A Fear of Commitment or a Fear of Uncertainty?

The fear of commitment, especially in regards to having children, is extremely common in the West. “I’m just not ready” the casual 31-year-old millennial might say, as he sullenly stares out the window sipping on his pumpkin spiced latte.

Is it really necessary to have children to have a meaningful life? Certainly human existence is not solely characterized by reproducing and spreading your genes to as many of the far-reaching corners of the planet as possible.

Millennials delay having children in the pursuit of careers and squeezing the most fun out of their 20s and 30s. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with doing what’s fun, this sort of behavior may have consequences as well. When I lived in Berlin, I often saw children in their late 30s unwilling to grow up. Why do I call these people children?

Let’s begin with Juan — he likes to party. Juan takes cocaine for three days straight at a rave without getting any sleep and complaining about how difficult life is afterwards. Is this unethical behavior? If this behavior is being used as a means of delaying some form of pain, whether that is internalized or externalized, then the behavior may be maladaptive for him. Taking recreational drugs, along with more common addictions like prolonged social media usage, is often a coping mechanism for maladaptive behavior patterns based on lingering traumas.

A Quick Note on Mental Health in the Digital Age

Physician Gabor Maté uses a behavioral model based on life experience to characterize addiction as a manifestation of unresolved traumas. We often fail to understand the influence of important life events on our current decisions and behavior. Every decision we make is a culmination of cascading choices and lifelong events. Your decision to study in Spain may have an influence on your fondness of Latin culture, a tumultuous relationship with your mother throughout childhood might result in general distrust of women.

Who you are is literally a cause and effect summation of your life experiences. As Sean (played by Robin Williams) says to Will (played by Matt Damon) in Good Will Hunting: “It’s not your fault.” Sean’s insistence on repeating the statement is an attempt to drive the point home — we are not responsible for what is done to us, only for how we respond.

Therefore, the level of anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders that have befallen us are not a result a choice, but rather a consequence of our experiences, or more specifically, the mediums we engage in.

You see, it’s no coincidence that mental health has become a focal point in the age of digital communication. Online soliloquies cannot, and will not, ever replace the interaction that you have with a real human being. Some psychologists believe that the increase in cases of autism among children may be linked to an increase in “iPad parenting”- a child interacting with figures on a screen fails to develop an adequate theory of mind when there is no one to respond to their social cues.

We’ve gotten to this point where we’ve developed an inorganic symbiosis with screens. Now we’ve arrived at the point where the relationship has become parasitic.

Meaning and Responsibility in the Age of Mass Communication

The pursuit of meaning, by taking on the important responsibilities of adulthood, is obfuscated by hedonic humanism, an attempt to delay the biological onset of aging by doing what feels good right now. Yuval Noah Harari points out in Homo Deus that liberal humanism is the new philosophy of our time, exemplified by phrases like “If it feels good, then do it!”

My only critique of liberal humanism is when it fails to take into account the other side of the coin. Every action has consequences; when you go out for three days non-stop, like our friend Juan, your mental health pays the price afterwards. When you spend your life doing only things that are only fun, rather than subjecting yourself to painful experiences, you are possibly setting yourself up for more painful experiences later in life.

When sources of instant gratification have become ubiquitous and easily accessible, our ability to cope in the material world deteriorates.

If you use drugs in order to attain a desired goal or state, either happiness or confidence to approach a woman, you become a slave to that substance. If you use social media to kill some amount of boredom you’re experiencing, then what happens to your attention?

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson details that the ultimate measure of subjective well-being is how you deal with negative experiences in life. Choosing what negative experiences you want to deal with is often the driver of success. It’s impossible to live a life completely devoid of misery since human civilization hasn’t reached this type of Huxley utopia just yet.

Whatever your drug of choice, whether that is a Tony Montana sized mountain of cocaine or your Instagram feed, external dopamine to numb pain stunts our ability to mature.

Finding Your Calling in a Distracted World

Is it possible to maximize our subjective experience in the short time we have on this planet and simultaneously take on meaningful responsibilities? To do so, you need to find your calling.

