The dating game isn’t a particularly fun one, it’s a long drawn out process which seems like nobody ever really wins. A friend of mine recently compared it to shoe shopping, you must trawl through many racks of shoes before finding the perfect pair and then it probably won’t be in your size, or will hurt your feet, maybe take time to wear in, or become forgotten when you discover a better pair.
Trying to find the right guy often goes through a slight period of self harm for most women who are inevitably attracted to the ‘bad guy’. Not necessarily ‘bad’ because they’re in to crime, drugs or other undesirable behaviors (e.g. Pete Doherty) but because they’re unobtainable or renowned for messing other women around (e.g. Jude Law). Everybody knows a guy like that. you know, the type that is usually quite hot, surrounded by rumours of past relationships, and seems like a lot of fun but mysteriously won’t call you for days on end.
The problem with these relationships (if you can ever call them that) is that men are fully capable of remaining unattached to the situation throughout, can walk away relatively unscathed and never worry about messing anybody around. Women, on the other hand, despite feeling like they can be as emotionally detached, always end up worse off. We seem to keep going with the self harm under the false illusion that you’ll be the girl that finally tames the un-tamable man.
Personally, I blame Hollywood Romcoms, Sex and the City and Disney movies for filling our heads with romanticized views of relationships. For the majority of Sex and the City, Mr. Big was one of “those” men and we’ll all know how that ended up. I also feel like modern technology has lead us to be slightly more obsessive, for example, it’s not just about waiting for the phone to ring when you’re at home, it’s about whether he’s text you, Myspaced/Facebooked you, or emailed.
Myspace and Facebook have definitely got a lot to answer for, it provides a whole new medium of obsession on which you can check out all the other girls who’ve messaged him in the past week (admit it, you’ve all done some snooping). But how do we get beyond the ‘bad guy’ stage? When do we suddenly realise that it actually is much more worthwhile to stick to the nice guys who will contact you and not send confusing signals? And if you’re in the trap, can you end it before he does?
Laura Street is the editor of The Bag Lady and thinks Carl Barat is more attractive than Pete Doherty.