Fear of commitment Fear of commitment In self-help literature, fear of commitment is the avoidance of long-term partnership or marriage. The concept is often much more pervasive, affecting school, work, and home life as well. The term "commitmentphobia" was coined in the popular self-help book "Men Who Can't Love" in 1987. Following criticism of the perceived sexist idea that only men were commitmentphobic, the authors provided a more gender balanced model of commitmentphobia in a later work, " He's Scared, She's Scared" (1995). When aversion to marriage involves fear it's called gamophobia. A hatred of marriage is called "misogamy". Besides the common criticisms
Fear processing in the brain to study in a clinical setting as opposed to mechanisms that underlie long-term potentiation (LTP), in which synaptic plasticity is induced by electrical or chemical stimulation of lateral amygdala circuits. LTP is important for fear processing because it strengthens the synapses in neural circuits. These strengthened synapses are how long-term memory is developed and how fear is developed. Synaptic input can be strengthened when activity in the presynaptic neuron co-occurs with depolarization in the postsynaptic neuron. This is known as Hebbian synaptic plasticity. This hypothesis is especially appealing as an explanation for how simple associative learning, such as that taking