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Yo I was 16 when I met my first “bad boy.” He was 17, rode a motorcycle, had shoulder-length hair, and wore vintage Levi's. He was a heartbreaker. He had been expelled from a boys' boarding school and was attending a college near my school in Kensington.
A friend introduced me to him when I got off the coach who took us to play lacrosse. He was against the wall smoking a cigarette and he blew the smoke in my face. He looked at me and I at him. That was it.
It was exhilarating. When he wasn't running away from his rich, hippie-artist parents who wanted to punish him for skipping school, we were in his room in Kennington listening to Lou Reed. Soon I was moving every weekend. We had crazy parties when his parents were at their country house and drank all their expensive wine.
Everything in my world changed after that. Because? From then on, I always went for the “bad boys,” and they have been the bane of my life ever since. I think I only had another kind of boyfriend once, someone I would call “Steady Eddie,” and I just couldn't deal with it. I needed unpredictability. Those, however, are never the marrying type, although I have often wanted to marry them. Instead, they are brooding and complicated, handsome but tough, charming but commitment-phobic, and so dysfunctional they could practically live on the therapist's couch.
There's always the chance that you can change them, of course, or even save them from their bad behavior. I have tried it many times. Above all, they are charming and even when they behave terribly (or have no talent other than charisma) you can't help but love them. And looking at the current pop culture landscape, many of us can't resist them either. See Strictlythe tattooed reality star Pete Wicks, or the upper-class lothario Rupert Campbell-Black in the recent Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals. They are a drastic departure from the beloved “softbois” of Generation Z: delicate and pleasant young people like Timothée Chalamet or Tom Holland.
Wicks has been involved in high-profile sexting scandals and is currently romantically linked to not only love island star Maura Higgins (who's in the jungle right now for I'm a celebrity) but also its Strictly partner Jowita Przystal. However, despite all this, he has proven popular with the show's voters, reaching the semi-final despite previously being at the bottom of the rankings. It's a sure case of bad boy charm trumping competition.
Meanwhile, Campbell-Black plays naked tennis and has an illegitimate daughter: he is the archetype of the rich bad boy, a mix of real-life aristocrats such as Andrew Parker Bowles, Rupert Lycett Green and the Earl of Suffolk. And, as brought to the screen by actor Alex Hassell in the Disney+ series, it has been completely irresistible to viewers.
It's understandable why we love men like that. They do not represent domesticity or mundane types of stability. You don't talk to them about who is going to wash the car on the weekend, or take the dog for a walk. They are for fun or laughter as they commit another mortifying but ultimately forgivable faux pas.
However, it seems that I no longer need to bother about my romantic decisions. Wanting a bad boy is due to primal instinct, according to psychologist Jessen James. He stated in the daily mail that, as human beings, we feel “drawn to a challenge” and chained to the idea that “we can tame the untamable.” It's like these men are lions and not just a simple headache.
“You are the savior who can tame the wild beast,” James explained. “It is human nature and instinct. Bad boys often project traits like dominance, resilience, and independence, which can be linked to evolutionary instincts onto strong, capable partners. Even if they are not the right choice for long-term stability, they provoke an emotional and physical response that can be difficult to resist.”
I had an eight-month honeymoon phase with my first bad boy. Then he lost interest. Maybe it was my fault. I became insecure and needy, and he pulled away even more. The next thing I knew, he didn't include me in his new group of friends. At his parents' lavish party at a country house near Oxford, I realized, to my utter horror, that he had actually given his Rolex to another guest, whom he had been sitting next to all night. I tried to keep my jealousy a secret and talk myself out of making a scene in front of 50 people, but my paranoia wasn't all in my head.
A week later, I hopped on my moped when I couldn't reach him and found her at her parents' house in London; They were having an affair. Friends of mine said it might have been for the best because I wasn't happy anymore. But it still broke my heart. I was hoping it would just be a one-time bad boy experience, but no such luck.
The bad boy returned in many different forms throughout my life. There was the water-skiing libertine who fled to the United States; the magnificent free spirit who went to Lapland and had dated my sister first; the eighties guitarist of a well-known band whom I tamed for a month.
They broke all the rules and I admired them for it. And they kept me on my toes, yes. All of my relationships with bad boys lasted a year or more; They were not flashes in the pan. Some were even more significant than others. I remember the first time I met my children's father, although not in the best place: we were outside an AA meeting. He was tall, dark and handsome and had been sober for a few years. I could see him expertly playing around the room, but that only made me love him more. I saw through his alpha male facade. I could see his inner vulnerability.
When we first started dating, I often wondered where he was half the time. I knew that if I kept an eye on him, I would scare him away, so I tried to act calmly. “Slow, slow, catchy monkey” was my catchphrase. It took 10 years.
I was convinced I could rescue him from his addiction; After all, I had been through that too. By then my maternal instinct had kicked into high gear. The fact that he didn't even want to commit to a relationship, let alone want to have children, was a red flag. But did it discourage me? No.
He had intimacy issues and often sabotaged our relationship by breaking it up. Yet somehow we always managed to get through it, largely because I never gave up. We tried to have a baby and then turned to IVF. Years later everything ended in disaster when he tragically committed suicide after a bout of depression. I had her two children after her death through IVF, but at least before she died we were committed to each other. As far as my experiences with bad boys go, it was a first. I'm very happy about that.
I don't regret any of the bad boys, but spending my life hanging out with them has lost its appeal. They are too complex for me and I think I have surpassed them. I think of them as fairground attractions, which I loved; Since I have children, I can't stand going around in one. All it does is make me feel dizzy.
