Commitment is a strange beast. In once sense, there's no such thing; it's just some words you've said that are interpreted by others as having lasting significance. Yet, at any moment you could, if you so chose, abandon the commitment and go about your life. Of course there may be major consequences, such as the betrayal others would feel, or a bad credit history, but those are all trade-offs you weight against the value of your freedom.
For me, freedom has always been the most important thing. Although I recognize that I may never exercise all of the freedom I pay to maintain, its presence is worth the price. By this I mean that I live a life which would be trivial to leave behind, should the mood strike me. This has its own particular costs: renting instead of buying for the sake of liquidity, and a general approach to interpersonal relationships in which I'm less likely to become deeply involved with people, due to my perception of their potentially transient nature, among others. These may seem like steep costs to some, but for me the opposite feels like blatant confinement. Again, it's generally only necessary for me to have the illusion of freedom on order to be happy, whether or not I ever choose to put it to use.
For a while now I've assumed that my reluctance to commit to a long-term relationship, marriage for example, was based on this same desire to maintain my freedom of choice. But after some deep thinking on the matter, I think I've determined a much more cause for my hesitation to spend the rest of my life with one person. Previously I had dismissed the notion on the basis that people change over time, and that it's impossible to know either what the other person will be like many years down the road, or what you yourself will be like. It seems likely that the person will change in some way that you do not find appealing, or that you own desires and preferences will change over time such that you no longer care for the person, whether they've changed or not. While both of these situations are possible, I eventually asked the question, "So what?" If that happens, you get a divorce, and move on with your life. If your goal is to be married some day, you need to take the chance on someone. Otherwise, you'll be along forever, always unwilling to commit for fear that it won't last. That's a ridiculous reason for not committing to marriage.
I realize that my reluctance isn't based on my fear that I or my partner will change. Instead, it's based on my fear that we won't change. What I fear is wanting the same thing for the rest of my life, being pleased by the same things for the rest of my life. Somehow, if I feel like my interests and desires ever get locked down, part of me dies. I haven't though about this enough to know whether the fact that I feel this way concerns me at all.
I don't want to get married, because I don't want to be happy with one person for the rest of my life. Note that I didn't say I don't want to be with one person. I specifically mean that I desire, in advance, to lose interest in people over time, because to me that's a sign of my continued growth. Of course I recognize that I could find someone who grows alongside me, but how would I know whether we're both growing, or both standing still?
I'm not justifying this feeling I have, I'm only articulating it. And I'm wondering, not surprisingly, how to be free of it. The answer is not simply committing to a relationship and just seeing how it goes, because I'm almost certain that would be like injecting slow poison into it from the start, knowing someday it will be lethal. Until I understand this feeling, I assume that any commitment I make will essentially be a lie.
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