You’ve dated guys for a long time—long after you stopped liking them—because you didn’t want to hurt them. The idea of the pain they’d feel after you dumped them made you feel so guilty, that you just stuck around. Of course, the longer you wait to end it, the more it hurts them when you do.
What is it about women that just makes us a little more on it? I don’t know. What I do know is that, because there can be that delay for men, there are always those awkward years for most women when they’ll date dudes who just don’t yet have their lives together.