What Every Single Woman Needs To Know About Men's Commitment Aversion

Are mate-seeking* women inadvertently driving men away?
(*mate = serious, long-term partner)

It's a gruesome and heartbreaking scene. You can see it in their body language any night of the week. She's leaning towards him, he's trying not to pull back. She's positive, earnest, and willing something to come of this. He's thinking, "Oh man, get me outta here!"

One is reminded of anthropologist Edward T. Hall's study of diplomats. The Arab envoys (small personal space needs) advance on their retreating American counterparts (large personal space needs). The uncomfortable pair work their way down the passage: one shuffling forwards, the other backwards.

Male commitment phobia is a big topic. For now, I offer a guided tour of that intense and automatic retraction of himself that a man sometimes makes: commitment aversion.

Phobia vs aversion

Commitment phobia (fear) is not the same thing as commitment aversion (antipathy). Phobia is fear of likely harm—in this case, of an imagined marriage in the future. Aversion is strong dislike—in this case, of this woman before him right now.

At first glance it's curious. Why doesn't he become a helpful, protective, action-oriented man, even a randy male—Mars to her Venus? After all, this is a woman in need. Instead, it's all he can do not to turn his head away from her; he retreats.

It's an increasingly familiar and sad story. A woman—having gotten her education, dated, and built a career—is now ready to find a mate, to get married and have children. She is eager.

Time is no longer her friend, though; she hears the clock ticking. So she's more than eager, she's anxious. And the longer this goes on without any progress towards her goal, the more her longing grows.

EAGERNESS + ANXIETY + LONGING → DESPERATION

Yes, she is desperate. The question is, why does her (carefully composed) distress not awaken men's gallantry? Why are they cold and uncaring? To her horror she has become anti-catnip for men.

Is it that men don't want to grow up just yet? Is it that they prefer the charms of someone closer to twenty than to forty? Is it that all the good men are taken (or gay)?

yes, yes, and yes—but with lowercase 'y's, i.e., there's some small truth to each of these. But none of them gets at the powerful, immediate, and instinctive away-impulse we're looking at today.

Smells like singleton spirit

Here's the awful truth. Men smell her desperation, and without mentally processing it, go "No, thanks all the same!"

I don't use the word "smell" lightly here. It's not that the woman literally smells. Rather it's that the affect (basic emotion) the man experiences is not fear but dissmell. Dissmell is one of the six basic negative emotions identified by the great psychologist Silvan Tomkins. It is rooted in our physical reaction to a bad smell, say sour milk. The head pulls back and the corners of the mouth are pulled down.

(Dissmell is quite different from disgust, which is based on the sense of taste.)

We say that someone hangs around like a bad smell, and this is precisely what the man feels when faced by a woman's desperation. He pulls back.

Anyone on the receiving end of dissmell feels, that's right, shame. Neither party knows it, but he's recoiling from her as though she smells bad, and she's humiliated as though she knows that he thinks she has a bad smell.

That's at a deep unaware level. On the surface she is hopeful and determined, but the hope is poisoned by shame. It's a painful predicament.

When does man become Mars?

Consciously, women know very well that desperation can be a turn-off. A desperate salesperson is likely to lose the sale. But life has also shown that sometimes desperation serves to activate a man. If sex is on the cards, for example, then a woman's desperation may drive him to great heights. Or when a man's wife is desperate, say, about something at work, he is quick with helpful suggestions. I'm aware that this isn't necessarily what she wants, but my point still stands: sometimes female desperation captivates a man.

But our woman's mate-seeking desperation actively disengages him. Understandably, she is hurt. She sees him as perfidious, unpredictable, and self-serving. She may become bitter and cynical about men in general and about marriage.

The tragedy is that all along, she had almost no hope of success. Men are like lions in this respect. Inclined to see Us and Them, their job as nature intended it is to increase the pride and to defend it against the world.

Our unfortunate woman looking for a mate thinks she's playing a two-handed game when she's really playing solitaire. There is no winning for her. The man is not desirous, protective, and gallant towards her because she isn't his woman.

O cruel paradox. She wants to be his woman and for him to be her man, but he won't be her man because she's not his woman!

Wait a sec

I hear you object, so many guys seem to be willing to divorce their wives and leave their children. Where's the pride there? My answer: either the guy has attached himself to another woman (she is now the woman) or he was never a man to begin with (he's a boy looking for a Mommy). Stories for another day.

The male commitment-aversion hypothesis

Before we clamber back on board the bus and leave this harsh place, let me sum up my point (my experience is that women find it a mind-bending one).

A man is a man with his woman. It's a powerful force. Strong mate-seeking vibes (notice, I didn't say sex-seeking) from another woman are likely to reverse that force—instead of magnetic attraction, repulsion. It is a curious fact that sometimes a man will switch the force off with woman A and switch it on again with woman B. But a desperate woman is unlikely to become B unless he has already decided to leave A, and probably not even then.

OK, desperation is out. How on earth does a woman become the woman in a man's life, you ask? Great question.