Commitment

" Whether it be shallow or not, commitment is the foundation, the bedrock of any genuinely loving relationship. Deep commitment does not guarantee the success of the relationship but does help more than any other factor to assure it. Initially shallow commitments may grow deep with time; if not, the relationship will likely crumble or else be inevitably sickly or chronically frail...............
Problems of commitment are a major, inherent part of most psychiatric disorders.......Character-disordered individuals tend to form only shallow commitments, and when their disorders are severe, these individuals seem to lack totally the capacity to form commitments at all. It is not so much that they fear the risk of commiting themselves as they basically do not understand what commitment is all about. Because their parents failed to commit themselves to them as children in any meaningful way, they grew up without the experience of commitment.....Neurotics, on the other hand, are generally aware of the nature of commitment but are frequently paralyzed by the fear of it. Usually their experience of early chilhood was one in which their parents were sufficiently commited to them for them to form a commitment to their parents in return. Subsequently, however, a cessation of parental love through death, abandonment or chronic rejection, has the effect of making a child's unrequited commitment an experience of intolerable pain. New commitments then are naturally dreaded. Such injuries can be healed only if it is possible for the person to have a basic and more satisfying experience with commitment at a later date..........." "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck, MD