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commitment?
    5. In all your important relationships either you or your partner have done something to create or maintain distance .
    Men and women with unresolved commitment conflicts crave distance. Yes, they want relationships. Yes, they want closeness. But they just can’t be too close for too long. It’s too threatening. So there are two choices: Either find a relationship with built-in distance—such as with an inappropriate partner—or manufacture or create distance in an existing relationship.
    There are a wide variety of ways in which someone can create distance. Infidelity, for example, can be a way of finding distance. Getting lost in work or at the gym or behind a newspaper are other common ways. Any activity or behavior that is used to keep another person from getting too close is a way of maintaining distance and avoiding real commitment.
    6. Your most intense romantic feelings have been directed toward partners when they appear to be pulling away from a commitment to you .
    When a relationship is progressing smoothly, both partners’ feelings for each other are evolving more or less on an even keel. When people with commitment issues get together, this is never the case. In fact it may very obviously be quite the opposite.
    There can be something tremendously liberating about being in love with a person who is subtly, or not so subtly, pulling away. It allows you to pursue your love with the most tender or terrible passion. Love doesn’t become frightening until it is returned in kind and threatens to become entrapment.
    7. You have a history of becoming involved with, or obsessed by, partners who are emotionally, circumstantially, or geographically unavailable .
    If you choose unavailable partners, then you are choosing relationships that already have a built-in sense of distance. And if you have a clear-cut pattern of falling in love with people who are, to all intents and purposes, unavailable, then, much as you may deny it, it is questionable whether you yourself are truly available for commitment.
    Remember, an unavailable partner will never make you deliver on the commitment you say you want. He or she will never hold you accountable for all of the feelings and desires you are holding in your heart. He or she will never require the commitment you say you’re prepared to give. Why? Because unavailable means unavailable.
    Unavailable partners include those who are:
    Geographically unavailable . It’s the classic scenario. You live in New York, your beloved lives in L.A. You have great weekends together six times a year. Your phone bill is outrageous. Is this a relationship? It may be romantic, but there is too much fantasy and not enough reality. Of course you don’t have to live in separate states to have a long-distance relationship. The same purpose can be served by becoming involved with someone who travels all the time or someone who is never there long enough for it to feel settled and real.
    Emotionally unavailable . Usually those who are emotionally unavailable give you plenty of warning up front. They may actually tell you that they can’t handle commitment. They may be emotionally elusive. They may tell you that others have found it difficult to relate to them. They may simply be unable to give that much, and this becomes apparent very quickly. They may be too elusive, a little too hard to reach, too hard to find, too hard to pin down, too hard to keep around. In short too distant, too controlled, too unavailable. A man or woman who behaves this way is warning you that he or she is afraid of intimacy. Why would you keep trying unless you’re afraid of intimacy too?
    Circumstantially unavailable . Okay, he’s married, and she’s involved with another man. So why are men and women in these situations so appealing, so desirable—so perfect? Even if someone sees you five days a week and calls five times a day, if he or she is involved with other partners, that special someone is