{"id":5244,"date":"2016-03-01T03:08:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T21:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5244"},"modified":"2016-03-01T03:08:57","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T21:38:57","slug":"millennial-commitment-phobia-lifestyle-defense-mechanism-heartbreak-dating-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5244","title":{"rendered":"Love Hurts: Is Millennial Commitment Phobia a Lifestyle Choice or Defense Mechanism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p><\/div>

\nf you\u2019re a \u201990s kid or older, chances are you\u2019ve experienced at least one incident of life-altering romantic rejection or <\/span>heartbreak<\/span><\/a>, which ended up affecting the way you give and receive love. In some cases, dreams of growing old with a highschool sweetheart are thwarted by forced arranged marriages. In others, soul-crushing betrayal shakes the very foundation of one\u2019s ability to love wholly again. But future partners will obviously still dismiss this as \u201ctrust issues\u201d.<\/span>\n\nCommitment phobia, I\u2019ve found, isn\u2019t really a phobia at all. <\/span>From what I’ve gathered from friends and past encounters, it’s merely a defense mechanism you develop after <\/span>monogamy<\/span><\/a> didn’t work out for you in the past. It isn\u2019t that commitment-phobes are averse to the idea of love or just unwilling to settle down because they enjoy being fuckbois and cool gals too much. Most commitment-phobes are just people that have convinced themselves that they can never love the way they once did before. Think of it as the exhaustion that sets in by the time you give your third KT exam in a subject that you\u2019re just beginning to think isn\u2019t one in which you will ever excel. It\u2019s not that you don\u2019t want to pass the subject that all your friends seem to understand so easily. But you\u2019re just exhausted by trying, failing, trying again, and failing again. That\u2019s what lies at the heart of my commitment phobia.<\/span>\n\nThis fear of commitment doesn\u2019t necessarily bring about seismic changes in our love life \u2014 by which I mean it doesn\u2019t stop us from frantically searching for someone who makes us feel less lonely \u2014 but it\u2019s generally triggered at unsuspecting moments. When you come across an old, dusty love letter and are reminded of the naive, gullible teenager you once were. Or when you clean out your old shelf and find a box with movie tickets and <\/span>Cafe Coffee Day<\/span><\/a> receipts saved up from 2011. You wonder how your 19-year-old self could be unabashed and arrogant enough to assume that those remnants of a relationship could one day be looked back on with fondness? You judge this 2011 version of you and curse the wide-eyed optimism they had towards love and romance.<\/span>\n\nBecause you\u2019re a far cry from that kid now. And just like the rest of your millennial peers, loving freely is a luxury you can\u2019t afford anymore. Falling in <\/span>love<\/span><\/a> after being hurt is like trying out the bottle cap challenge without having any martial arts training; Some of your friends will make it look easy and post their successes all over social media. But if you try to do the same, you will likely spin around aimlessly before landing flat on your ass.<\/span>\n\n

You wonder how your 19-year-old self could be unabashed and arrogant enough to assume that those remnants of a relationship could one day be looked back on with fondness?<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nFor my fellow \u201990s kids who are still single while staring down the tail end of our 20s, what went wrong with us? I mean, we did most things right, right? Growing up, we enjoyed both playing outside as well as vegging out in front of MSN Messenger. We spent most of our teens being fooled into believing our digital friends were akin to real life friends who actually <\/span>cared<\/span><\/i> about us and at the same time lived in the delusion that Bollywood\u2019s toxic version of pyaar was something to aspire to. And perhaps most significantly, we experienced hookup-culture on steroids while witnessing the advent of <\/span>dating apps<\/span><\/a>, where you needn\u2019t care about finding Mister or Miss Right so long as you could swipe right. Alright, I get it. In many ways, this commitment phobia epidemic was inevitable. Perhaps us millennials were set up for loneliness from the very beginning.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThis is further proven by more and more of my friends \u2014 well, at least the single ones \u2014 who are aggressively adopting the belief that the key to getting over <\/span>commitment phobia<\/span><\/a> and staying content in their romantic life is to simply lower their expectations. Which is a fancy way of saying, \u201cJust settle with the balding banker who doesn\u2019t call you by a different name on the second date because you aren\u2019t getting any younger, Namrata!\u201d Or, \u201cWhy is your love life so important anyway? There\u2019s bigger issues to worry about like money and jobs and the environment.\u201d CJ Hauser sums it up perfectly when writing about suppressing her own need for affection in <\/span>The Crane Wife<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>\u201cThere are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\n\nSo yeah, I guess you could say that falling in love when you\u2019re a commitment-phobe is a lot different from when it happens during your teens and early 20s. The <\/span>romance<\/span><\/a> is measured and maturity becomes an excuse for holding back feels. Because you\u2019re apprehensive of coming across as needy, and let\u2019s face it, being a romantic just isn\u2019t cool in 2019. But then you also live in the silent hope that someday, you might meet\u00a0 someone that makes you want to start saving those CCD receipts again.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millennials’ fear of commitment is like the exhaustion that sets in by the time you give your third KT exam in a subject that you\u2019re just beginning to think isn\u2019t one in which you will ever excel. We’re tired of trying, failing, trying again, and failing again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":5245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[8732,8875,1047,8876,1835,8877,224,1912,1906,228,1466,8878],"class_list":["post-5244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-cafe-coffee-day","tag-commitment-phobia","tag-dating-apps","tag-defense-mechanism","tag-heartbreak","tag-kt-exam","tag-love","tag-millennial","tag-monogamy","tag-relationship","tag-romance","tag-romantic-rejection"],"yoast_head":"\nLove Hurts: Is Millennial Commitment Phobia a Lifestyle Choice or Defense Mechanism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Millennials' fear of commitment is like the exhaustion that sets in by the time you give your third KT exam in a subject that you\u2019re just beginning to think isn\u2019t one in which you will ever excel. 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