Commitment in a relationship or marriage is basically the agreement of sharing some part of life and of mutually accepting obligations agreed upon.
Extrinsic commitment is a decision, and intrinsic commitment is an emotional bond, following the decision to create it. In extrinsic commitment someone accepts obligations as an unpleasant but unavoidable price to pay in return for benefits, in intrinsic commitment, the emotional bond makes obligations to appear not as obligations to the other, but as giving what is expected and needed, or even as something, that would be done readily and is not perceived as an obligation at all.
Example: In extrinsic commitment, a man refrains from cheating for the purpose of not jeopardizing his subscription to have the committed partner's body available at any time. In intrinsic commitment, he feels so much part of a unit and being bonded, that for him, other women do not exist as women anymore, only as neutral parts of the social environment. The wish to cheat just does not occur to him.
I grew up with the idea, that people get married for better and for worse, and that they form a union against the inclemencies of life. Getting married meant three symbolic acts, marriage in church and at the townhall as the beginning of extrinsic commitment, and their first night together as the beginning of intrinsic commitment.
Growing older, becoming an atheist made the church wedding superfluous, and becoming more of an individual, I decided that the government had nothing to do with my private life, so that the signature in the town hall also lost any meaning. There was no more extrinsic commitment for me to look for.
What was left was my strong wish for the intrinsic commitment of creating an emotional bond, of becoming in my identity half of a unit, half of a couple, being transformed automatically by the beginning of an intimate involvement.
When I was young, I suffered a lot of pain, because I was so naive as to assume, that it was the same for men. Now I know better. For the majority of men, a woman is a body to be used as a valve for their instincts, independent of being attached to her person or not. But I have my dignity, and the knowledge, that I am a body without a bond to a man, turns me into an asexual sack of potatoes and I am proud of this.
Therefore the symbolic act of starting the physical intimacy after having created emotional and intellectual intimacy first, has two effects upon me. It not only creates the bond and makes me transform into having the identity of being half a couple, that bond also validates physical intimacy to become the shared joy of nonverbally expressed attachment. The bond of attachment modifies an otherwise beastly instinctual act into an act of human interaction, that is enjoyable, because it is in sync with my dignity. It is human, because the physical intimacy is an additional expression of the pre-existing emotional and intellectual intimacy of two personalities.
There are promiscuous and hypoanimalistic men. The promiscuous men are by their innate tendencies disabled to form an intrinsic bond of commitment at the moment of entering an intimate relationship. For some this has been hardwired into their brain genetically, for some it is the sad result of desensitization after having more than one fling and not stopping there, because they have been brainwashed that promiscuity makes a man a real man.
I feel sorry for them, because they are lacking some profound human capacity for the special joy of being deeply and exclusively bonded.
Hypoanimalistic men are rare and very precious. They are those, for whom entering intimacy creates automatically a bond of intrinsic commitment, and from then on they feel like half a couple as much as I do. Only they are suitable for me.
Since I am fully aware of all this, I know by now, that a man, whose capability is limited to only decide on extrinsic commitment, because he is promiscuous by nature, is a big hazard to me, he will cause me pain instead of happiness.
Only intrinsic commitment can give me the emotional home, safety of belonging together, trust, reliability, that to me make a relationship worth having.
I am aware, that a promiscuous man could enter extrinsic commitment, and it could then grow slowly into intrinsic commitment over time. But I am not made to cope with this. A promiscuous man enters physical intimacy to test, if the woman is suitable for him to get his instincts satisfied by subscription for the price of extrinsic commitment. Would I knowingly agree to such an arrangement, this would be a disaster for me. While I would still get myself bonded immediately, I would feel the lack of the other's bond, I would feel like a used body, and I would be as responsive as the sack of potatoes, while waiting for the other to develop a bond. But since he does not want a sack of potatoes, but a responsive partner, so I would of course fail his test and be dumped feeling myself the agony of the broken bond.
I am wise by now. I know, what is good for me. There could come a Nobel prize winner, a genius, a world famous scientist, he could impress me with aw, but if he is promiscuous, I would not want him.
Unfortunately too many women, for whom male promiscuity in reality is as devastating as it is for me, are brainwashed to accept it and to repress their own needs as a price for social status and acceptance. Men could not have flings, if there were no stupid women first consenting and then secretly suffering. Men would be less convinced of their strife for flings being justified, if more women would have the full awareness of what they really need and would resist male promiscuity with much more determination.
As sad as it is, male tendencies still dominate the social climate so much, that they can brainwash women to tolerate promiscuity, instead of the women having the influence of teaching men to acknowledge their promiscuity as a dysfunctional tendency detrimental to the happiness of couples. As much as it is in their genes, they are doomed. But if promiscuity were considered as a form of anti-social and disruptive trait, then men could at least be spared to desensitize themselves even further by the routine of having flings without hesitation.
Male promiscuity is similar to overeating and relief-drinking. It gives short-term pleasure or relief and long-term damage. Only the damage of obesity and alcoholism is obvious and visible, while the subtle loss of the capacity of deep bonding will not be noticed, because the unhappiness because of the lack of a deep bond is usually not seen as connected with promiscuity.
Where are those precious hypoanimalistic men hidden?
