What Does Commitment Mean?

I was recently thinking about this, and I decided to pen down my thoughts and views on the topic to help my audience. But, I then realized that I must instead share the original piece I referred to when I was exploring to gain clarity on the topic. So, here’s an excerpt on commitment from John Gottman’s book, Eight Dates. He has explained the concept better than I ever could. Enjoy!

In a relationship, commitment is a choice we make every single day, over and over again. We choose it even when we are tired, overworked, and stressed out. We choose it no matter what attractive person crosses our path. We also choose it every time our partner makes a bid for attention, and we put down our book, or look away from the television, or up from our smartphone, or stop whatever it is occupied with to acknowledge their importance in our life. This acknowledgment may call for just a smile or a conversation, but whatever it calls for, we authentically try to deliver. When we make our relationship a priority by showing it’s a priority, we build trust and demonstrate our loyalty far beyond any words we say in our wedding vows.

So what does genuine commitment mean? The most obvious meaning is that
we resist possibilities with other people. We’re faithful sexually and faithful emotionally to our partner. We maintain boundaries in our relationships outside the marriage. The late Dr. Shirley Glass, one of the world’s leading experts on infidelity, wrote a book entitled Not “Just Friends.” Her expertise boils down to windows and walls. When you’re married or otherwise committed to a partner, ideally, you create a wall around the two of you with an open window between you.

This wall around the two of you separates you from others in terms of
your deepest emotional and physical connections. Dr. Glass found in her research that when people, especially those unhappy in their relationships, start confiding in another person about their relationship, they open up a window to this outside person. And when they keep this new platonic or emotional relationship secret from their partner, they start building a wall between themselves and their primary partner. There can’t
be walls between you if you have long-term and lasting trust, commitment, and loyalty. And windows to a close friend (whether of the opposite sex or the same sex) outside your relationship can quickly become doorways, and that’s when affairs happen. It’s not impossible to have friends like this, but you have to be aware of your boundaries, and it’s a huge red flag if one of you starts keeping secrets from your partner about any new friendship. Then you are building a wall between you that disrupts your commitment to one another.

There is no question that committing to a person can be a terrifying
prospect. It means putting all our eggs in one basket. No one will wait in the wings if this relationship doesn’t work out. There isn’t a
safety net. If things aren’t going well, we go to no one else to complain.
Instead, we must go directly to our partner to work things out. Also, if
we’re committed; we have given this person everything we offer.
There’s nothing left over for another lover. That’s a risky decision, but it’s
essential. Without this level of commitment, love will not last.

Choosing commitment means accepting your partner exactly as he or she
is, despite their flaws. It means never threatening to leave, even if, at times, you might want to. It also means caring about your partner’s pain as much — if not more than — your own. As John aptly says, “If my wife is in
pain, my world stops so I can listen to her.” In a committed relationship,
you will stop the world from trying to understand and ease each other’s pain. This is partly why we get married, and this is partly why we love. We need each other and need to be needed by each other. True commitment is
choosing each other over and over again because, ultimately, what makes
relationships work is the decision to make them work.

There is one step that cascades toward all betrayals. It often happens
when things aren’t going well in the relationship. That step negatively compares our partner with other real or imagined alternative
relationships. We call these “Negative Comps.” Rather than
nurturing gratitude for what we have with our partner, we nurture
resentment for what’s missing. When something is bothering us about our
partner, rather than talking this over to get our needs met within the relationship, we fantasize about another relationship and how we might receive what is missing from our current relationship with this fantasy partner. These Negative Comps become a dangerous way of dealing with our negative feelings within the relationship.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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