behavior
April 19, 2024
Minutes To Read: 1

What is commitment aversion?

You know that guy you hang out with a couple of times, and then when the relationship started to show signs of a more serious commitment, it just seemed to crumble into the atmosphere? Stop feeling hate for him. The poor thing may have a genetic alteration that prevents him from making love commitments.

Joking aside, a group of researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found what may (in part) explain the panic that some men seem to feel about taking on a serious relationship. Changes in the AVPR1A gene would be responsible for a carrier's predisposition to maintain only sporadic and fleeting relationships, feeling trapped when in a monogamous relationship.

The study, led by young researcher Hasse Walum, was published in the American Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and demonstrates that this gene works, among other things, by helping the body regulate blood levels. vasopressin in the brain. This substance is associated with male aggressiveness as well as the ability to develop emotional or affective bonds.

The research method was to interview a total of 552 pairs of twins, aged 37 to 64, who shared a house with a woman. The researchers detected mutations in AVPR1A in 220 of the total volunteers.

This group claimed to be more unhappy within the relationship than those who had no changes in the gene. About 50% of the carriers said they thought of ending the relationship. Of these, 48% did not consider themselves married.

Remember that all respondents lived with a woman, which shows how much the tendency to polygamy increases in the carriers of the mutation. Among those men who did not have it, the rate dropped to a mere 17 percent.

Despite the genetic evidence pointed out by the Swedish study, the major determinant of difficulty making commitments It is still the family culture and the environment in which man was raised. Some people, having seen discussions or embarrassing situations that occurred between parents during childhood and adolescence, end up really traumatized and, when they become adults, start to dismiss appointments that can lead to marriage.

Values passed to man throughout life are also determining when he needs to decide whether or not to enter into a serious relationship. Some research in this sense demonstrates that external factors are capable of activating or deactivating the influence of genes on human personality. The name of this new type of science is?epigenetics?, a branch that promises to decipher the influence of the environment on the genetics of each individual.