A friend and I were talking today about her roommate, who settles for dating a douche who doesn't seem to like her enough to be respectful or pay attention to her. Said roommate is very pretty, very smart, and generally kick ass. I know women like this too, and one who even sits around hoping that the guy will come back some day after leaving. What's up with that? I'm not saying guys don't do this too, but it seems less common.

We decided that there are two things at play here. The first is the inability of these women to understand that their autonomy is totally obscured by the men in their lives. Someone else is in control and dictates much of their life decisions, or even the minor choices. I can't say why they might not see this, but I think it's fair to say that in a lot of cases it's that they don't know anything different, or don't have a wide range of relationship experience (or therapists or counselors). In fact, it's hard to even know that this autonomy obscuring is even going on until you step out from behind it. Someone very close to me had the courage to step out of her relationship and explore every choice she could make on her own, and it was liberating, despite the pain inflicted to get there.

The second thing, and this isn't always present in every case, is a lack of self-esteem or perception of self-worth. Everyone has been there before, where you question why you exist if you can't be with a specific person, or people in general. That's a hard one to work through. Some people never do. A friend of mine dated her high school sweetheart through college and for years after that. They never dated anyone else. In their mid-20's, they got married, and divorced a month later. I still feel a sense of regret for her, that she never explored her options when it was easiest... in college. Since her divorce she had to do the bar scene and online dating, which never yields the opportunities she could've had in college. It's not even that you need to get meaningful relationships out of that period in your life, as much as you need to learn and understand what it is that you need; To build a profile of people that might be ideal. You need data to do that, and you don't get it without exploration.

In most cases, people do eventually work through it. My friend's roommate is in her mid-20's though, and you'd think she would have it figured out by now.

And of course you wonder, why would you care anyway? Well, because that's what friends do! It's not us judging our friends, it's us looking out for them.