I know, I know… it sounds cheesy as hell, but finding your calling is the solution to defeating the misery of mundane work, while also embracing the creative drive that maximizes productivity. Instead of drinking four cups of coffee and taking an Adderall to strain yourself to look at an Excel spreadsheet for an hour, a better alternative is to be naturally drawn towards work without feeling like you’re forcing yourself to do so. The naysayers may think this sounds too good to be true, like a get-rich-quick scheme, however, with the advent of online entrepreneurism, I think this is completely possible.

A calling doesn’t have to be entirely career related. Having children could be an example of this, or volunteering at a shelter on the weekends. The result is having a greater sense of purpose that answers the question of why we get out of bed in the mornings.

Counter-arguments for Hedonic Humanism

Now you could make the argument “But Marc, what if going to a 3-day rave and selling happiness in a decrepit bathroom of a nightclub is meaningful to me? I’m making myself and others happy.” I mean, who am I to say if taking ecstasy or Adderall is a negative experience in itself? If taking these drugs only had a positive outcome, then by all means do it.

But it rarely works that way, which is why we pay the price afterwards. Everything in nature has a counterbalance to it. It’s why subjecting yourself to intended pain in the gym releases endorphins afterwards. If the consequences of engaging in such behavior are maladaptive to one’s existence, then I would argue that these behaviors need to be changed. If it takes a toll on one’s mental health or relationships with others, then one should rethink their habits.

The negation of responsibility in the pursuit of pleasure is a conscious decision. A lack of commitment, however, is something that manifests itself despite one’s best attempts to resist it, like someone caught in the crossfire of an unwanted destiny.

Peter Pan syndrome is a term that describes someone who is unwilling to embrace the responsibilities of adulthood. Peter Pan never wanted to leave Neverland and stay with the lost boys forever; an unemployed 37-year-old man who lives with his mother is likely afraid of abandoning the only thing familiar to him. Why is it that men overwhelmingly suffer more from Peter Pan syndrome than women?

I’ve pointed out before that men and women face an entirely unique set of responsibilities throughout their lives that perhaps leads them to different levels of emotional maturity at different ages. Women face the reproductive danger of early pregnancy, while men bear no such responsibility. Sure, women can use contraceptives to avoid the danger of pregnancy, yet the danger is still there.

Men who do not commit themselves to anyone or anything:

An epidemic of overgrown children is not good for society, let alone for themselves. Scott Galloway recently wrote an interesting piece on the growing number of single men and the threat that it poses to society. Why is such a threat to be reckoned with? Because young single men have been the source of many, if not most, revolutions throughout history, including the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the Arab spring in 2011, and most recently, the attempted insurrection at Capitol Hill on January, 6 2021 (of which 85% of the participants were male).

Whether these men are voluntarily or involuntarily celibate is a different question; the outcome, however, is still the same. With most of these men being unemployed, single, and ready to rebel against a system they felt has failed them, the consequences could be dire. This is truly a force to be reckoned with.

Our Fear of Commitment

Our fear of commitment stems from our fear of uncertainty, more specifically the need to have a certain and predictable future. We stay in miserable relationships or jobs we hate because they are better than the unknown alternative.

Psychologist Ester Perell says that embracing the unknown and continually trying out new things builds resilience. Going to an unfamiliar restaurant for dinner or taking a new route to work changes your previous perception of the world. One of the secrets I’ve learned over the years is that most, if not all, of our suffering is unconsciously self-inflicted by rumination and thinking without being aware of doing so.

Most indecision in life is due to a lack of information about a specific issue. The uncertainty of marriage or having children that causes anxiety is certainly due to lack of experience in this domain. The way we approach life is only based on past experience, so it’s natural for the mind to perceive danger in innocuous life events like committing yourself to a new career or lover.

Let’s explore this fear here a little further. Most of the fear stems from the idea that you’re making the wrong choice with irreversible consequences. Should I be a doctor or lawyer? Should I accept the job opportunity even though I might not like it? These decisions become debilitating when we lack information to make these decisions. Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics that the uncertainty around decision-making results from a lack of understanding/information about the choices that are available.

To make an informed choice, we need to look at the issue from a different perspective. Because it’s impossible to think oneself out of uncertainty, we have to make a leap of faith. This could be why the Great Resignation is upon us. Perhaps people are becoming inspired by others making the leap of fate for themselves, willingly venturing into the unknown in the pursuit of something more meaningful?

Only after you’ve leapt, does the certainty of what you were missing out on become clear to you. It’s time to jump.