I think the biggest rush from relationships comes with getting to reinvent yourself. When you meet someone new, you can present a side of yourself or even put together a collage that is completely new, and present that as who you are. This person takes it at face value and in a way, you can be the person that you've always wanted to be. But the trick comes when the relationship deepens. Has the person you have assumed become hard to maintain the deeper the other person gets to know you? Can you become so much of this assumed person that the deepest part the other person will examine will also match what is being shown from the outside? This is where fear of intimacy (exposure) comes from. The fear that the person you've presented as your true self to another person will be discovered as not being true but as hiding something much more flawed. You become not only exposed as someone disappointing to others, but as someone who lies and can not be trusted, which is also disappointing to others. I also believe there is the fear of pity in there, that others will feel pity for you because you felt the need to present something bigger/better than who you really are. The fear of commitment comes after the fear of intimacy is conquered. At some point, the other person stops digging and assumes that what he/she has been presented is exactly what you are. While there is relief at this point, fear of commitment soon sets in. Can I maintain myself as this person forever? What if that means this is the person I have to be, with all these assumed ideas and thoughts and behaviors and desires, for the rest of my life? What if all the flaws that I have presented within this assumed identity are the ones that people who know me at this state/as this person will presume I have? So you know that if you didn't have to see this person (who has become a Constant--an outside conscious force that causes one to maintain a consistent image), you could reinvent yourself. Thus, the need to break off relationships and establish fresh ones. Those who tend to shy away from mass society and are labeled "introverts" tend to illustrate fear of commitment and intimacy across the boards in regard to relationships. For whatever reasons, they feel that they are so flawed inside, that they must reinvent themselves in order to assimilate without being humiliated. The motivation for reinvention is--once a person makes a mistake in human interaction, he retreats into his corner and analyzes why there was a mistake made. He will analyze which characteristics he must incorporate into his presentation of himself and his projected identity. Then, he will seek out new people with whom to relate, and show this reinvented self. This person will be able to interact smashingly with others, and perhaps be very charming, until there is another hitch in human interaction and this person fears that he will be perceived is flawed and a fraud (fear of intimacy/commitment). This person will again retreat, analyze what characteristics need to be eliminated or added, and again, find new people with whom to relate and present with his "new and improved" self. This is the cycle of the neurotic. He is afraid of Constants which would cause him to remain in a world that could hold a negative view of him without having any way to separate that perceived image with who he is inside (or can be). There are many levels of issues that deserve attention when dealing with the neurotic mind. First, this person needs to understanding that those who find flaws within him do not expect those flaws to also become constants. There seems to be a lack of trust between this person and the outside world. This person fears judgment and that, once branded with a negative character type, he will be condemned to it forever without a chance to prove himself to be different or better. This seems to also point to the presence of overly-critical adult figures or environments in the developmental years alternating with minimal or non-existent positive feedback. Possibly, the child only received attention for doing things wrong. Secondly, sure it's fun to continually reinvent yourself to new people, but at some point, you'd better settle on a connection that is most reflective of your inner self, rather than getting stuck in one in which you must maintain a presentation that is unlike yourself. That is the basis of why people become unhappy in marriages. Because they're passive-aggressive and have repressed feelings of trappedness over getting stuck being someone they no longer want to be because this other person expects them to be a certain person and they have to present that person consistently; they will often blame the other person rather than themselves for their predicament.


The neurotic mind is also afraid of Non-Constants--people who do not cause a person to maintain a constant image. These are people that this person does not see on a very regular basis (regular being defined as a time span within which he believes no changes within his projections will be perceived). This person is afraid that if he has changed negatively (physically, psychologically, idealistically) this other person (Non-Constant) would be able to see it immediately because she has had more distance for objectivity, and will register disappointment or another negative perception. So once this person breaks away from someone as a Constant, he is then fearful of this person when she turns into a Non-Constant.