Soul Kadee

Commitment. It’s a much-misunderstood word. Especially between couples in a relationship.

As Paige Parker, author of Dating Without Drama, notes in her latest Dating Dish column, whether your definition of commitment includes legal paperwork (aka marriage), or simply mean a verbal agreement between you and your boyfriend to date one another exclusively, or whether you only expect him to commit to actually calling when he says he’ll call, every woman’s expectations are different, as far as commitment is concerned.

Just as long as the man in your life is honoring your expectations, why fret about whether your relationship is heading towards some self-imposed deadline of marriage?

When I realised that I was the commitment-phobic one in my relationships, I did some serious thinking and realised that it wasn’t commitment I was nervous about. I’m just cautious about getting into a marriage too soon - or a bad marriage, to be more precise, since I see so many around me.

I’ve long ceased to believe that a legal agreement makes a marriage. Or even that love alone is enough to make a relationship work. In fact, I feel that giving too much importance to your legal status and the everyday routine of marriage can often kill a potentially wonderful relationship.

The reason I had so many reservations about making a commitment was because I haven’t yet met a man worth commiting to. I still have expectations of commitment in a relationship. But, for me, a commitment means much more than paperwork or passion.

It means:

• Honesty and Trust
• Loyalty and Exclusivity
• Respect for each other’s values and beliefs
• Being responsible and keeping one’s word
• Being the best of friends
• Making the relationship a priority
• Being there for each other when the chips are down
• Supporting each other’s dreams and goals
• Being open to growing and learning together

If a man is not capable of meeting the basic requirements above, he’s simply not worth commiting to on any level.

As I was telling a friend recently, ANY good relationship requires commitment to thrive. Whether it’s an agreement between friends, family members, business partners or lovers, a commitment is just a promise to the other person that they’re cared for and that their feelings matter.

The article here on Stress in Relationships notes that

While most people make (and break) commitments all the time, few of us know what it means to live committedly. In order to have happy, successful relationships with other people, you must understand the nature of human commitment.

True commitment is a context we create to keep our promises REGARDLESS OF OUR CIRCUMSTANCES. It is an unconditional pledge to ourselves and to others to live our lives consistent with our word. It is a decision - in advance - to always rise above our fleeting thoughts, feelings, moods, and situations and to deal with any problem or conflict in a way that enhances, rather than diminishes, the quality of our relationships.

As long as we make intelligent, sincere promises to other people, and as long as we endeavor to honor these promises - NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS - our relationships usually flourish. When we make foolish, naive, or insincere promises, however, or when we violate either the letter or the spirit of our commitments, our relationships tend to die because we destroy the very ground that gives them life.

So what does commitment mean to you?

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