In this conversational YouTube episode, host Audrey reads anonymous social‑media comments from men about why they fear commitment, and the panel—including Matthew AI, Stephen, and other speakers—dissects each fear. The discussion moves from the surface‑level excuse of "not wanting my life changed" to deeper psychological roots: fear of losing one’s core identity, fear of judgment and rejection, fear of becoming a pleaser and losing personal well‑being, and a fundamental distrust of one’s own boundaries. Matthew AI reframes the "rock‑star" excuse as a mask for an inability to trust oneself when intimacy demands vulnerability. Stephen and other participants add cultural context, noting that the fear of commitment often masquerades as a gender‑based grievance but is largely unisex, tied to past relationship trauma and the desire to retain control. The conversation also touches on how fear of vulnerability can lead to self‑protection through emotional distance, and how this dynamic fuels the belief that commitment equals loss of autonomy. Toward the end, Matthew references a practical program—"Attraction to Commitment"—that teaches persuasive language and influence techniques to help people transition from casual dating to committed relationships, linking the theoretical discussion to actionable training. Overall, the episode blends anecdotal commentary, psychological analysis, and a promotional segue to a coaching program, offering a nuanced look at why many men (and people generally) resist commitment.
Questions this video answers
August 24, 2022
getthefreetraining.com
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I've got my cool life and you're gonna come in and you're gonna try and change it up and make me make the bed and do things and turn my music down.
We put a post out on social media asking men, what is the brutally honest truth about why you might get scared of committing to someone? And I was thinking I might read them out to you guys and just get your thoughts on them. Some of them got my backup, I'm not gonna lie.
I don't know, I only know a couple of these that you're gonna read. A lot of these, I don't know which ones you've chosen, so I'm excited to hear you get angrier with each one.
Comment number one. Jonathan says, I would say I'm afraid of being changed, to be told that in order to be with someone, I must change who I am.
Thoughts? Well, you will be changed on some level by someone. I think that's the nature of things. You meet someone and you're in some way changed by them. That's actually one of the best parts of a relationship, I should add. I would actually like to change the narrative around it a little bit because that anytime I think that you can mark your life by the moments that someone who changed it came into your life. There are all people, there are people throughout our life, friends, colleagues, bosses, people that we fall in love with, that change us in some way that we're really grateful for. So let's be clear, there are relationships where one plus one equals three and you're happy for the changes. What Jonathan is talking about is the kind of change that happens when someone starts to strip us of the things that we feel are fundamentally us and crucial to who we are and what we like to do and how we like to live. And I think that we're all a little afraid of that. Usually we come to a relationship with a little bit of trauma from having been in a relationship before where someone did. It did feel like someone robbed us of something that felt like it was fundamentally us. And we found ourselves treading on eggshells with our own personality and. having to sort of amputate crucial parts of ourselves in order to make this other person happy. And then when the relationship ended, we feel less of ourselves and we feel like we're having to find ourselves again in the process of rebuilding.
And the truth is also it is very difficult to change, right? So often if somebody is feeling that pressure, like you need to change, it's not like, oh, I'm afraid I'm going to just change and I'm going to be so different and lose myself. Sometimes it's just like, I'm afraid this person is just going to sit there constantly resenting me because they're just always thinking of these ways that I should change and I'm not going to completely change. Like I think of that scene in Before Midnight where Ethan Hawke's character is walking with Julie Delpy and Julie Delpy asks the question like, if you could change anything about me, what would it be? And Ethan Hawke's character kind of knows what she's getting at and he's just like, I think I would change the fact that you want to change me all the time, you know, or something like that, where it's like he knows that she's sitting there sort of ruminating on, like, these little habits he has and all these things, and he's just kind of feeling that resentment.
Yeah, because it really does feel. I mean, it is the antithesis of being accepted, and being accepted is. Is what we really want. So, yeah, I think that that's. There's an interesting one by Jonathan. I get it.
You know, I feel like it's more about being afraid of being judged than being changed. Like, I'm gonna get judged for my choices or the things I like to do with my time, my lifestyle, like my habits.
Don't you think that being judged is a disguised fear of not being accepted? And if I'm not accepted, then I don't feel worthy. So what I'm really afraid of when, I don't want to be judged is I'm afraid that the things that make me me, my idiosyncrasies and eccentricities and the little things that I enjoy doing are going to be seen as weird or stupid or just. Just not normal. And that therefore I'm not going to be accepted by someone.
Yeah, absolutely. And then I think the extra fear might be someone thinking, maybe I'm not going to be strong enough to defend the way I like things. There's two things. There's like, there's wanting to keep the things that make you you, and there probably is a bit of fear of some of these things I probably will have to compromise a bit to properly have a relationship with someone. And that's also a reason probably people get fearful of getting in relationships these days where they're used to having their own autonomy a lot. and they think, yeah, I'm gonna have to live in a bit of a less selfish way. I'm gonna have to compromise some things to be with someone. And that's also scary.
You know what? It's interesting you say that because another comment from Sabrose was being afraid of losing it, not sure what it is, and to become a giant pleaser and forget my own well-being in the process, which I think is similar to what you're talking about, Stephen.
