Fear of Commitment

yes @mary, that has been my struggle with commitment.
my radar has been very flawed all my life due to the toxic environment i grew up in, and i just could not seem to get it right.
i couldn't see the train coming until i got plowed by it.
of the years of work and especially the last couple years of getting to know, understand, and honor my feelings, have i been able to identify and avoid abusive or disrespectful partners.

so, my confidence in my ability to understand what's good for me in a partner, and choose accordingly, is much higher.

i don't feel that old fear, if i do it's more like an old trigger feeling and not a pervasive thing.

Yes, I have to work on my radar.  How were you able to identify or understand the feelings?  I'm just blinded by the light.  I know I am choosing based on my "role models" but how do you see it before it's too late?

honestly, i had to take a very rudimentary approach and learn more about feelings, the different nuances of emotion- like the list of emotions i posted here in the support forum when i first got here.

in conjunction, i did inner child work to identify when i had a block of pain or some negativity in me that was heavy but that i couldn't identify. the list helped me coax it out of myself, to figure out what the narrative was and how i was reliving old hurt.

it was a process of actually doing some homework inside myself, and setting time and privacy aside to address feelings (which i usually feel in my body first, i think... so if i get a tightness or an ache i have to pay attention to it before i spin into coping in ways that don't address it).

it's just a long process and one i try to be diligent at. but i don't always feel like feeling. trust me. lol.

for me, it also goes beyond being able to sense a dangerous person, and into how i am habitually responding, internally.
what does my little juniper think she needs to do?
placate? tolerate? smooth over? mediate? convince someone that it doesn't need to be this way?
is she somehow bound to stay out of an obligation?
does she just feel like it's part of the package?

and what are my reflexive actions? go toe to toe?

over time i was able to identify things that kept me stuck in he pattern.

nowadays, when i meet a mean person, i just say "uh nope" and there is no hook. i know it's bad because it feels bad and mean behavior is not my problem to work with. i don't have any need to sort that stuff out i just like to go away from it, as it should be.

What you are choosing is a reflection of yourself, of your own commitment, of your fear.  It took me a long time to realize this. 
I thought the trust and commitment would just appear if I could just find someone that would be committed to me.  I need to change my own thinking, trust myself, and trust that I can commit.  Without that, I will keep choosing what is inside of me. 

I'm FA not DA, not sure if that matters in this context, but I think for me when I fear commitment it comes in part from a fear that I will not be able to keep that commitment or will regret it. I pride myself on not making promises I can't keep.

If I look at my most successful longest-lasting relationship, he didn't push for anything and we only really "committed" to communicating well and caring about each other. The biggest commitment type thing we did was live together, which was gradual and involved conversations about just trying it out and having no expectations and how we were free to decide at any point that that situation wasn't working.

Like you, I also don't trust my ability to choose a good partner.

As for losing freedom, yes maybe that too, since I would actually lose certain freedoms, like if someone wants me to commit early on to not dating other people I may do it but then have the weight of knowing that now if I think I might want to date anyone else I will have to end the relationship. The person I had the good long-term serious relationship I mentioned above didn't even ask me to do that. And living with someone you usually lose a ton of freedom and privacy, even just things like the freedom to come home late with no explanation. As for something like marriage, I don't know, that idea seems too ridiculous to me to even consider it, however divorce is a thing so even if I ever married someone (extremely unlikely) I would probably be like, "This doesn't mean this is permanent!"