TPL #13: Choose Commitment Over Dopamine (Insights on the eve of marriage)

I’m getting married in two days.

My ( impending ) wife keeps getting the same question from her friends and coworkers.

“Are you scared?”

At first glance, it seems like a ridiculous question. She’s not a mail-order bride, preparing to be shipped off to some eclectic billionaire and having to endure awkward old-man sex for the next decade — she’s lived with yours truly for several years.

She knows all my quirks.

She’s already made it through the worst of my protein farts when I go too far over 200g per day…

There are no surprises here.

Marriage isn’t going to change anything about our day-to-day, so why should either of us be scared?

The people asking us this question are tapping into a deep-rooted human fear: the fear of commitment.

The monotony of the predictable.

We’re a species driven to seek out novel opportunities, and the thought of giving up the potential of new things is terrifying.

To be honest, I feel it.

When I look back on my years as a single man, there is an undeniable element of excitement.

The excitement of possibility where anything could happen.

You’d never know which swipe could end up resulting in something meaningful (or a fun few hours), or which event could be the one where you’d meet that special someone.

This trait isn’t limited to relationships.

New opportunities will always be more enticing than the familiar.

The drive for unexpected, novel experiences is the pull of dopamine, and it’s a defining characteristic of human behavior.

The following excerpt from “The Molecule of More,” which is in my top few books for insights into human behavior.

A defining part of the human condition is the internal conflict between being happy with what we have and that insatiable desire to have more. It’s a conflict between competing molecules in our brains.

When we’re experiencing enjoyment in the moment, we’re under the influence of the “here and now” molecules: serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin.

But when we fall for the lure of anticipation — for the fantasy of desire — we’re in the realm of dopamine.

Dopamine is commonly misunderstood as a “molecule of pleasure,” but it’s not that simple.

Here’s another excerpt from “The Molecule of More:”

This desire for the unexpected is called reward prediction error, and it’s why we find new things so intoxicating

When things become routine, there is no more reward prediction error, and dopamine isn’t released to provide the feeling of excitement we crave.

It’s at this point that the excitement of a new relationship, career, business, or any other endeavor fades from the passion of dopamine into the routine of the here and now.

And this is where many people will tap out, and exchange the depth that comes from commitment for the allure of the new, exciting opportunity.

It’s a costly mistake.

Think of the person who is always on to a new project. They pick it up for a few weeks, meddle around, and then they’re off to something new.

Always busy, never productive.

Or the person who can’t stay in a relationship longer than two months. They like the thought of commitment and starting a family, but they can’t endure the transition from dopaminergic passionate love to companionate here-and-now love.

The new will always be more enticing than the familiar.

But to excel and find fulfillment in our relationships and careers, we need to shift from the fantasy of anything being possible to engagement with reality and all its imperfections.

If you don’t, you’ll never cash in on the ROI that only the depth from commitment provides.

This dichotomy applies to all aspects of life, but it’s most easily seen through the lens of relationships.

When a relationship is new, it’s passionate. It’s full of dopamine-driven novelty and excitement. But this eventually subsides into companionate love: the predictable routine of the here-and-now molecules.

The difference between passionate love and companionate love is embracing reality as it is instead of living in excitement for the future.

Chasing the passionate is an attempt to hold on to something fleeting, to make something out of an idea that will only slip away.

To find fulfillment, you need to live in the world of what is over perpetually existing in the world of what could be.

This requires commitment.

It’s never been more important to value commitment because new has never been easier.

Fed up with your career? You can retrain with an online program and enter a new field in six months.

Not happy in your relationship? You can download eighty different dating apps and start putting your thumbs through a workout.

Hit a plateau with your training? You can choose from seven thousand different workout programs available on the internet.

It’s easy to perpetually avoid depth and float around from shallow pursuit to shallow pursuit, constantly chasing dopamine.

To exacerbate this, we also have the misguided idea that the right opportunities should feel easy.

“Find the right career, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” goes the saying.

Tim Grover, the trainer who has worked with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade, calls bullshit on this idea.

A key tenet of his approach is:

No path in life will be or should be easy all the time. Committing to anything will have its challenges. You’ll face the days you don’t want to show up and put in the work—the days where the work isn’t fun.

The perpetual dopamine chaser will stop here and exchange their commitment for the shiny potential of something new. Until that thing also gets hard.

Then it’s on to the next thing.

Committing to something is scary.

It’s saying that I’m going to be in this for the long haul, through thick and thin.

Embracing commitment is saying that you’ll choose to live in reality, with all its difficulties and imperfections, over the exhilarating fantasy of anything being possible.

The allure of potential is exciting, but you eventually have to cash it in for something real.

I don’t expect marriage to be easy.

But the work will be worth it.

I’m choosing to commit — choosing to trade the fantasy of anticipation for companionate love. It may be less thrilling than dopaminergic passion, but companionate love has a key advantage.

It’s real.  

The allure of dopamine can steal your life if you let it.

It can prevent you from experiencing something real that can only come from commitment.

Am I scared to get married?

Maybe a little bit. Every commitment is scary.

Commitments close doors and kill opportunities.

The route of the word “decide” means to “cut off.”

When you make a decision, you cut yourself off from all the other potential opportunities.

But this is exactly what makes commitments meaningful.

And what’s the alternative?

To live a wishy-washy, lukewarm existence with one foot in and one foot out.

I’ll take the challenges of commitment over that.

I’ll choose to live in the here and now of companionate love over the seduction of dopamine.

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