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I have a young friend in a situation that I don't understand, so I was hoping one of the young women here could shed some light on this for me. A 24 yo girl has lived with the same guy 4 different times since 18. He has always screwed around on her and two times she left on her own and last time he threw her out for another woman. Like usual, after the new girl finds out he's a douche and leaves, he begs her to come back...and she does. Her mother and father hate this guy. She pays ALL this guys bills and has nothing left for herself. The guy makes jokes to his buddies what a great deal he has with her. She pays his bills and cooks, cleans and has sex with him and he still gets to do his thing. And she knows he brags about this! Now she just found out he is cheating on her again, with one of her own friends. She won't visit home and ignores mom and dads calls. She tells everyone her life is great, even though they know better. She hasn't talked to her best friend in a year. The old BF has waited for her to get tired of the BS and come back to no avail. The old BF is a friend and asked me for advice, but non of it makes any sense to me unless she just has really low self esteem or likes taking care of a loser. Any clue why a young good looking girl would put herself through this? I told him I think he is wasting his time, move on. Ideas on this?
Hmmm she's in love with who she wants him to be and has very low self esteem.
She probably thinks this is the best she can get or she simply loves the guy and hopes he will change. This is not really gender specific as I know many men who went through similar situations with women. Your friend is better off not worrying about it and moving on because no one is gonna make anyone do anything they don't want to do. The girl will eventually either reach a breaking point and move on or she will continue to stay with the dude until he finds someone better.
This is not particular to young girls. It's simple psychology.
She has already committed a lot of her time and energy to this guy, and is not willing to see all her investment "go to waste", and thus she tries to hold on to the slim hope of the guy turning into something else. She is afraid that if she lets go of the guy, she will have to spend another 6 years on someone else and it may not even end well. At this point, she has already lost too much and she is afraid of losing the guy which would mean she lost absolutely everything. It is an illusion of having something merely caused by you having tried to create it, and this is why break ups and failed marriages are such traumatic experiences - you feel like you have lost everything even though you didn't have anything to begin with despite investing a lot into it.
The only way to help her is to tell her the brutal truth that the guy will never be hers and explain to her that it is just psychology messing with her head. Maybe send her to a psychiatrist.
You see many men and women these days desperately holding onto their relationships despite suffering mentally and physically. It's sad, really.
This is a classic example of how abuse is not always physical. She has exiled herself from Her family because he has probably told her something like "they don't really care about you."
She also probably doesn't want to be alone.
What was her familyife like? Are her parents still married? Is she close to her father? Is she from a region that tends to marry young, like the south or rural areas? All of these things could give us a better clue as to what is going on in her head.
Although as I often try to explain on this board, human behavior is not always rational.
This is a classic example of how abuse is not always physical. She has exiled herself from Her family because he has probably told her something like "they don't really care about you."
She also probably doesn't want to be alone.
What was her familyife like? Are her parents still married? Is she close to her father? Is she from a region that tends to marry young, like the south or rural areas? All of these things could give us a better clue as to what is going on in her head.
Although as I often try to explain on this board, human behavior is not always rational.
If you really want an answer, OP, it would be in the family background info, like what CCL here is asking. Something about how she was raised factors into this. And it's rare for women in their early 20's to even think in terms of how much time they've invested in someone, because it's so easy to move on at that age, so I don't agree with that part of it. This guy has some kind of appeal for her, she obviously really likes him, and discounts the negatives, and doesn't realize there are great guys out there who would treat her well.
I knew several men at that age who married early and kept saying they might as well stay with their wife (in marriages that went sour very fast, within months), because there were no other options. They truly believed that, which sounds incredible (both were good-looking and accomplished), but this is how some young people think. I actually heard one guy say, "If I weren't married to [X], all there is, is women who wear curlers in their hair all the time." He was talking to a couple of single women his wife's age who had beautiful long, straight hair, no evidence of curlers, when he said this. Go figure. Some people at that age seem to believe they've found the only single person on Earth who shares their interests and lifestyle. I don't know how to explain it, but it's a very real phenomenon. These guys did eventually divorce; one--sooner, the others hung on until completely demoralized and beaten down. That's a shame.
If you really want an answer, OP, it would be in the family background info, like what CCL here is asking. Something about how she was raised factors into this. And it's rare for women in their early 20's to even think in terms of how much time they've invested in someone, because it's so easy to move on at that age, so I don't agree with that part of it. This guy has some kind of appeal for her, she obviously really likes him, and discounts the negatives, and doesn't realize there are great guys out there who would treat her well.
She does not consciously "think" that way; otherwise she would have realized the investment is a sunk cost. This is all psychology working in the background on a subconscious level.
The guy most likely doesn't have any appeal apart from having been with her through her entire adulthood and thus establishing a deep level of familiarity with her. When the girl is depressed, she goes back to what she is familiar with, and guess what, it's this guy. She fears having to deal with an unfamiliar and uncertain dating world, and she has reasons for that since she never had a chance to explore the outside world due to having been acquainted with the guy since 18. He has become such an integral part of her life that removing him from her life would be unimaginable to her, and again, because she does not have experience. She has even become emotionally dependent on him.
All of this thinking is on a subconscious level.
A very similar phenomenon happened when the slaves were freed after the Civil War. Many of the slaves could not part ways with their masters because they had become emotionally attached to and dependent on them.
If you wonder why I brought up slavery, it is because the girl is mentally a slave to the guy at this point.
She does not consciously "think" that way; otherwise she would have realized the investment is a sunk cost. This is all psychology working in the background on a subconscious level.
The guy most likely doesn't have any appeal apart from having been with her through her entire adulthood and thus establishing a deep level of familiarity with her. When the girl is depressed, she goes back to what she is familiar with, and guess what, it's this guy. She fears having to deal with an unfamiliar and uncertain dating world, and she has reasons for that since she never had a chance to explore the outside world due to having been acquainted with the guy since 18. He has become such an integral part of her life that removing him from her life would be unimaginable to her, and again, because she does not have experience. She has even become emotionally dependent on him.
All of this thinking is on a subconscious level.
A very similar phenomenon happened when the slaves were freed after the Civil War. Many of the slaves could not part ways with their masters because they had become emotionally attached to and dependent on them.
If you wonder why I brought up slavery, it is because the girl is mentally a slave to the guy at this point.
It's called "Stockholm Syndrome". That's the first thing I thought when I read the OP.
There is nothing you can do other than be there for her once he dumps her for good.
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