Exactly. I think sometimes there's a preemptive defense where people are like, I know I'm going to be a pleaser in this relationship. I know I'm going to want to care about the other person and I might end up forgetting myself or or doing things that aren't me because I am got a good heart, because I care, because I just need to please someone. And they're kind of like, I don't want to do it because I know I'm going to feel that pressure to please them.
But that's so interesting, isn't it? Because even there is just a crucial insight that what I'm disguising as a fear of you changing me is really just the fear that I cannot trust myself. Yeah. That's what it comes down to. and people don't say that, right? People say, oh, I don't want you coming into my life and changing me. It's like it's sort of this feel, it's almost like a, it's like a rock star excuse, you know? I've got my cool life, and you're gonna come in and you're gonna try and change it up and make me make the bed and do things and turn my music down and whatever, and instead, what it really is is I'm actually so distrusting of myself and my ability to have boundaries that I don't even want to develop feelings in the first place because I can't trust myself when I do. It's fascinating.
Really interesting. And I would like to add briefly that I think the point you made earlier about the fear of not being accepted is huge because I think there's a lot of insecurity when you're When you're afraid of commitment, you tend to, that tends to be interwoven with insecurity somewhere. And the insecurity with a lot of, in a lot of these responses that I think is popping up is, if I allow myself to be too vulnerable, I will basically be crushed, you know?
Is there another comment like that?
Yes, in fact there is. The next comment is from Robert. And he said, because commitment means eventually being known in my vulnerability, which is a huge reason why people are scared of commitment, don't you think?
Yes. Look, I think that it's the more distant you keep someone, the more it feels like you have total control over the situation. you're essentially controlling the elements in your life and minimizing the variables. And one of the greatest variables you can introduce into your life is someone you care about and someone whose opinion you care about and someone who you let your guard down in front of. So if you're afraid that it's going to be hard to control your feelings of rejection if that doesn't go well, then you just don't want to invite that possible rejection in, in the first place.
Audrey, do you think that this is a uniquely a guy's fear or do you think that women go through something like this too?
I mean, I think a lot of the things that are popping up are actually unisex. You know, I definitely think that people who are afraid of commitment are just afraid of letting someone in. People just find it hard to be vulnerable. I have a very, very dear friend who is someone who has struggled for a really long time to sort of let someone in and she finds the process very uncomfortable. She's obviously overcome a lot of that, but this is me being very candid. There's a lot of men here who are essentially saying they haven't met anyone they like enough or find attractive enough or want to commit to. And they're sort of, instead of saying, oh, maybe that's because the people that I think I should be with don't want me. They're saying, oh, it's because, you know, like, everyone else is just controlling and wants to pin me down. And it feels a little bit to me with some of the comments from these men personally that it's just a bit of a kind of, let's blame women and how crazy they are and how commitment is evil versus the kinds of things that are holding them back and the ways that they are actually viewing themselves versus the reality. Does that make sense? Am I sounding harsh?
No, I think there's absolutely truth to that. I think it's easier to have someone who, for example, you didn't have boundaries with, who you kept in your life too long, who then kind of is kind of scarring when you have someone who makes your life really, really difficult. and brings a lot of bad energy to your life. It's a scarring thing and it's sort of easy to draw a conclusion from that. The easiest thing is to just draw a conclusion and say, women are crazy. Women are controlling. Women want to take away this from you. They want to take away that. It's easier to do that than to say, well, why did I allow that to happen? why did I choose someone like that in the first place? Come to think of it. And make no mistake, every single one of us, most people at least, have been in the wrong relationship and felt had that feeling of like I wasted time and it didn't feel good and I don't want to do that again. And so a lot of people bring that fear of wasting time to the next situation. And of course, if you couple that with the fear that once I develop feelings, it's even harder to get out of the wrong thing. then you have an awful lot of high stakes going into committing to anybody. And one of the things that we talked about in this week's video is that with people like that, and I say this week's video, for those of you that only listen to the podcast, of course, we release a video on YouTube every week. But these kinds of people, there are actually things that we can do to influence what they do, their thoughts around commitment, their behaviors around commitment. I talk about this in one of our programs. Audrey and I recently did a private kind of session with some of our members where we talked about the fact that I had some fears around commitment, that Audrey was amazing at navigating and influencing. which of course was the thing that led to me proposing, which is something that kind of a couple of years before that, I was in no way in the right mindset to be able to think in those terms. So that's, and oh, and I should say in that video we talk about where you can actually learn more practically about what you can do to influence the situation with someone who's not a bad person, they're not, coming from a toxic place. They're not coming from a place that would make Audrey angry. They are, they are just someone who's struggling a little bit. And what can you do if you found the right person, but they're struggling a little bit? If you want to go somewhere now that can help you with that, please go here. It's called getthefreetraining.com is something that really will help you with this, and it will help you learn. There's a certain language to persuasion. There's a certain language to influence, especially in a situation where it's those fragile early stages of dating. And this particular video training is from my program, Attraction to Commitment, which the entire program is about how to go from being casual with someone to being committed. But this is like a bite-sized video portion of it that you can have for free, and it takes all of the stuff we're talking about now and debating sort of intellectually, and it makes it practical for you so that you know how to create more commitment with someone you like. Go over to getthefreetraining.com to watch that now because it really is very powerful and it's taken from an entire program I have on this subject.
