Quote Originally Posted by birdgirl73
There are plenty of guys who can't or won't make a relationship legitimate,..... it takes a lack of self-respect on her part to get involved in a hopeless situation like that. Just as there are guys who can't commit, there are also women who constantly connect themselves to guys who can't and then spend their lives being frustrated and angry that the guy can't commit. ....On some unconscious level, she may well not want to be married, herself, or she wouldn't be choosing guys who don't think she's worthy of being married to.
Birdgirl is a genius. This is SO true but I could not put it so eloquently!

The way I see it from personal experience, having done EXACTLY this for YEARS, there's something in her past that she hasn't dealt with enough to feel self-secure. A fear of abandonment, a poor relationship with her own father, parents getting divorced when she was young- any of these things could make a woman subconsciously set her self up to fail at relationships over and over.

It sounds like she could benefit from talking to a therapist on her own too, but of COURSE you can't really suggest that

Either way, I'll bet there is a pattern here, and that her past relationships also fit into it.

On the positive, this is an age where a lot of us start looking more honestly and with some detachment at our pasts and do a lot of growing. When you are secure in your career and start having adult friendships and a new relationship with your own parents, your attitude towards romantic relationships naturally is going to mature as well and you should have a lot easier time of it trying to communicate honestly.