Commitmentphobia

One of my dearest friends, Kathy, has been dating Eustice for about six months. From everyone's perspective in our friend group, the pair are well suited to each other and seem very happy. They go on ice cream dates all the time (too cute) and have spent a lot of time together, when you add it all up. She's quiet in groups, but is one of the funniest people I know when you get her to open up. She's tall and gorgeous and an amazing swimmer. He's also a really cool guy, someone who met her and knew like all her friends know, that she is a catch. All her friends could appreciate that.

However, the guy won't commit.

It boggles the female brain that a guy would spend so much time with a wonderful girl, but leave her hanging when it comes to a label. Sorry guys, we want a label after trusting you with our hearts and secrets and time for six months. It's really not too much to ask!

So when Kathy confronted Eustice about the status of their relationship, he became defensive and wouldn't give her a real answer. She was obviously upset, but he didn't offer comfort, rather distanced himself and gave irritatingly ambiguous answers to her and her nosy friends. What are we? became Are you going to love me forever and ever and marry me so we can be happily ever after? in his mind. Speaking from having many a conversation with Kathy, the latter question was nowhere close to what she meant.

How can she be blamed for wanting to know if he is going to up and disappear without notice? Why did he become so defensive at that question when he texts her constantly and wants to spend time with her practically every weekend? Why is this a surprise to him after six months?

Then came the blatant idiocy on his part (though normally he appears to be an intelligent person.) He texted another girl in our friend group. How poorly chosen. How poorly timed. How fishy.

The worst feeling in the world is telling someone you love, something that will hurt them.

This is a point of contingency between my mother and I. My mother always tells me I shouldn't be the bearer of bad news, that telling someone what you know will hurt them and causes you to become part of unnecessary drama. In fact, I feel guilty thinking about what my mother would say to Beatrice and I telling our best friend Kathy that her boyfriend is acting suspiciously.

"But you don't KNOW what Eustice was thinking when he texted your friend!" she would say.

I trust intuition above anything else. All the times where I have been most hurt and ended up crying on the floor, or on the bus, or in the car, or during a swim set, it was because I didn't trust my intuition, and trusted a man instead. Call me a man hater (I'm not, really) - but the feeling of betraying myself is that of the utmost stupidity... and I didn't want Kathy to feel that way.

How terrible would I feel if my friends knew for the longest time that my love interest was being sketchy and texting my friends behind my back? And they never told me??? I'd be petrified with humiliation. Thus, the decision was made and Beatrice and myself told Kathy about the wandering eye.

As I always do, I have come up with a theory about Eustice.

I think that he feels social pressure to be "single" (although he's kind of been seriously dating someone for six months, uh FAIL on the being single, Eustice.) Men in college are like sheep falling off a stupidity cliff. How else can keg stands be explained? Or streaking? Or drinking until they puke? Their caveman instincts are in full force until they graduate college and realize that those four or five or six years were meaningless without the people they loved the whole time. I know I'm being slightly unfair here, but you watch your best friend cry for an hour and then try to be fair towards the opposite gender.

I think he's waiting around for Carmen Electra to be reincarnated into someone college-age who would realistically date him. Which is unrealistic and shallow. Can she hold a conversation? NO.

I think he loves Kathy. But loving someone doesn't mean you're in love (as an ex boyfriend once said, oh so poetically) and it doesn't make you become wiser immediately. In fact, I think loving someone makes you act ten times more irrationally than you would act for a friend. That would explain Kathy putting up with six months of wishy-washy answers. And I will defend her to the end, it's sure as hell not her fault.


So what are we supposed to do about the male gender until they snap out of it?
Just put up with it?
Get our hearts broken habitually?
Become nuns?
Act as badly as they do?