My friend and I have been mates since we were teenagers. She is from a culture where people stay at home until they leave to get married. My friend has never married or lived with a man or even had a proper long term boyfriend in all her adult life. She has had many short-lived attractions that ended with her feeling shut off and gaining loads of weight and almost in a cocoon to keep the world out.
When she turned 45, she decided she was going to change things so she lost 3 stones in weight and looked bloody fantastic. She then joined various online dating apps and has had about 4 deep attractions to men despite going on loads of dates. These men have all refused to commit and/or had issues with other women and eventually have either left or just kept her around for convenience. The longest 'relationship' she had was with a guy who is up to his neck in trouble with his business partner and has previously said he didn't know if he could love her although she kept seeing him. This went on for just over a year on a once a week basis if she was lucky! According to her, all these failed romances have contacted her a few weeks after to get back in touch. I haven't said anything but I know that it is she who has been in touch with these men first. She bounces between giving them chances and then if one disappoints her, she falls back on another one of the failed romances to get her through so to speak. Even if they have treated her badly, she never cuts the ties with them. I get that she is lonely and desperate to have a relationship but getting frustrated with the 'cycle'.
The latest is she met a guy online, supposedly never married but has 4 kids in his home country and the ex-partner has supposedly left the kids with her parents to work abroad and he has left them to work here. He said he hoped to have the kids to live here with him at some point. She had two dates with him in which he seemed to pushing things along too fast and she slept with him on the third date in her house with no one else on the premises (which worried the hell out of me as he could have been violent or anything!). Anyway..... she then saw him a week later and she paid for a hotel for them to stay at. By all accounts he was super attentive etc, hugging, kissing, saying all the right things and then whilst they were talking, she happened to mention she had to take out an extra mortgage loan for essential repairs on the house and so wasn't financially free. Apparently, he started to get quite angry when she said this and the following couple of days he was really cool with her. Last weekend she got a text saying he had met someone else and slept with them so probably not a good idea to carry on. She is gutted but then she immediately texted the once-a-week guy and has arranged to meet up with him.
I don't know how to say that I think she is playing with fire. She made all these excuses for this guy who got annoyed that she wasn't as solvent as he thought (she thinks he was comparing his life circumstances and was angry about how his life turned out) whereas I think he thought he had a safe bet - desperate middle-aged woman prepared to do anything to make it work, with her own house, good job etc whilst he has no home, no permanent job etc. And now she is going to go back to the other one who basically said he doesn't want a committed relationship and didn't want to let her in or share. She has even hinted that she is hoping and expecting to hear from the one who just dumped her following the financial conversation as she thinks he has issues but can't seem to make the link between him being hot and heavy until he discovered she wasn't as minted as he thought so he dumped her.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to listen to it over and over again. I want the best for her but I don't know how to deal with someone who is desperate for a relationship to the point that they gloss over the inconvenient truths and who seems to be in love with the idea of love even if it is harmful to her emotional/financial/psychological health. I am genuinely worried about her and part of me just wants to blurt out the unadorned truth but I don't want to hurt her either.
How can I phrase it in a non-judgy sounding way that she needs to back off, get to know these men before diving in and engage her brain a bit more?
I want to be a good friend and I love her dearly and would be thrilled if she met someone decent and nice but she keeps rushing headlong into these guys who are 'unavailable' or have 'issues' and she seems to relish the drama. Help!