I think I have commitment issues

I’m a 21 year old girl, and so far I’ve been in a few relationships in the past couple of years, many of which I wasn’t very emotionally attached to. I’ve found that creating and emotional/romantic attachment to a person is really difficult for me, and that even over a long period of time, the other person in the relationship is still way more “into it” than I seem to be. When it has come to relationships where I HAVE managed to get attached to the person and fully invest my time and energy into the relationship, there seems to come a point a few months into the relationship where I just shut off, it’s hard to explain but it’s almost as though I get nervous because it’s getting deeper, and I’m losing control so then I start to make excuses until I find one good enough to end the relationship. This all sounds as horrible as it is, because in having done that before, it has hurt people and to be quite honest it has hurt my own feelings. I’m not quite sure how to move forward. I do want to meet someone and be serious and happy but each time I hit a certain point, it’s like my emotions go into shutdown. I have done quite a bit of research on commitment issues and I recognise that my parents divorce in my early childhood and the abandonment of my father could be a possible factor to how I find it hard to stay committed. But I’m just not sure how to move forward anymore.

Hello starrynight: Thank you for bringing your concern here to PC. I see this is your first post. So... welcome to Psych Central. The Attachment Disorders forum, here on PC, may be one to take a look at. Here's a link just in case you haven't already found it:

https://psychcentralforums.com/attachment-disorders/

And then here are links to 5 articles, from Psych Central's archives, that (hopefully) may be of some help including a link to the romantic attachment quiz here on PC. The first link is to an article by our host Dr. John Grohol, Psy.D.:

What is Commitment Phobia & Relationship Anxiety?

Are You Emotionally Unavailable?

What Is Attachment and Why Is It Important?

How to Change Your Attachment Style

https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/rom...tachment-quiz/

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

Hi, @starrynight3004, welcome! Big fan of Glasgow here. Anyhow, as someone who is sort of nearing the opposite end of life from you (in my 50s now) and having been in a good number of 'committed' relationships, including a 17-year marriage and a roughly 10-year partnership, I can tell you that in my experience and opinion, commitment issues in marriages/partnerships/committed relationships are way, way, way more common than people generally openly and freely admit. People struggle with this stuff all day long, all the time. In year 51 of her marriage to my father and before she passed from lung cancer, my mother turned to me one night and said: 'Oh, honey. I just don't think people were meant to be married this long.' I laughed, because it was funny. But the fact was, underneath the humor was some kind of grain of truth for her. It is, in fact, hard to be with the same person for 51 years. Even someone as great as my dad.

But for some people, being in a committed relationship for 6 months is hard. For all the reasons we know. You have to be accountable to someone else. Your time is not necessarily your own anymore. You are sort of officially partly responsible for the well-being of another. A lot of compromise is required. Money can be a big issue. And of course, you're not supposed to date, carry on, and sleep with other people. That stuff is all part of the commitment. It is a lot to do and it is hard. Throw in one or more children and it really gets interesting.

I am no child or adult psychologist/psychiatrist, so I can't really comment intelligently on your remarks about your upbringing and father, etc. That said, I can share that, for me, having been cheated upon in both my longest relationships, that I still carry with me somewhere some kind of a sense of the potential for betrayal humans are capable of. And it affects me. I don't want to get negative, but I don't really trust most people. I've been burned. Fool me twice--well, you know the saying. But I am working on this, trying to turn it around. But it's hard.

I tell you all this because I suspect you are in a similar sort of situation, in a way. For whatever set of childhood/adolescent reasons that you may or may not figure out, you have a commitment issue. And it may not even be necessarily that you are afraid of commitment (though that's, of course, possible). It could be that in you, your total and complete psychological self has at this stage concluded that you simply don't want to commit to anyone. That, deep down, taking your fear center into account, you don't even like the idea. And you're not going to do it--at least not for a sustained period. Just a thought. Could be totally off-base.

In any event, there are all kinds of commitment issues in people from your age to mine and older. Like my mom. You are by no means alone or weird. There is not something 'wrong' with you. A good therapist could, of course, help you sort through a lot of this, if you want to do that. It will be some work. But you can definitely do it. Commitment is really hard. Very few people do it well, in my opinion. Nobody told me this when I was your age. I wish they had. I could have saved myself a lot of self-blame and misery. You have a lot of years ahead of you to work through all this, if that's what you decide to do. But don't beat yourself up. Your commitment situation may be different than someone else's, but almost everyone deals with commitment issues. Whether they realize it or not.