Have any of you women experienced this kind of guy: he's been in a serious relationship for a LONG time (say, over 2 years). Things are going swimmingly; he loves you, you love him, and you're starting to wonder whether this one is "the one".
Say some time passes, things are still happy and loving, but now you're REALLY starting to wonder where this relationship is going, because although you're thinking about long-term plans all the time, it seems like he isn't doing.
We're all mature adults, and sometimes we have to have state-of-the-union type talks with our serious partners. So you decide to have "the talk". You pour out your heart about your desires and expectations and hopes, and are shattered to discover him being evasive and equivocal. He claims that he's "not ready to settle down" or "needs more time". But why? He's never been a player, or the kind of guy who seemed to have that uncanny ability to attract lots of women. Basically, you're his best option, but still he wants to "keep his options open". How exasperating!
The conventional thinking on this issue that's presently extant is, of course, that "he's just not that into you", but as readers of Tip for Men and Women # 32: S/he's just not that into you. (Part 1) already know, I'm not satisfied with that advice. I think that may be helpful in the short term and for more surface-level issues in the relationship, but in order to come to terms with this male response, I think it's important to go deeper.
So, let's consider monogamy and maleness. Evolutionary biologists believe monogamy to be a mating behaviour that developed via the mechanism of female sexual choice. Of course, human sexual behaviour is not as simple as, say, peacock-peahen sexual behaviour, but that rough pattern where the male courts and the female chooses basically obtains. But rather than fancy plumage, what female humans look for are signs of strength and stability, viz. indicators that the male will be able to help care for and support children. (This is important to the female because the physical limitations of only being able to sire one child per annum means that having more sexual partners might lead to her finding a genetically better mate via sperm competition, it will not lead to a greater number of children.) And the strongest indicator of this is the propensity to be monogamous, because a lack of wandering eyes and hands suggests that the likelihood that the male will abandon the mother to care for the children alone is low.
Males, on the other hand, pursue monogamy only because females prefer monogamous males over polyamorous/adulterous males. For men, having more sexual partners is extremely profitable from a genetic standpoint, because theoretically each new mate can yield a new offspring. However, the less genetically viable the man, the less likely that he'll be able to mate with a large number of women. Roughly speaking, the more viable he is, the more partners he can have, because his patent viability will increase the likelihood that women will copulate with him without requiring monogamy (either casually, through polyamory, or through adultery). Seen this way, monogamy and polyamory are just two mating strategies of men, each of which will be more successful for a given man based on whether he is, respectively, more or less genetically viable.
Which brings us back to your commitment-phobic LTR boyfriend. Why won't he settle down with you, even though his outside prospects are limited if not nil? My theory on this is that he's unrealistic about or has simply overestimated his genetic viability. Basically, although his best reproductive option lies in staying with you and being monogamous, his biological wiring to act like a sperm and maximise his number of partners is telling him that he shouldn't settle down. And for whatever reason, he's not a good judge of his own genetic viability, so rather than recognising that his best option is to stay with you and be monogamous, he orients himself as a man who wants to have other sexual partners would do.
This of course just begs the question: why is he a bad judge of his own genetic viability? Probably because he doesn't have strong male figures in his life who educated him in the ways of masculinity, in how to be a mature man. As the line in Fight Club goes: "we're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really what we need."
Now don't get me wrong, mature masculinity and monogamy/settling down do not necessarily go hand in hand. But mature masculinity and, say, self-knowledge and decisiveness do. A man who knows himself well enough to accurate gauge his best reproductive option to lie in eschewing monogamy for polyamory and decisively communicates this to his partners is as mature as a man who recognises his best reproductive option to lie in a monogamous relationship with one woman.
The real problem, then, lies in this commitment-phobic boyfriend of yours, whose immaturity, indecisiveness, and self-unawareness paralyse him with only one in your door and one foot out. My suggestion: it's time to either (1) try to educate this guy, or (2) try to weed him out of the gene pool.
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