Nothing can be more frustrating than being in a relationship for a long time and never talk about marriage. if your man won’t commit, you might start to think if you are wasting your time. Although it is true that a lasting relationship may not need to include marriage, but if you are looking forward to having kids, or a stronger bond can be created through marriage, then a trip to the altar is something you need to do. Men often tells you that there is nothing you can do to change the mind of a commitment phobic. That isn’t always true. There is always something you can do to make a man suddenly decide he wants to marry you.

If your man don’t commit, the very last thing you need to do is to nag at him. A man won’t simply decide he wants to marry the woman he love because she keep going on and on about it. In fact, your constant nagging make him more convince in his decision of not marrying you. One of the best thing any woman can do to make a man commit is to stop bringing the subject up. Men expect to be bombarded by questions on where his relationship is headed. If you don’t bring the subject up, he will be thinking more and more about it.

Another great approach to take if your man doesn’t commit is to make yourself less accessible. One of the issues of long term relationship where there seem to be no commitment is how woman seem to be available. When a woman is always available and willing to adapt to meet her boyfriend’s schedule she’s silently telling him that his needs are more important than hers.

A great test of a man’s true feelings is to make yourself scarce for a few days or weeks. Plan a trip with your girlfriend and when you are out of town, try not to contact your man too often. You want to create a senario where he will start missing you when you are away. It’s that longing to see you that will push him to want to be together with you permanently.

So start testing your man and get him committed.

Do you have any insights to share? Feel free to leave  a comment or two. Happy relationship!

Moving a relationship from the “just dating” phase to the next level can feel like a round of “Whack-a-mole.”

That’s a popular arcade game in which the player stands in front of a machine with a flat top the size of a small kitchen table. Periodically, automated moles pop their heads out of one of half a dozen holes in the surface. The object of the game is to bop them on the head with an oversized mallet before they disappear again. The faster you swing, the more they pop up and down. Sounds easy enough; but moles are quick little rodents. Just when you think you’ve got one in your sights—you don’t.

If this reminds you of your romantic relationship—a constant game of “catch-me-if-you-can”—then you may be involved with someone who suffers from commitment phobia. Maybe you are that person. Whether you’re hiding in the holes or holding the hammer wishing your partner would just stand still for a second, this article is for you. Here are four things you need to know:

Commitment phobia is often misdiagnosed. “Phobia” is a word that carries a negative connotation, implying irrational, even neurotic, fear. But you should be careful before accusing your partner, or yourself, of being “afraid” to commit. Cautious deliberation when making a decision with life-long implications is not necessarily irrational or fearful. Sometimes it is the most prudent thing to do. Does double-checking your parachute before jumping out of a plane make you acrophobic? Certainly not.

Commitment phobia flares up when “what next?” comes up too soon. If you or your partner feel unsettled at the idea of settling down, it may signal nothing more than the need to let more time go by before considering an exclusive relationship. Rushing to nail down your future together may paradoxically poison it—if the time is not yet right. Remember, just because one of you feels ready now doesn’t mean the other should as well. Each of us must arrive at life-changing decisions in our own time.

Commitment phobia can signal unresolved pain in a person’s past. When a relationship takes longer to develop than we’d like, we often respond in frustration, swinging the hammer harder than ever. That is unlikely to help, especially when the reason for reluctance is a still-tender emotional wound one of you is shielding from further injury. If a previous commitment went bad, it may take an extra helping of compassion and understanding—easy on the accusations—before you are ready to try again.

Commitment phobia is sometimes exactly what it seems—a dodge. When all other options have been considered and discarded, what’s left may be an unpleasant truth—that your partner is dragging his or her feet to keep options open in case someone better comes along. Usually, there are other obvious warning signs as well. If so, call it like it is and move on.

What’s the best antidote to confusion over commitment phobia? Patience . . . discernment . . . and communication — lots of it.

