Column

W hen I wrote about the commitmentphobic man last fortnight, I had braced myself for some feedback.

Especially from girls who might have been put through the ringer by similar specimens. What I didn’t expect was the rousing response from the males. There was grudging admiration from some (“You’re ruining it for my tribe” SMS-ed one charming quinquagenerian bachelor I happen to know), and impassioned diatribes from others. One gentleman actually wrote me an entire passage on how these commitmentphobics are actually “good catches” and how we girls need to “position ourselves as life partners and not just pretty wives/girlfriends” to land these Mr Rights!

Therefore it’s a very tempting thought to rest easy smug on the success of my supposedly accurate analysis of this male subset. Except that . . . there is no such thing as a commitmentphobic! Yes, all the men who have displayed those easy-come-easy-go characteristics at some point are eventually married/in relationships/waiting for ‘her’ to say yes! The complex mushroom-cloud of commitmentphobia is thus nothing but the simple male inability to say ‘no’! Boy meets girl he is sort of interested in; they do the whole drinks/dinner/your-place-or-mine routine and then boy discovers that he doesn’t like the girl enough to plan
Biarritz getaways and baby names. But before he realises it (aka testosterone!), they have drifted into a relationship and he just can’t tell her, ‘honey I’m not that into you’. Therefore what follows is a few tepid months (or even years) of “I’m busy at work darling” or “Oh is it your birthday today? Why don’t you get something you like and charge it on my card? till the girl accuses him of neglect and of not being ‘into’ her. He hangs his head shamefacedly in agreement (silently relieved), suggests that maybe he isn’t cut out for a permanent relationship and tells her that she deserves much better. I can almost empathise with this boy minus the testosterone bit and that ‘you can do much better than me’ line; trust me that’s the last thing a heartbroken girl needs; some sorry-assed affirmation of her pathetic sense of judgement in men!

But the fact that all of these men eventually get hooked, booked and cooked proves that they do want to plan romantic getaways to Biarritz and baby names. So then, what exactly gives? I know plenty of girls who see these ex-boyfriends happily hitched and rue that they weren’t pretty, or perky or smart enough. And the self-help publishing industry grows richer feeding off this insecurity by ‘decoding the male myth’ and prescribing foolproof formulae to ‘snag your dream guy’.

Fact is the girls who land these ditherers aren’t necessarily prettier or smarter or perkier. Nor have they copped some patented six-sigma process for landing men. The former girls have started out detached and uninterested, and have been gradually won over by the guy’s smooth moves. Once hooked, they have become openly expectant, perma-available and thus, less of a challenge. And once a guy knows he has a girl, it doesn’t matter if she is Liz Taylor, and he will still take her for granted.

In contrast the girls who end up keeping these guys, start out devoted and interested in the man, his 80-hour workweek, his Labrador’s bout of colic and everything else seemingly inane that matters to him nonetheless. And just when the man is getting used to having her in his life, she subtly pulls back. She is there for him, but not 24/7; she still makes gooey eyes only at him but that hasn't stopped her from discreetly looking at the other boys and voila! before you know it, the guy is hooked. This isn’t rocket science; these girls are just closet economists. Keep supply just a tad lower than demand and watch the price rise!
Thus, a commitmentphobic man is just a figment of the self-help industry’s imagination (as well as cheeky columnists of course!) So girls, don’t waste your time on chicken poop for the soul; brush up on your Adam Smith instead. There isn’t a ‘commitmentphobic’ who doesn’t bite the nuptial bullet eventually. Even the biggest of them all, Mr Big had to say “I do” finally. What happens afterwards is of course a subject of separate discussion. Or an entire film called Sex and the City playing in the theatres right now!
deblina@dnaindia.net