Commitment Issues

Based on everything we’ve looked at so far, you might notice the following signs of commitment issues in a relationship:

1. You have an insecure attachment style, particularly if it’s high in avoidance.
2. You have negative beliefs about relationships and/or assume they will fail before you even start.
3. You are not as happy in the relationship as you think you could be elsewhere.
4. You avoid depending on the relationship for emotional or material gains.
5. You avoid investing resources in the relationship, in case you break up.

This is not a diagnostic list – rather, it’s a compilation of signs of low commitment that can be used as a self-reflective tool.

It can be difficult to know where your partner lands on this list, particularly if they do avoid deep conversations with you. Online forum users say that low-commitment partners tend to avoid talking about the future, keep you away from important people in their lives, and are often unavailable when you need emotional support – all signs aligned with avoiding investing and discouraging dependence.

In many cases, non-committal partners are actually quite direct about not wanting a relationship, but we might be hopeful that they’ll get attached and change their mind one day. This isn’t fair on either one of you, and it’s important to communicate how you really feel.

Is It Fear of Commitment or the Wrong Relationship?

The Investment Model suggests that the relationship is central to the deciding factors of commitment, rather than the individual. We do see many examples in pop culture of non-committal people changing their minds when they meet the “right person” – for instance, George Clooney repeatedly said he would never marry again, before meeting Amal Alamuddin and proposing in under a year. The fictional Summer Finn, of (500) Days of Summer, is also upfront about not wanting a serious relationship, yet – spoilers – she is engaged by the end of the film.

This idea that a relationship is simply not right for your partner can be very painful when it feels right for you. If your partner isn’t able to give you the commitment you need, sometimes it’s less painful in the long-run to end the relationship.

Paula Sacks, LICSW, often sees this play out:

“If there’s a person who has ‘commitment issues’, say a guy has been dating a woman for 6 years and he just can’t seem to ask her to get married, he says ‘I love you so much, I just can’t do it,’ – it’s because he hasn’t met the right person. Sometimes it’s not really an issue with commitment, it’s just an issue with the situation, or maybe they just don’t want those things, and it’s not fair to call that commitment issues.”

How to Work on Commitment Difficulties

If you’re experiencing commitment issues and you want to be more committed, working on attachment security could theoretically help, although more research would be needed to test this. Our self-guided resources can support you in building a more secure romantic attachment style. If you don’t know your attachment style yet, take our free attachment quiz – you can also retest every couple of months to find out whether your attachment style is changing.

If your partner is the one who’s finding it difficult to commit, you can’t make them want to change. It can be helpful to talk about your needs, but understand that they may simply be unable to meet them. At this stage, you might consider whether you can stay in the relationship and meet your needs at the same time – if not, it might be time to move on.

Can Therapy Help With Fear of Commitment?

There’s no standardized model of therapy for a fear of commitment, but a therapist can certainly help with any emotional difficulties that commitment might bring up for you. A therapist might help you to understand where your feelings around commitment come from, and to learn to cope with them when relationships feel too intense.

Couples’ therapy might also help when a relationship is faltering. A couples’ therapist can help you to understand both of your needs and how your relationship is or isn’t serving them, and perhaps help both partners to see things from another perspective.

Conclusion

There are lots of reasons why somebody might have difficulty committing to a relationship. Often, it’s down to the relationship itself, although individual factors like attachment styles might come into play.

If you’re finding it difficult to commit, but you want to experience more committed relationships, building attachment security and/or working with a licensed therapist can help you to understand more about yourself and cope with difficult feelings. If your partner isn’t able to commit, remember that you can’t make them – if it’s impossible for this relationship to meet your needs, you might consider ending it.

FAQs

Is commitment phobia a real diagnosis?

Gamophobia, or fear of commitment, isn’t a diagnosis in itself. It’s possible to be diagnosed with Specific Phobia that relates to commitment, but this must cause clinically significant distress to be classified as a diagnosis, and most cases of commitment issues won’t reach this threshold.

Do men and women have different commitment issues?

In pop culture, we tend to think of men as being more likely to experience commitment issues – but really, anyone can be non-committal.

Is fear of commitment the same as avoidant attachment?

A fear of commitment isn’t necessarily just attachment avoidance, although attachment avoidance might involve avoiding the things that build commitment, such as dependence and investment.

Can someone with commitment issues change?

In theory, someone with commitment issues might increase the likelihood they’ll commit by building attachment security, although research is needed to prove this. Sometimes, people who find it difficult to commit can find it easy with “the right person”.

References

1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th ed., text rev. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 2022.
2. Birnie C, Joy McClure M, Lydon JE, Holmberg D. Attachment avoidance and commitment aversion: A script for relationship failure. Personal Relationships. 2009 Mar;16(1):79-97.
3. Joel S, MacDonald G, Shimotomai A. Conflicting pressures on romantic relationship commitment for anxiously attached individuals. Journal of personality. 2011 Feb;79(1):51-74.
4. Rusbult CE, Agnew C, Arriaga X. The investment model of commitment processes. Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications. 2011;26.
5. Le B, Agnew CR. Commitment and its theorized determinants: A meta-analysis of the Investment Model. Personal Relationships. 2003 Mar;10(1):37-57.