DT Gals: Attracted to 'Bad Boys'?

[GenuineRisk]

Kev, you weren't kidding; this is a great thread (it was great chatting tonight, by the way, as always! The future love of your life will be lucky to get such a great conversationalist. )

I think the Bad Boy thing is something young women go through- maybe it's that there's something so very attractive in someone who doesn't seem to care whether he has you or not (so if you can just get him to fall in love with you, you've really accomplished something!), maybe it's the dark, sad secret you just know he's hiding (because you want to be Florence Nightengale, oh yes you do), maybe it's the "He'd be so great if just this one thing was fixed" (because you've confused a boyfriend with a fixer-upper apartment). And all that unattainability makes your heart pound (I read somewhere that infatuation is the intense desire to spend all your time around someone you know nothing about, and I think that's as good a description as I've ever read).

BUT- I think sometimes (many times) what we're attracted to on a gut, irrational level is perhaps not what is good for us, because, especially for women, on some level, we're trying to fix something else from our lives through our relationship. Lord knows I was going against some bad habits when I started dating my husband.

Kev, Randall, you guys are undervalued stocks. As the girls around you get a little older, and a little more tired of breaking their own hearts, you'll get grabbed up by someone who knows a good thing when she sees one and her friends will spend the rest of their lives saying, "Why can't I find someone like him?" Well, you could have, sweetie. But you were too busy breaking your heart over Mr. Dark and Brooding. Tough.

As for why men want bimbos, I think some guys just don't really want a partnership; they want eye candy. Hey, if that makes them happy, fine. If they're rich, they'll be able to get their eye candy forever, and as long as they don't delude themselves into thinking their eye candy is with them for anything other than their wallets, they'll be perfectly happy (I'm always amused by rich old guys who are shocked, shocked, when their young wives cheat on them. Come on; you got her taut skin and she got a Mercedes. Don't think she's with you for your personality. You're not with her for hers).

Me, I figure we're all eventually going to end up old and wrinkly and I want to still like talking to the person I'm old and wrinkly with, since conversation may be all we'll have left!

"He's got his arm around every man's dream
And crumbs in his beard from the seafood special
Oh can't you see my world is falling apart?
Baby, please, leave the biker, leave the biker, break his heart."