Hello and welcome to Transmute Yourself, where
I will help you to get inspired to find your inner peace. Today I want to talk about a topic that is
very personal to me, and it is about how I went from having commitment phobia to becoming
engaged. So as you might know already, I am engaged
since the month of June and will get married in the month of December of this year. But it has not been at all a straightforward,
flat road, but rather a bumpy one, with lots of breakups, lots of mental drama. I would remember for example how many people
would plague me with questions of "what happened! I didn't see anything wrong in that relationship"
or even my own girlfriends after we broke up, I would get those types of questions,
such as "I don't know what happened, I am so confused". Please bear in mind that this a two-part video,
in this first part, I decided to give you access to the contents of some of those boxes
that are hidden deep within the attic of my mind and that I am sure is sure with lots
of people suffering with commitment phobia all around the world. In the second part, which will be released
until next week, I will also share with you some of the insights that allowed me to overcome
it. Are you ready? Let's start! Before even we get into my experiences, I
will give you a brief summary about what is meant by commitment phobia. It is basically a fear of getting too close
to people or of making any type of long-lasting relationship, which can be expressed as a
reluctance to commit to things like careers, friendships, business relationships, and especially,
at least in my case, romantic relationships. Commitment phobia tends to be related to the
attachment style of adults, which tends to come as the processing of different experiences
with our parents or caretakers. For example, the experience the rejection
of a parent or having an over-protective parent, or even the sudden loss of a parent, or also
other experiences such as having a very bad breakup, can have a very big effect in the
attachment style that we have. This leads to two main attachment styles that
are related with commitment phobia: the dismissive avoidant attachment style and the fearful
avoidant, of which I will give you a couple of examples in a second. The dismissive avoidants tend to live by the
beliefs of: "I don't need relationships, relationships are for weak people, partners tend to be over-possessive,
or I feel weird when I show too much emotion so I prefer to be by myself, or in general,
relationships are not for me". Dismissive avoidants, on the other hand, they
want to be in a relationship, but they are just so afraid of being hurt, that they would
try to avoid it and become very fearful of any type of relationship. So in my case I would actually live by both
types of attachment, especially the dismissive avoidants, so in general I would think that
I don't need a relationship and I would be very cold after some time during the relationship,
thinking that I just don't need to give love, and even that I don't need to receive love. Let me just tell you some of the patterns
that would describe how I would come into a relationship. Basically, let's say that I was in a place
with potential partners, such as a party or a social event. I would very shily approach someone if and
only if if it would be very easy for me. So let's say that someone would introduce
me to someone else, then that would be an opportunity to maybe give it a shot. But I would be very rarely be proactive in
that aspect simply because of being very afraid of being rejected. So if I saw such an opportunity, the first
thing would be a very very strict screening process. That screening process meant, especially but
not only, screening physically, seeing if there is any physical reason that would prevent
me from getting into a relationship and then avoiding the relationship itself, so finding
a rational justification for not getting into it. Of course I didn't know at that time that
it was that. I would just be very like having a magnifying
glass and finding anything that would give me a reason not take that effort and not to
pursue anyone, in order to avoid it. Then if for any reason that went into another
step, for example, that I took that decision of "all right, let's see what happens", and
that there was some type of attraction between the two of us, we would keep going like that,
but I would still withdraw very often, I would still be very shy, in general, I would give
very confusing signals so that sometimes the girls would not know what was going on with
me. After some time into that stage, it could
be a couple of weeks or even months, in which I would be there but not there, withdrawing...