View the original article here

It is a tragic flaw of humans to take things for granted. Things that they possessed, things that they have done. We are so used to such things that the words “take things for granted” never come to mind. And when we lose them, we feel so bad and finally understood the meaning behind those words. That’s too late. And it’s unfortunate that it applies to relationships. And it takes a bang against the wall or something to make us wake up.

Committed relationships are often taken for granted, just because we are too comfortable around each other, we forget how important they are to us. Commitment does not necessary mean marriage, it could just mean the other is spending huge amounts of time and efforts on you, or with you. We must learn not to have a “lazy “view on things, and open our eyes wide to appreciate what we have.

Does your partner appear in front of you whenever you are feeling sad? They may not appear magically but will appear just after a phone call. They are the ones who listen to you when the whole world is ignoring you. It is a sin to forget these.

He or she may have already taken you to meet their parents, friends and relatives. This is a special privilege to show that you are already part of their world and they way to introduce you to you the other “residents” of their world. You should feel glad and proud by this.

It will take time to know whether your relationship is a committed one. Time allows people to each other deeper. Therefore, take time to observe your date, listen attentively to him or her, so that you may find signs that the other person is committed to you.

A good relationship is one that requires long periods of commitment. It may be lifelong in cases of an eventual marriage. If you have the above mentioned factors in your love life, treasure the person and always appreciate him or her, even in times of misery and self-doubt. 
You will not want to take things for granted. Hold them close to you forever and never let them go.

It is common to hear that “The man would sacrifice love for sex, and the woman would sacrifice sex for love”. Therefore some woman are willing to give sex to a man they love, and then ask for a commitment after the act is done. Most of the time, the man gets freaked out.

Unmarried couples getting engaged in sex is very common today. It is not too far off to call it the “norm”. Some of the women treat sex casually whereas others actually want their men to commit to them. It is just not said. The problem here is that sex is given too early. Most good men would actually be willing to wait for marriage before engaging with sex with his love. Therefore, to the woman, she is assuming things too much. Perhaps it is true that the woman is really willing to give sex for love, one that is officially committed as in marriage. The problem is that she dare not ask the man if he is willing to commit before engaging in sex.

A man will regard a sexual act as one that is mutually agreeable, and therefore he does not hold certain liability to it. If he was serious about you, he does not need the sex to commit. And the other hand, if he was not, you will be wasting your time on him. Sec should only be reserved for one that you love, and loves you. By offering sex in the early game, the man assumes you are mature enough to handle it, therefore he feels he doe not have to give anything else in return.

So abstain from sex until the man has promised to commit to you. Make him feel that he is getting any sex until marriage. At the same time, be such great person that your man will fear losing. Remember that if he really wants you, he will be willing to wait for sex after marriage.

Every relationship has a romantic start, and a very nice process of seeing each other and falling in love. When things are going well, it will reach a point where it will either rise sharply or fall dramatically. This is the point where people decide whether this person they are dating becomes their husband or wife. This “evaluation point” is the hardest part of any relationship.

It is at this point where both will decide whether or not to further commit to each other at a higher level, or eventually break off. Will tears of joy be shed, or tears of sorrow? To most people, marriage is a very, very big decision to make. And this the after-effects of this dilemma spells the either the birth of a newly-weds or the end of a sweet love.

Men are known to avoid commitment like a disease. In order to get him to commit, the past surrounding his fear must be understood, and eventually removed. A child that grows up in a less-than-perfect family is bound to be afraid of threading the same path of his parents. He who has witnessed unhappy marriage in is own family will certainly doubt the need of commitment.

The man’s perception of commitment may hold him back from executing the dreaded word. Commitment to the man may mean loss of freedom, and loss of personal time, both of which he may be enjoying very much. These may be strong enough reasons he is using to stop himself from committing.

A man who is well to do may have financial reasons for not committing. It is a fact that women ask for huge sums of money, or even part of business in a divorce agreement. This problem can be easily solved by having a prenuptial agreement. As for other reasons listed above, a great deal of talking and understanding may be necessary to guide his perceptions of commitment.

