The harsh reality of dating is that you’re never really sure how many chances you’ll get at finding your soul mate or “the one.” For some of us, “the one” is whoever we’re with at the moment. Others go searching for “the one” their whole lives and never find him or her. However, if you’re searching and you finally find something good you’re likely to hold onto it — even past its expiration date. Why? Because of fear that you might not be able to find anyone else.
Think about your dating history (or lack thereof), it’s likely very hard to identify someone that you can see a future with unless you’re desperate. Removing all the desperate people from the conversation you have to factor in a lot of things. You wonder if you can stay in the same room with the person for longer than a few hours, you wonder if you can stomach seeing them on consecutive days, you wonder if you can imagine yourself having sex with them… over and over again, and there’s a whole list of other things to wonder. Now should you happen to find someone who doesn’t make you wonder, you settle down with them and begin a relationship. And then when things start to go south, you wonder, will you be able to find something like this again?
For women this question is a compounded by the fact that it’s a simple numbers game at play. Therefore, in addition to trying to find a man that meets all of their expectations they know that there’s a small chance that there will be another man who meets them, let alone exists. That fear that rises within women is what makes them stay in a situation long after it’s obvious it isn’t going anywhere. I shouldn’t speak for women, but from my point of view it seems many would rather stay in a situation hoping it will change than start over with someone else. It could be that some people (male or female) don’t like to be alone and so they choose to stay in a relationship that’s not going forward because it’s better than being by themselves. It could be a myriad of reasons but the root of them all is fear.
The ironic part of this situation is that there’s not much anyone can do to stop someone from being in a situation they shouldn’t be in. The only person that’s going to get a woman to break up with a guy when the relationship is going nowhere is herself. While it’s hard to be friends with a woman in a dead-end relationship, it’s better to be friends with her than to leave her out there by herself. That’s advice for friends and a warning for said women as well because when you stay in relationships that aren’t going anywhere and alienate your friends you’re barreling towards disaster. When that relationship ends, in addition to it being hard to find someone else to date, you won’t even have friends to lean on during that time. As friends all we can do is be supportive and constructive. We may not know the exact reason why she’s staying in that relationship but the thing we know for sure is that she’s not going to get out of it until she wants to get out of it.
