need convincing my sister in law to leave her boyfriend

[navywife]

so, the title kind of says it all, but i should really explain why.

 

it's not that i don't like her boyfriend/fiance, it's that i don't like him AS her boyfriend/fiance. in the year and a half they've been going out, he has had 2 jobs lasting at the longest a month each. he used to get unemployment and have a lot of money from coming back from iraq with the national guard. but now that all of that money is gone, he's been living off her hard earned money from a middle management position at a store in a mall which just recently went bankrupt. so very shortly she'll be out of a job as well. anyway, they decided to get joint banking account, (why i will never know) and twice now he has incurred almost $350 in overdraft fees. so not only is he spending all of her money, but he's spending money she hasn't even earned yet. at any rate, now they are engaged because he volunteered to go back to iraq this spring. and if they are married before he goes, they will make a lot more money from it, (basically, i believe this is why they're getting married in the first place) but it's not only that, they're gonna do a civial service before he leaves cause that's all they have time for, and he'll be gone 18 months! so they're gonna be married for MAYBE 2-3 months before he leaves for 18, and do you really expect her to be happy with that? i was married for 6 weeks before my husband left for bootcamp with the navy and i was miserable. anyway, she called me yesturday and told me she was leaving him because he got all those overdrafts again, and she told him if he did it twice she was leaving him, cause that's just ridiculous. well, i'm talking to him online and he said they "talked it over" meaning they talked about how stressed she was, not aobut the money, and now everything is cool. how does that work?? how do i tell her she needs to leave him without hurting her? she's my best friend not to mention my sister in law. help!

[HokeyReligions]

You can't. All you can do is be there for her and not judge her. She has to work this out herself. It's hard to watch people we care about get hurt, but if we really care about them then that is what we do. You can offer a suggestion, but do it by letting her know that no matter what her decision she won't lose you.

[navywife]

so i did that. i told her that no matter what she wants, i'm there for her. she told me that he makes her happy more often than he pisses her off, so i asked what he does that makes her happy. that way if she still was slightly upset, she'd be thinking about the things she loves about him, and that always makes me feel better. ok so, we start and she tells me she loves his smile. ok, that's pretty good, but come on, who doesn't love a smile? that was a cop out answer--everyone says that. she i kept pushing her for unique things he's done. for a time when he made her feel so amazing (aside from proposing) and she told me that he got her favorite flowers for her birthday. ok, that's pretty good too, but come on, how overdone is flowers? and he got her that last year. so i used the examples: i love the way my husband doesn't always hold my hand, he escorts me. or, i love that if i take all the blankets, even though i tell him to take them back, he'd rather freeze that possibly make me cold. and, she really...came up with nothing. after a while she didn't want to do this anymore, which was understandable. this was all done on msn and little did i know that he was right there, reading everything i said and she said, so he got pissed at her for not being able to think of anything, and before we log off to go to bed she tells me she's just gonna sit there and cry for a while. so what do i do now? she says she wants to be with him so i try to help her remind herself why she wants to be with him--she says she wants to leave him, and really, i just listen then. i don't try to tell her "yes you have to leave" but i think, if you have to sit and cry over the fact you might be leaving him--that it upsets you that much to leave him--doesn't that kind of indicate deep down you don't really want to leave him?