You know her.
She is the queen of first dates. She has a coterie of close girlfriends with whom she dissects in detail every humiliating date with the bad boys she adores. She's the one who has been happily engaged for half a decade or more with no wedding in sight. Or she rebounds from one long-term relationship to another without ever stopping to reflect. She tells you that all the good men are taken. You tell her she's too picky. She replies, "Why do I have to settle?"

Some might call her an independent woman. But Elina Furman, author of 'Kiss and Run: The Single, Picky, and Indecisive Girl's Guide to Overcoming Her Fear of Commitment,' calls her commitment phobic. Apparently women are not only bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan, but they've adopted the same bad behaviors that women have long attributed to men.

"There are a lot of woman in their mid-20s and -30s doing everything to sabotage their relationships," Furman says, from dismissing men before getting to know them better to playing the field. Even women in their 40s and older -- who have been married, divorced and have raised their children -- are reveling in their newfound freedom.

In the past 30 years, society has changed, giving women more options for work, family and relationships. As a result, women are more independent than ever. At 47 million strong, according to the U.S. Census, single women are the fastest growing segment of the American population. And with society more accepting of their single status, women are free to pursue whatever choices they want to make. However, conflicts can arise from all this newfound freedom: More women are living life on their own terms but finding it harder to compromise.

Furman says she knows these commitment-phobic women well because she used to be one of them. "I was in a long-term relationship. We never even talked about marriage or moving in together. It never came up once in all the time we were together. What's wrong with me that I would be with someone for that long and not think about it as a possibility?"

When that relationship ended, Furman says she became a serial dater. Eventually, she was dissatisfied with her relationships with men. "Every day I would struggle with wanting to stay and wanting to leave. Is this person right for me?" Furman says she started to wonder what was at the root of her behavior. Like any good researcher, the author, (who previously homed into another lifestyle trend with her book 'Boomerang Nation') began to ask questions, eventually interviewing 100 women about their views on relationships. "I needed answers," she says. "I started interviewing women. I talked to psychologists."

The work eventually helped her to get at the root of her issues. It was, she says, a cathartic experience and fodder for the book. "Other women needed the help as well. It validates our fears. So many women wrote in who had the same issues."