Why Do People Have Trouble Committing?

Many of us don’t focus hard enough (or long enough) on what makes a relationship truly satisfying and sustainable over a lifetime. Being more forgiving of a partner’s faults or more flexible about another person’s annoying habits may be difficult, but the ability to compromise matters. Instead, many of us are looking to wherever the grass appears to be greener.

Love, it seems, has torn a page out of the economics textbook. It’s a classic case of maximizers versus satisfiers. Maximizers are always looking for the newest and best thing available. If, one thinks, I stop looking for the best possible option, if I accept this person’s flaws, I won’t have the best partner I could possibly have.

Those are the people who might have trouble committing to anything, says Young, “whether it’s a house, a stereo or a person, because they are constantly looking for ways to tweak it — to make it better.”

On the other hand, the satisfier is someone who recognizes the things that make something — or someone — great, and doesn’t keep looking for something bigger or better.