CNN posted a great article by Judy McGuire on The Ambiguous Dater. Basically, the ambiguous dater is a person who doesn't put a label on a relationship. Dates may just be "hanging out" and whether or not this person is your boyfriend/girlfriend is anyone's guess.
A good friend of mine, "Carrie", was with an ambiguous dater for two years. Though for all intents and purposes they were a couple, the guy (we'll call him "Andy") refused to call her his girlfriend and repeatedly just said they were dating. As I was friends with Andy, I cornered him on chat one night about why he refused to give Carrie any sort of commitment. He said that he knew she wasn't the one and it wasn't going anywhere but he liked hanging out with her. He was also perfectly content with leaving her hanging indefinitely.
Like any good friend, I printed out the chat conversation and gave it to Carrie. She promptly broke up with Andy and is now happily married to a man who wasn't afraid to give her a commitment. As for Andy, he did almost the exact same thing to yet another friend of mine and continues to lead her on to this day (though she is actively looking elsewhere and he's her 'fallback').
So what is up with these ambiguous daters? They like being in a relationship without actually being in one. They thrive off the ambiguity and then get angry or suddenly change their minds (albeit temporarily) when challenged by another man without commitment issues.
A 2002 Rutgers University study gave a number of factors for why men may hold off on committing or avoid it altogether. Firstly, the study reports, men no longer feel the societal pressures to "settle down" that they did in the past. Society is much more tailored towards the single lifestyle. Even traditional institutions that encouraged marriage, such as churches and other places of worship, rarely put pressure on men to marry or commit.
Furthering this, society no longer looks down on co-habitation or child-rearing outside of wedlock. According to the Center for Disease Control, in the United States 38.5% of all births were born to unwed parents.
Of the other reasons, several were financial- including more fiscal responsibilities, wanting to avoid a divorce, wanting to be financially secure, etc. Another interesting reason was an overly idealistic fantasy of love or their "soulmate." This reason is why Andy can't seem to commit. He is waiting for the "woman of his dreams" and believes so firmly in happily ever after that he is inable to cope with real relationships that have ups and downs.
Regardless of why the person won't commit, the important thing is to remember that the only person you can change is yourself. If he won't commit to you, if she changes the subject every time you mention moving to the next step, there is nothing you can say or do that will change that person's feelings. The ambiguous dater is the only person who can change themselves and make the switch from a seasonal somebody to a soulmate.
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