Commitment phobic men are masters at deceptively keeping you hooked on them.
Just about every woman has dated at least one commitment phobic man in her life. They are the ones who keep you waiting for the day they’ll finally agree to live with you or marry you or commit exclusively to you. But they never do. When you meet them they are hard to resist because they compliment you and appeal to your vanity. And they lie. They lie about being in love with you, they lie about wanting to date you long term, they lie about not wanting just a sexual fling. And they don’t care.
Here are examples of Commitment Phobic Male Behavior:
- You date for one week and he tells you he loves you, the next week you never hear from him again
- You date for a month and he tells you he only wants to date you, then you find out a friend saw him flirting at a party with someone else…the night he was too tired to go out with you
- You live with him for 8 years and he still won’t marry you
- He still doesn’t call you his girlfriend and sees his mom more than he sees you, after one year of dating
Commitment phobic men are men who cannot commit to you with the emotional intimacy of marriage or living together because they are emotionally attached to someone or something else that makes emotional intimacy with you impossible.
I know you’re thinking right now, “But how can I avoid these men when I don’t know if a guy is commitment phobic until after we’ve dated for weeks or months?
Actually, it’s easy to spot a commitment phobic man when you first meet him, just by talking to him for a short period of time, before you even date him. You just need to know what behavior traits to look for. You must focus on certain signs a guy gives you that are indications of commitment phobic problems. These “red flags” are glaringly apparent when you know what they are. But even if you know what they are, you must summon the inner strength to ignore a commitment phobic man’s charismatic charm, the appeal of his compliments, and your codependent desire to care for him.
Don’t even give a guy like this a chance by dating him even once, if it’s possible. Once you date him, he’ll trap you with his bag of deceptive tricks, and manipulate you into feeling a comfortable false sense of emotional intimacy by telling you “You’re the woman I’ve always dreamed of finding”.
It’s important to know the ploys and manipulative behavior of these men. They have the ability to make a woman feel a “codependent” need to take care of them by appealing to her need to feel special by taking care of others. They paint themselves as helpless victims of past love relationships, past failed jobs, and parents who abused them; and this makes a woman feel vulnerable to wanting to “fix” their lives and be the one to finally make them happy.
If you were the one in your family tending to the emotional needs of your parents or siblings, you will be easily lured into the world of a commitment phobic man. I highly suggest you read books on codependency by Melodie Beatty and learn what codependency is. It’s important to know if you are susceptible to the charm of commitment phobic men due to your codependent behavioral upbringing.
Commitment phobic men hide behind a persona of charm and adulation towards women that completely camouflages how they truly feel inside. Behind the charming façade of a commitment phobic man’s outer persona, is a man who wants to control, deceive and abuse women. They are unhappy with their lives and often blame a woman in their past for ruining it. Of course, this blame started with their mother, and has now transferred onto another woman in their life. But usually they don’t realize the first seed of hatred towards women, and desperate neediness of them, started with their mother.
These men don’t trust women, like women, respect women or admire women – they hate them. Many of these men are victims of verbal and sexual abuse as children. They have mothers who made their lives miserable, and now they will let out their anger and resentment on you.
When you first meet a commitment phobic man, he will have certain behavior traits that creep into his facade of adulation towards you. It’s important to see these traits as red flags that signal how potentially disastrous dating a man like this can be. These initial behavior traits may seem innocent enough, but they are telltale signs of bigger problems to come. I call them 1st Stage Behavior Traits because this is the behavior you can detect when first meeting or dating a commitment phobic.
1st Stage Behavior Traits of Commitment Phobic Men:
Behavior Trait #1: He will single out insecure women who need attention and compliments to feel good about their life. Then he will say something to a woman that is slightly inappropriate about how sexually alluring she looks. This helps them find the woman who will put up with their problems because her self worth is tied up in someone else’s opinion of her. This is the kind of woman they can control. The woman who doesn’t walk away in disgust is their next victim.
Behavior Trait #2 He will keep the truth about his past life, his finances, his past relationships, his relationship with his mother, and how he truly feels about commitment from you. The real him will be well hidden from your outer view. Most commitment phobic men have deep feelings of shame about themselves and their life and they will hide that shame by doing things to cover up the truth about their life.
