Men’s Fear of Commitment

Marriage is an institution. If you want to spend the rest of your life in an institution, go right ahead. Father to his son on his wedding day.

The stereotype in our culture is that marriage is an institution that benefits women but costs men, so women try to entrap men into marriage, and men try to stay single for as long as possible, holding onto the freedom they believe women want to take from them.

These cultural stereotypes persist despite evidence that marriage serves men much more than women in almost every way. Married men are better off than single men; they are healthier, wealthier, and happier. Single women, however, are better off than married women. Married men are happier than married women, and unmarried women are happier than unmarried men. Divorced men and married women have the highest rates of suicide.

Men’s obsession with not being controlled by women is the strongest evidence of their fear of being controlled. A woman writer for the men’s magazine Muscle and Fitness offered men 10 signs that they might be “whipped.” Some of these signs are things that should be a legitimate concern for anyone in a relationship, like indications that your partner may be having an affair. However, some of what the author suggests that men watch out for seems to advocate an almost paranoid hypervigilance about any sign of “losing control” in a relationship. For example, she cautions men against allowing women to straighten their hair, make suggestions about clothing, or ask them to hold their purses while shopping.