George Weinberg - Why Men Wont Commit: Getting What You Both Want Without Playing Games

The key to understanding
WHY MEN WONT COMMIT
begins with learning their basic needs:

The need to be special.
The need to travel light.
The need for loyalty.
The need to be close emotionally .

Men keep these needs a secret, even from themselves. But once you understand the puzzle pieces of mens minds, its easy to make yourself invaluable and get the commitment you want.

A groundbreaking exploration of the male psyche, Why Men Wont Commit will enable you to be the one woman who becomes indispensable to your man .

Dr. Weinberg effectively explores many of mens greatest emotional weaknesses. His discussion of the masculine pretense will be especially valuable for every woman reading this book.

Steven Carter, author of Men Who Cant Love

OTHER BOOKS BY GEORGE WEINBERG, PH.D .

The Taboo Scarf and Other Tales of Therapy

The Heart of Psychotherapy:

A Journey into the Mind and Office of the Therapist at Work

Society and the Healthy Homosexual

Self Creation

Will Power!

Using Shakespeares Insight to Transform Your Life (with Dianne Rowe)

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YOUR MANS FIRST BASIC NEEDTHE CRAVING TO BE SPECIAL

YOUR MANS SECOND BASIC NEEDTO TRAVEL LIGHT

YOUR MANS THIRD BASIC NEEDLOYALTY

YOUR MANS FOURTH BASIC NEEDTO BE CLOSE EMOTIONALLY

ARE YOU GIVING TOO MUCH?

What is life when wanting love?

Night without a morning

ROBERT BURNS

A number of people made this book possible. Chief among them were Dianne Rowe, whose astute sense of the English language and knowledge of people kept the manuscript on track at every stage; Barbara Lowenstein, my friend and agent, who conceived of the book and made suggestions all along the way; Kim Meisner, my editor, who amended the final version. Her suggestions added kindness and an overall sensitivity to the whole project. Others whose counsel during the writing was extremely helpful were Lawrence Abrams, Lauren Howard, and Patrice Robertie.

Wherever you turn, from lunch tables to sitcoms, you hear women talking about men as being irrational, infantile, and afraid of commitment. Men play into this image by acting as if marriage is a trap, by looking scared if a woman mentions the future, and by being notoriously afraid to say I love you.

You may have experienced the problem yourself. You may be attractive, bright, capable, articulate, and ready to love. More than once, you may have thought that the man in your life was great for you, only to realize that he wasnt going ahead another step. You tried different approaches, but after a while you felt shaken, and it was hard to do anything right. You got angry at yourself and very angry at him. Maybe your man ended the relationship, maybe you did. But either way, now its over, and youre still not sure exactly why.

Obviously you dont want this to happen in your next relationship, which may have already started. Yet you cant help worrying. Even if there is real love on both sides, you know from experience (not just from yours but from those of your women friends) how easily things can go wrong. Men have a way of pulling back suddenly.

It may seem that youve been facing mens classic problemcommitmentphobiathat men just dont want relationships the way women do. But this is oversimple and not true. Men actually want commitment, love, and permanence every bit as much as women do .

So why do many men act as if they dont?

What terrifies men in love relationships isnt commitment but what they perceive as the loss of their masculinity the strange way that they view masculinity. The secret of why men wont commit (even when they want to) involves very particular fears that nearly all men have. Without realizing it, you may risk triggering your mans fear by simple acts that can make him afraid to commit to you for life.

From childhood, men have been brought up to be strong and silentnever to show weakness. Theyve been taught that to say theyre afraid, or in pain, or even that theyre happy or in love is unmanly. Most men have spent so many years putting their feelings aside that by adulthood they lose their ability to describe many of their feelings, or even to know what they are. But they still have feelings, of coursewhich become unidentified forces within them that confuse them. What we cant identify always feels very exaggerated, and most men react in exaggerated ways when theyre bewildered and threatened.

The feelings that confuse men the most and often lead them to act in dramatic ways are feelings of threat to their masculinity. Its these feelings that stop them from commitment. Your man has the tremendous (and largely unnecessary) burden of having to maintain a masculine image, which he feels can be very easily put in jeopardyespecially by a woman whom he loves.

* * *

The worst mistake that women make in relationships is to overestimate men. Men pretend to be in control, to know what theyre doing. But men arent nearly as secure as they would have you believe. Men dont have the insight into their emotions that women do. Real insight takes courage. When we first look inside of ourselves, we dont always like what we see. So most men dont bother to look.

Your man is probably worried about aspects of his own self-presentation that might seem utterly trivial to you. He feels threats that you cant possibly even imagine, but he cant talk about them. If he could, he would probably see that he wasnt under threat at all. The two of you could discuss things and put them in perspective. You could help him see that commitment to you would pose no threat to his masculine image.

But because the threat remains at the level of a vague feelingwhat I call a gut reactionit can ruin everything. Your man is too much ruled by his gut reactions, and when his gut reactions are bad, he wants to run away. He may overreact to small things that bother him in your relationship because he has no idea what to say or do to make things better. Unfortunately, this means that the man in your life is likely to make big decisions about youdecisions often based on fear, like the fear of being trapped or the fear of showing softnesswithout knowing why.

Most men are on a quest for the ready-made perfect woman because they basically feel that problems in a relationship cant be worked out. When the slightest thing goes wrong, it seems easier to bolt than to talk.

The man you began dating last week, or whom youve been going with for six months, has gut reactions to you aplenty. Most of them are positive, or he wouldnt be with you. But he may also have certain negative reactions that stop him from committing himself to you. He has been afraid to look inside himself for such a long time that he couldnt tell you what they are, even under truth serum. But you can know what they are.

This book is about why men wont commit. But more specifically, its about what you can do to help your man overcome his irrational fears so that he can commit himself to you fully. As a woman, you probably have an insight into feelings that most men dont. Feelings have been an integral part of your life. You have lived with yours, talked to your friends about them, and accepted them as a part of you. You have used your awareness of your feelings to improve past relationships. Now you can use your knowledge to improve this relationship, easily and at no cost to yourself. You can help your man move toward the commitment that he secretly craves.