One commitment phobic guy I dated didn’t have a decent car, so he used his mother’s car to impress me, but never told me he was using her car until a month of dating him. Another guy I dated took me out to an expensive restaurant on a first blind date and constantly tipped the waiters with large bills. Then I realized on the 2nd date he really couldn’t afford to be so extravagant when I saw his “down and out” apartment lifestyle. He had to give me a false impression about having lots of money, as if that one night would cloud my ability to see his dismal apartment.
There is nothing wrong with a guy wanting to impress you on a date by taking you to a nice restaurant or driving his parent’s car. But there is something wrong with a guy deliberately presenting himself as someone he isn’t just to keep you from knowing the real him. If he has to keep facts about his life from you, he isn’t honest, regardless of the reason he’s doing it. Unfortunately many women who first date commitment phobic men catch a deception, and then they make excuses for why he did it. They don’t realize that once you accept any deception, you will be dealing with bigger lies and secrets to come.
Behavior trait #3: You can never have a conversation with him about what his relationship goals are. He’ll act uncomfortable, and sometimes visibly annoyed. If you sense he isn’t open to a future that includes the kind of commitment you are looking for from a man, don’t consider dating him. Men who won’t commit in relationships will show you by their facial expression and behavior, when you bring up the subject of commitment that it’s one subject they don’t care to discuss. You must realize he has commitment issues when he freezes up when you talk about what you are looking for in a long term relationship. And if he tells you he never wants to get married, he’s doing you a big favor. Believe him and don’t think you can change him, regardless of how much he tells you “you’re the woman of his dreams”. Don’t even consider being the one who’ll be that loving wife he never found. Remember this: with commitment phobic men, it’s not only what they say that matters; it’s their attitude about certain subjects and what you sense they are keeping from you. It’s that unsettling feeling in your gut that this guy isn’t being totally honest with you.
If you do continue to date a guy like this, you’ve accepted behavior that already sets the tone for how he’ll continue to treat you, which will be all about what matters to him. Many women feel it isn’t their right to talk about their relationship needs when they first meet a guy. They feel they will scare the guy away because he’ll immediately think they want to marry him. Wrong! This is the time you must talk about what you want in life. If you don’t tell a guy you want to get married and have kids one day, you will give up your right to expect to get it down the road as far as he’s concerned. Commitment phobic men don’t waste their time with women who declare confidently that they want to get married and have kids. It’s the surest way to watch them disappear.
Behavior trait#4: Another surefire sign that a guy is a commitment phobic is when he will never do anything on time and will always change the time and day of your date or be late for your date. He will also never agree with your suggestion about the date. If you make a decision about the movie you want to see or the restaurant you want to go to, he will want to try a different one. If you accept this behavior, he will continue to act controlling with you, by never focusing on pleasing YOU in the relationship. Of course, you may not notice these first signs when he keeps telling you how beautiful you are and how he can’t wait to make love to you. You won’t be annoyed that he’s always late when he flatters you all the time, right? He is setting up control in the relationship; one that gives him the right to dictate to you what the terms of the relationship will be. And those terms will not include committing to you.
Behavior trait #5: He will make you feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet. He will shower you with his desire for you and give you compliments to an extreme. He will tell you that you are the only woman who understands him, makes him feel such intense attraction, and that he knows he will fall in love with you because you are the woman of his dreams (if he isn’t in love with you already). This is all to distract you from getting to know the real person behind those compliments, seeing all those deceptions and false pretenses.
Behavior trait #6: He will have a dependent personality which means he will need you to take care of him and he will only appreciate you when you do things for him. He will paint himself as a victim of life with bad luck and bad, cruel women. “Thank god he’s finally found you” will be his motto. That is, until he gets bored with you and moves on to someone else. And even if he doesn’t, he’ll never commit to you or fulfill you emotionally. He will lump you in the pile of all those other cruel women who never understand him or care about him. And all you will feel when he moves on is how much you were used and unappreciated.
It’s easy to spot a commitment phobic man when you notice these behavior traits. Usually the first behavior trait is hard to detect until you’ve dated him for awhile and realize the real truth about his life and his past. But the other behavior traits show up immediately: his constant barrage of compliments and making you feel like you are the woman of his dreams; his first comment to you being inappropriate about your physical appearance (or inappropriate touching); his victim mentality about past relationships; his reluctant, almost angry attitude about talking about commitment in a relationship, his constant control of how you both spend your time together by always being late and wanting to change plans and never letting you decide what to do on a date.
These behavior traits may seem harmless and insignificant, but they are red flag signs of serious trouble to come.
See the signs, and when you do, close the door on his opportunity to date you. You deserve a man who offers you so much more.