Time & Perspective Quote by Albert Ellis

Ellis slices through the sentimental fog around romance with the brisk impatience of a clinician who’s heard every excuse twice. The first sentence offers a cool, almost bureaucratic framing: relationships as time-and-effort investments that a person could logically opt out of, like a second job or a gym membership. It’s not anti-love so much as anti-mystification. He’s reminding you that opting out could be a rational choice - and that alone punctures a culture that treats couplehood as the default setting.

Then he pivots to the real diagnosis: “But most people are afraid of rejection.” The subtext is that our stated devotion to commitment often disguises something less flattering: avoidance. If you’re terrified of rejection, a prolonged relationship can become a fortress. Staying attached isn’t always about intimacy; it’s also a strategy to reduce exposure to judgment, loneliness, and the brutal uncertainty of dating, sex, and social comparison. Ellis implies that many people don’t choose relationships so much as they cling to them, not because they’ve weighed the costs and benefits, but because the alternative requires emotional risk.

The context here is classic Ellis: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, built on the idea that suffering is amplified by irrational beliefs (“I must be approved,” “Rejection would be unbearable”). The line works because it flips the moral script. It’s not that modern people are too selfish for commitment; it’s that they’re often too scared for freedom.