It has nothing to do with you. Its not the character, career or social circle or anything else. And if you tried a few times, you know that you are already tried hard enough. The man may just be scared of commitment. There may be a few reasons.

First, he just does not believe in committing time to anything. He is happy in a relationship but does not believe in promising anything, especially the rest of his time. He may not have the confidence to believe that he can provide a living for the two of you. He may undervalue the concept of spending one’s whole life with another at this point of time. To him, commitment kills his freedom. He will be bound to you by a commitment called Marriage.

Second, he may be hurt from past relationship. This humiliation and fear stops him from giving 100% to your relationship and therefore he dares not make a commitment, for fear of repeat of history. You can make him think that commitment is all right as long as both are willing and committed to that aim of a happy, lasting relationship.

There are strategies to overcome this fear of commitment. Know that the change must come from himself. Understand his perception of the situation and what commitment means to him. Convince him that it is not what he thinks it is. To do that, you must first make him feel he needs someone to spend his rest of his life with. Try to be less “sticky” for a while and make him see you as a wonderful person he can gladly commit to. Know what got him interested in you in the first place and try to imitate those same qualities. This will make you look independent and confident. Then, he will realise you are someone he should not let go. This will invoke the need for commitment in him.

Women fear committing to anyone else other than themselves and their best friends. From the experiences of other women, they may have believed that commitment means compromising herself for the sake for her man and they believe there is no eligible men anymore.

From the men’s point of view, eligible women are a plenty but their sky high criteria leaves them being single.

Nowadays, women have strong careers and broad social circles. These have become part of our lives. Getting in a marriage may threaten this lifestyle as they become committed towards the husband and the family. Here, marriage is seen as a change in role; from career woman with a great circle of acquaintances to boring housewife. Hence, the fear the fear of commitment. A lot of women would rather have self-fulfilling lives with a great career. Many career women will not compromise their work for a relationship.

With social status changing, things are getting more complicated. Men who were the breadwinners, and rightly so, may compromise to take care of the family instead of going out there and earning money. The man is no longer the breadwinner; he may be staying home to take care of things.

The new sophisticated woman often see a committed relationship as a sacrifice; giving up a fun and exciting career for security. Therefore, they now be the ones “shopping” for men. Instead of having a man to come into their life, they may have a man for a supplement in their life. For such women, probably how able the man is does not matter a lot. The statements do not suggest any form of compromise or sacrifice; men is just a add-on, extra or whatever it may be called.

The trend is that more and more women are now more dominant in a lot of fields: financial, emotional, corporate, relational. Maybe so much so that the men are quickly losing their ground. Before it was the men who call the shots. Today, its not for certain who calls the shots. Perhaps now, the woman feels that she does not have to commit, and therefore compromise anymore.

We live in an age where people are less than honest about their commitments. Wilson Pickett sang, “Don’t let the green grass fool you, Don’t let it change your mind” expresses the extremely deceptive nature of your perspective when you look across the fence from your current vantage point. The old saying, “The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence” is still just as true today as when it was first said. To be certain, there is no shortage of tempting proposals, some real and others imagined that threaten our resolve to remain committed. Marriage, parenting, work, school and faith are constantly victimized by failed commitments.  

The grass can be green on both sides of the fence, if you maintain the commitment you began when you chose to occupy this side of the fence. Reality is often punctuated by moments of pleasure and joy, yet it is the presence of challenge, struggle and pain that give your pleasures their power. We ought to understand that reality is not fantasy. Fantasy is always the stuff of legend, it takes place in the best of all possible worlds; a place where the variables of life are ever tipping in your favor.

Like the character Walter Mitty, from the James Thurber’s acclaimed short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, we concoct fantasies that speak our latent desire to be bold and daring. We are prone to disdain the life we have for some fictional life we might have had given different decisions, circumstance and actions. 

