Today I want to share some thoughts with you about commitment phobia (CP) and Birth Order. First, let me define CP as the fear of being trapped. It is developed naturally when parents have to control the behavior of their children. A parent may have further helped create the phobia telling a child, “You made your bed, you lie in it.” In other words, the parent makes the child feel stuck with whatever choice he or she made. If there is no remaking one’s bed one must be very careful about making commitments!
CP can also come from a broken love relationship in which the hurt party decided, “I’m not going to let anyone hurt me like that again.” The result is a subconscious fear of getting close which results in CP.
Any Birth Order can experience CP. A person can be indecisive to avoid making a commitment, anxious having made a commitment or constantly looking for a way to relieve the pressure of commitment. It can make a person continually change jobs or become unhappy in a job after a short time. It can make a person buy impulsively to act before the phobia puts a stop to it. It also affects marriages.
I have observed CP especially in Fourth Born/Second Born marriages in which both express their CP differently. The Fourth Born seeks to overcome the phobia while the Second Born resigns to being trapped. These marriages can last for decades before they break up.
The married Fourth Born (and others with CP) may try to relieve the sense of being trapped with an affair(s). Or, the Fourth Born may fill life with work so there is little time for family relationships that would trigger CP. Some Fourth Borns try to escape CP by sleeping alone in a different part of the house. Another may eat alone rather than with family.
The Fourth Born may also sabotage the relationship to escape feeling trapped. By making the relationship difficult the Fourth Born with CP feels freer than in a good relationship. To put distance from spouse the Fourth Born may disagree with everything because agreement would trigger CP. The Fourth Born can be in a constant state of anger, continually complaining or non-communicative to keep from feeling trapped. To have a pleasant conversation, to reach agreement or even to cooperate would be to suffer from CP. Some avoid CP by controlling their partners, keeping them from doing what they want or from having money that would enable them be free. When the partner feels miserable the Fourth Born feels free of CP. Some Fourth Born men feel so comfortable when the wife is weeping that they want to have sex with her at that time.
Second Borns married to Fourth Borns are resigned to being trapped. Instead of fighting to overcome CP they submit to it. They endure the control, go along with the Fourth Born behavior and keep their feelings hidden from others and themselves. They don’t like it but they stay in it. The breakup comes when something tips the scales for the Second Born. A woman may inherit some money that enables her to leave, the Fourth Born may do something intolerably outrageous or a crisis occurs that makes the Second Born realize it’s time to get out. The Second Born is the one to leave the marriage. When the Second Born leaves the Fourth Born is taken by surprise because the Fourth Born did not experience the marriage as bad. Once out, there is no going back for the Second Born. They are just as committed to staying out as they were to staying in.
If a phobic Fourth Born is married to an Only, the Fourth Born, male or female, can be abusive to the Only. An Only is a fixer who wants the other person to be happy. The Only counters whatever bad thing the Fourth Born does or says with something good in order to improve the relationship. If the Fourth Born complains about the meal, the Only changes it. If the Fourth Born is angry about what the Only did, the Only will redo it. The Only tries hard to overlook whatever destructive things the Fourth Born does in order to make the relationship better. The Fourth Born may get so frustrated with the Only trying to make things better that he or she can get violent. In these relationships cops are involved over and over as violence gets out of hand. Onlies can be so optimistic about fixing relationships that police are called seven times on average before a woman leaves the relationship.
CP is about feeling trapped. The alternative to feeling trapped is to feel free. Here is a thought that can relieve CP: Forget making yourself be free, just let yourself be free. This thought can work wonders in a relationship troubled with CP. Share it with people who are suffering CP. A person can feel free in the marriage relationship without having to get out of it.
6 comments on Commitment Phobia in Birth Order
Add a comment
To add comments without entering your email and image verification, you must be logged in. Login or Join Blogster
My gosh, this is so on the mark. I'm a second born, (sort of), he's a fourth born and after 24 years of marriage, I finally got the courage to leave - and he's clueless as to why.
Can't wait to read your other posts.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm finding many Second/Fourth marriages ending in divorce after two or three decades especially when the wife is the Second Born. The Second suffers emotionally in the relationship while the Fourth thinks everything is okay.
Sometimes these marriages turn out okay if the couple are able to get good therapy in the early years.
Thanks for sharing your story. I wish you better years ahead.
Cliff
I am absolutely a CP always seeking freedom. That doesn't mean that I don't want a relationship whether with a man, my children, or family members. My circumstance is unusual in that I am second born of second born twins. My birth order personality most often reflects a second born in a family of three. However, sometimes I am really confused and know that I transpose my confusion into my relationships but just end up leaving. Any information available on twins?
Hello Diane,
Twins organize themselves into consecutive Birth Orders. So, you well could be Second Born in personality. But, because of your CP and the feeling of really being confused you might consider whether you might be Fourth Born in personality - it's possible. It might make more sense of your personality.