coming close and withdrawing, I would get like a wakeup call. That wakeup call would be that the girl would
tell me directly that I am being too friendly and confusing and that they would prefer to
put me back into the friendzone, or that they would withdraw themselves and then I would
feel that need or that kick, as if "oh man, really this is the moment, I've got to take
a decision, I've got to do something about it". So in any case, that wakeup call would make
forget about the fears, about being cold, or about showing too much, because that was
mostly what was going on, I didn't want to show too much, because I didn't want to look
weak or needy. And then, after that wakeup call, I would
forget all of that and start pursuing seriously. After some time in which I would go all in,
the girl would also go all in with me and we would just start a relationship. I would even meet the parents, sometimes we
moved in together and once I felt that I had the upper hand in the relationship, then I
would feel that things would start going down. So what I described right now was my uphill
moment or stage, in which I even forgot that I had any type of attachment problem, and
then once I felt that I had the upper hand in the relationship, it would start going
down, and my feelings would start waning, I would just become a little cold, and start
getting confused about what I was really doing in the relationship. Now what would trigger that? And that's very interesting I think. Usually it would be something that I would
hear from my partner at that point that would prove once and for all that I was stable in
that relationship and that she was really into me. Things like I would do anything for you or
I would die without you. That just clicked it, that was it, it would
make me think "maybe she is taking it too far, because maybe I would not die for her,
that's weak, that' s showing too much, that's needy." And I would start judging them as needy. Then these thoughts would come as for example,
maybe I took it too far as well, how about all these other opportunities that I am missing
out on by being with just one person. Or other thoughts such as: "being with the
same person for the rest of my life, oh my God, I don't know if I will be able to do
that". All of that would start coming into my head. I would start rationalizing and finding reasons
not to be there. But I would not express that. Some other things that would happen at those
points, apart from me thinking whether that was the relationship where I wanted to be,
or thinking that also that there could be other things out there, or other people...
where I would probably be happier, I would also get obsessed with the thing that I said
at the beginning, potential or actual, what I thought were flaws. So sometimes they were physical flaws, and
it is a big confession for me now and I know that it can get a lot of criticism, but I
am just being very honest, I would focus on whatever would be considered by me as a physical
flaw and sometimes a mental flaw. Examples: picking up on small things like
phrases, or mannerisms, and again something about the body or the face that would make
me justify that this is not the person for me, I see other people out there that don't
have that, I am definitely going to be happier with someone else. So I would talk about this to anyone, neither
to friends, nor to my parents, and especially not to my partner. And that would generate some sort of anxiety
within me, some feeling of drowning within me, because I could not express all those
bad things that I was going through and thinking. I would just myself a lot by having these
thoughts because that is not really how I was raised. What happened after some time in this stage
is that I would have sometimes some crying outbursts where I would just not be able to
control it anymore, and I would say "I'm not sure what's going on with me, I don't know
where this is going between us, and maybe this is not the right thing, I feel like I'm
drowning, suffocating, and that I need space"... although I know consciously that this is not
the case, that the relationship itself did not look that bad, actually there was nothing
that obvious happening, it was simply all of that in my head. So after months of being in that stage, having
a lot of anxiety and a lot of withdrawal stages, I would just breakup from one day to another,
saying "I can't take this anymore, I need space, I'm going crazy, I need to get this
anxiety out of the way, I just cannot be here anymore". After my last breakup, I decided to take a
look into myself, I said "this cannot be happening", I saw and got proof again that there was a
pattern, it had happened already 5-6 times, so it could not be that it is really just
that the other person is to blame, that they are not the right person, or that they have
this or that flaw... it cannot be that, because it's happening over and over again, so instead
of looking away from me, outside, I'm going to start lookin inside, and see what's going
on". So there you have it! That was part 1 of my vide on commitment phobia
and I really hope that you enjoyed it. I'm also very curious, have you ever suffered
any of the symptoms mentioned in this video? If you have, I want to invite you to write
it down in the comments. Be ready to tune in for the second part of
this video, where I will talk about the insights that I gained throughout my experience with
commitment phobia, and the actions that I took in order to overcome it. Don't miss it! and don't forget to like this
video and subscribe to my channel, and finally to share it in your social media, you never
know who you might be helping by sharing. Thank you and see you soon.
