Fear of Commitment (FoC) is a normal relationship-induced phenomenon that has plagued scientists for years. FoC is characterized by intense avoidance of, and discomfort caused by, all activities which imply commitment within a relationship, such as the co-carrying of shopping bags (usually coupled with the co-pushing of shopping carts) at grocery stores, the unsolicited giving of flowers and chocolates, the lending and borrowing of car keys, the leaving of toothbrushes in the other party’s living quarters, and most significantly, the request to move in with the other party and/or to relocate with the other party.

These commitment-implying activities, broadly categorized as Systematic-but-Understated Creepy Klingers (SUCK) and Psychotically-Inane-Stalker-Suffocators (PISS), have been observed to lead to intense phobia associated with the prospect of commitment, typically matrimony. Although previously thought of as being more prevalent in men than in women, Fear of Commitment is found in all humans regardless of gender, culture, age, and sexual orientation; prior assumptions of higher FoC in men are propagated by self-report biases due to significantly higher bragging rates in men, especially while engaging in football-watching and beer-drinking behaviors.

In this paper we review the significant body of self-report, skin conductance, and penile arousal physiological studies, as well as recent intra-cranial data obtained from yelling marriage proposals to epileptic patients while their brain activity was recorded. Results from converging methods in the FoC literature are highly consistent with a neural theory of Fear of Commitment. We propose that an innate and modular region in the brain codes specifically for the Fear of Commitment. The FoC brain region (preliminary studies implicate the right temporal-parietal junction) responds selectively to stimuli which induce the FoC, and firing rate increases exponentially with the degree of commitment feared. Activity in the FoC region is normal and robust in all subjects, but is uniquely attenuated by a negative feedback system triggered by a temporally-specific lock-and-key mechanism generally known as The RIght guy/chiCK (TRICK). The Right guy/chICK is thus able to eliminate Fear of Commitment and result in the common significant trend, as dating time approaches infinity, towards Love And Matrimony Everlasting (LAME).