Also, the integrity of commitments is especially important for our exclusive, intimate relationship; meaning marriage. The structural integrity of your chairs, your home, automobile and more must be maintained in order to safely occupy and operate. Without integrity everything that relies upon it may crumble. At the heart of integrity is the idea that there is no distinction between what you say and what you do. When we behave as though our word and our deed are separate from one another we are being irrational at best and lying at worst. The reality is that there is no difference between word and deed.

 I often counsel young men as well as young women and I told them: “don’t act like a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if you don’t intend to be the boyfriend or girlfriend.”

If you began the relationship, your actions say without question whether you intend to be committed or not. While you may not have verbally stated your intent, be certain that your actions does communicate your intent. For example, if I said, “I never want to see you again!” Yet the next day I call and invite you to lunch everyday of the week, send you gifts and the like; you would conclude that my words meant nothing because my actions are the real indicator of my true intent. However, if I said to you, “I Love You!” and proceeded to slap you; which do you think would carry the greater weight, my words or my actions? Your actions are a statement of intent that carries even greater weight than your words.

Fortunately or unfortunately, you get to decide that you are the commitments you make, whether you keep them or break them. Remember that reality is not fantasy, that your actions do not take place in the vacuum of your imagination; where no one is ever injured, loved ones are never shamed or embarrassed, or a life-time of valuable work is never destroyed by a moment of indiscretion. In truth, reality takes place in the actual and fragile world of human beings, where the tipping points are many and the crashes are often fatal to committed relationships.

Long-distance relationships have common threats that only steadfast commitment can overcome. These long-distance relationship threats include:

- Third parties. This threat arrives when both partners let their loneliness take over. 

- Malicious intrigues. This threat works when transparency and trust are no longer there. 

- Jealousy. This threat enters the picture when insecurities come to play.

Most of these long-distance relationship threats can potentially destroy any long-distance relationship when left unchecked. That is why the role of commitment must be fully understood, improved and realized.

Role of Commitment in Long-Distance Relationships 

The role of commitment in long distance relationships is very critical. It serves as an invisible chain that bond couples engaged in long-distance relationships to be together. It somehow makes the everyone involved in long-distance relationships to keep communicating all the time. Commitment keeps the heart loving and the love going. Commitments must be fully understood before engaging in a long-distance relationship.

Realizing Commitment 

Commitments in a long-distance relationship and love are synonymous. Bear in mind that commitment without love is as good as nothing. Likewise Love without commitment is worth nothing. Commitment and love are like heart and soul. Both are inseparable.

Apart from this, commitment means turning promises in to reality. Remember, commitment is about word of honor. Always mean what is being said and say what you meant.

Improving Commitment 

Commitment must be improved every now and then. Here are some ways for enhanced commitments in long-distance relationships:

1. Work on both planning and setting goals together. This work out can help couples enhance their shared beliefs, expectations and ideas. It can also adds more familiarity and intimacy to their long distance relationship.

2. Maintain mutual respect for each other. Respect each other’s views, beliefs, ideas and opinion. Respect each other’s decisions. Avoid making decisions before asking consent or permission.

3. Look for a time to recall as frequent as possible the reasons that have made the relationship come to terms. Bread in mind. Consider only reasons that need more than emotion. Understand that commitment usually means more than feelings.

4. Be happy all the time. Avoid skeptics as much as possible. Run away from people who are always unhappy about long distance relationships.

5. Practice transparency. Be transparent as much as possible. Let go of the rumors that being too clear could be disastrous. Bear in mind that transparency builds trust. Transparency takes rooms of suspicion away. Commitment and transparency are likewise indivisible.

6. Acquire the art of surprise. Find time sending surprises such as cards, gifts, letters, and flowers. Use modern technology to keep constant communications. Do not just settle for one mode of communication for instance the telephone. Try the latest forms such as Instant messaging tools, Emails, VoIP phones, snail mails, and cellphones. Most mobile phones at present have exceptional features that allows you to connect anyone in any part of the world. Tri-band cellphone networks can be used globally. Commitment can be easily improve when communication lines are open at all times.

