Getting to Commitment: Overcoming the Eight Greatest Obstacles to Lasting Connection

Our parents look at us, and they wonder, what's wrong? Our happily married friends try to introduce us to appropriate mates, even while they are wondering, what's wrong? We spend evenings with equally unattached single friends, and together we wonder, what's wrong? They write sitcoms about people like us, but it looks like it's a lot more fun on the small screen than it feels like in real life.

Author (with Sokol) of the bestselling Men Who Can't Love, Carter, again writing with Sokol, offers advice here for both men and women with "commitmentphobia." While recognizing the "hard work" of long-term relationships, he focuses almost exclusively on "old choices, old habits, old fantasies, old programs, old language, old doubts, and old fears" that sabotage relationships in their very early stages. Carter claims that by examining and clearing out these impediments, "[t]he possibility for real love and commitment slowly blossoms in front of you like a beautiful flower." He thoroughly explores the need to stop blaming, and to understand and release old relationship "ghosts"; to develop and maintain a healthy sense of self and "self-protection"; distinguish fantasy from reality; reveal your true self; accept differences and imperfections; change old patterns; and work through anxieties. Commitment to a relationship, according to Carter, requires time, desire, energy, risk, help (from friends, family, support groups and professional therapists), mutual effort and faith. Most of all, he warns, it takes "courage." Readers will find understanding and wise counsel here for difficult feelings and self-defeating behaviors that may be hard to face, from a man who shares his own commitment fears and how he overcame them. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.