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" Making a romantic commitment is like riding the Boomerang at Great Escape -- it&amp;#039;s too expensive, it takes forever to get there, and there&amp;#039;s always that moment right at the top when you think, I am going to die. Okay, commitment isn&amp;#039;t exactly like the Boomerang: It has no height requirement.  Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong. I&amp;#039;m a born romantic. I like to cry. I often do. But two months before I was to marry Julie, I started feeling -- something. I couldn&amp;#039;t figure it out. Zoning out at work, ambling into traffic. It wasn&amp;#039;t until I felt my heart racing in a stress-free yoga class that I realized what was up: I was freaking out.  Whether it&amp;#039;s walking down the aisle or just picking up a toothbrush for her place, men freak. And it can be a jarring journey for the women in our lives -- you may well wonder why your once-steady man is now a raving lunatic.  It&amp;#039;s a craziness that sets in when we sense we&amp;#039;re slipping closer to commitment. But just because we&amp;#039;re freaking out doesn&amp;#039;t mean we&amp;#039;re having doubts about where the romance is headed. Like most men, I knew what I was doing: marrying Julie was absolutely the right move.   Said my heart. My head was another story. That&amp;#039;s where the freak-out started.  First, I heard voices. Many were mine: Now you&amp;#039;ll never rough it in Ghana. Then again, some belonged to that enemy of romance: my pals.   &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t tie yourself down,&amp;quot; said Mark -- actually, pleaded Mark.  &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you just move in with her?&amp;quot; asked Robert.   &amp;quot;Go to grad school.&amp;quot; (That one was my dad.)   And leave it to Randy to say, &amp;quot;You could do better.&amp;quot;   Could I? Now I would never know for sure.   That leads to the second reason guys bug out. I think we&amp;#039;re programmed, genetically, to want to spread our seed -- uh, screw around. And that&amp;#039;s why when it looked like my seed-spreading days were over, I found myself in the street comparing babes to my bride-to-be. She&amp;#039;s taller, I was thinking. She has bigger boobs. And worse, I started to push the boundaries a little: One night I was talking to a female friend who had red hair -- the same shade I tell Julie she&amp;#039;d look good with -- and I noticed my right hand lingering on her back. That leads me to the third reason why men wig out: We&amp;#039;re afraid we&amp;#039;ll fail at monogamy, that we don&amp;#039;t have what it takes to keep it zippered. It&amp;#039;s a big challenge, a long hard road. Every man who makes a real commitment is embarked on a long and dangerous journey, bracing to face enemies he can&amp;#039;t foresee. And he wonders, Can I pull this off?  My freak-out wasn&amp;#039;t so bad, though I was not the only one who noticed my hand on Red&amp;#039;s back. But Julie wasn&amp;#039;t sucked in by the undertow of my freak-out wave; she rode out the storm instead, which is why she enjoys the calm we now share. She somehow knew -- as all women should know -- it&amp;#039;s during that neurotic time that a man comes to grips with the fact that he can survive the long, monogamous journey ahead. As for Julie and I, we just celebrated our fifth anniversary. We&amp;#039;ve had our ups and downs, of course, but nothing quite as rocky as my commitment-to-romance jitters. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a45/psycho-before-serious/?click=rel>