7. Share memorable moments like:

- Share latest video clips and audio recordings 

- Swap latest photos or Personal calendars 

- Watch similar TV shows or movies while talking online or on the phone. 

- Answer Puzzles together while online 

- Exchange digital photographs and videos of daily activities and send them through e-mail 

- Share photos with each other also using cellphones with cameras 

- Swap favorite songs and ring tones through mobile phone.

In order to have a long lasting relationship, always find ways to work on your commitment level. Be it you are in a short distance relationship or long distance relationship.

Imagine this, you have been dating your guy for awhile, maybe over a year. You have been constantly dropping hints on having a more committed relationship but he doesn’t seem to get what you are trying to say. As far as he is concern, it seem that he doesn’t mind maintaining his status quo and he even want to maintain it indefinitely. You may love him and even want to stay with him, but you do not want to stay in a dead-end relationship that is not going anywhere. What should you do? 

First, this tie in perfectly with a post I wrote (Revealed – The Secret Scientists Say Will Guarantee a Happy Marriage) this week, which is about what is the biggest factor that determine a successful relationship. In order for any relationship to succeed, both parties have to be on the same page as far as their life and ambitions are concern. If one of your goals is to get married and start a family but he doesn’t share that, then the relationship may not succeed, or if it continues, it will be in very unhappy terms. 

The key is to determine both parties future goals and that can only be done through communications. Some experts advice that you should not state your desire to get married in fear of pressuring him or scaring him away. However, I think that this is ridiculous. If marriage and starting a family is important to you, then you should make it clear that you are certain this is what you want. The key is to communicate in the most rational and sensitive way possible. You never want to give ultimatums. All that will do is cause more unhappiness and argument and eventually prevent further discussion. You should instead ask your partner if marriage and starting a family is one of his goals. If he say yes, you are on your way. If he say no, you can take the opportunity to express your point of view. 

Here is a good phrase for you to try - ”Thanks for sharing the way you feel about that, I really appreciate you sharing your feelings like that.” That way, you will create a comfortable environment that will encourage him to open up and share more about his feelings as well. After which, you can add “I would like to share with you how I’m feeling about it right now.” Use the word share, its a very powerful word used by salespeople to induce a more receptive state.  You could continue with your feelings and keep it honest yet not aggressive or assertive. ”I’ve always wanted to have a family, but I never felt ready until having met you and being in this relationship. It’s important for me to get married and have a family one day and I feel like I’m moving closer to being ready.”

See how he react. This is about your life and what you want, what you need. Don’t be afraid to state what you want and ask for it. You will never know the answer or getting close to what you want if you do not ask for it. Once again, you have to be very clear on your needs, only you can live your life.

If your guy is unreceptive and this is something that he clearly doesn’t want, you have several choices. You can hang in there for a while and see how things develop, or leave. Once again, don’t threaten to leave if he doesn’t do what you want, that creates an ultimatum and not only will you not get the results you want, but you’ll be seen as highly manipulative and controlling. Best thing to do is give yourself some time, give yourself a deadline of how long you are willing to stay, and then gently revisit the issue at that time. If the guy is still unreceptive, you can leave knowing that you’re not getting what you want out of the relationship and that you gave yourself the time you needed just to be sure.

It’s your life and you need to do what makes you happy. If a deal breaker for you is someone who smokes or takes drugs, you won’t date them or you will clearly communicate your viewpoint if someone you are dating starts to engage in those activities. Same thing here. Don’t be embarrassed about conveying your needs. Be very clear and direct. If being with a guy who doesn’t want to commit is a deal breaker, then break the deal. It will hurt at first, but you’ll be much happier in the end knowing how much time you saved getting out of a dead end relationship.