Everyone has commitments to their date(s)/significant others/spouses. The question is, at what level of commitment do you become twitchy? With each commitment you make, you give up a little but of future autonomy. A commitment is an obligation to do something in the future, something which you now no longer have a choice in doing. Well, not completely true. You still have a choice, but you have your conscience and other increased consequences to deal with should you choose differently than the commitment you made. It's the loss of autonomy that scares people. You are no longer as free as you once were.
So how of your freedom are you willing to give up for your security? That's the trade-off. You make commitments and your partner makes a commitment, even if unspoken. Your partner's commitment should be giving you a sense of comfort and happiness that you previously received from your sense of freedom. Since it isn't a zero-sum game, the idea is that the sense of security from the commitments is greater than the sense of security from freedom.
Each person is different in the amount of and scale of comfort that they get from their freedom and different commitments. Hence, Ms. Burgundy doesn't really want to receive or give any more commitment than she will show up where she says she is going to show up. The freedom provides more comfort than the commitment does.
Me, I like knowing that I will have an emotional walking stick there without looking. I like the security that stronger commitments bring.
In the end, the commitments are no better than the people making them though. Some people cannot bring themselves to trust others to keep their commitments. And so people opt for more freedom in the theory that the commitments aren't really worth much anyway.
Enough of the theorizing though…
Hmmm, I was going to give some personal thoughts on commitment and my own current situation and commitments, but they aren't coalescing into something as coherent as I would like yet, so I am going to leave that off for now. Ask me again ina few days if you really want to hear it.