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I was 16 years old when I met my first “bad boy”. He was 17, rode a motorbike, had shoulder-length hair and wore vintage Levi’s. He was a heartthrob. He had been expelled from a boy’s boarding school and was attending a college over the road from my school in Kensington.
I was introduced to him by a friend as I stepped off the coach that took us to play lacrosse. He was up against the wall smoking a cigarette and blew the smoke in my face. He took one look at me – and me at him. That was it.
It was exhilarating. When he wasn’t on the run from his rich, hippy artist parents, who wanted to ground him for bunking off school, we were hanging out in his bedroom in Kennington listening to Lou Reed. I soon moved in every weekend. We had wild parties when his parents were away at their country house, and we drank all their expensive wine.
Everything in my world changed after that. Why? From then on, I always went for the “bad boys”, and it’s been the bane of my life ever since. I think only once did I have another type of boyfriend, someone I’d dub a “Steady Eddie”, and I just couldn’t cope. I needed unpredictability. Those ones, though, are never the marrying type – even though I’ve often wanted to marry them. Instead, they are brooding and complicated, handsome yet rugged, charming but with commitment phobias, and so dysfunctional that they could practically live on the therapist’s couch.
There’s always that possibility you can change them, of course, or even save them from their bad behaviour. I’ve often tried. 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 landscape of pop culture right now, many of us can’t resist them either. See Strictly’s tattooed reality star Pete Wicks, or the upper-class lothario Rupert Campbell-Black in the recent adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. They’re a drastic departure from Gen Z’s beloved “softbois” – delicate, by-all-accounts nice young men such as Timothée Chalamet or Tom Holland.
Wicks has been mired in high-profile sexting scandals and is currently being romantically linked not only with Love Island star Maura Higgins (who’s in the jungle at the moment for I’m a Celebrity) but also his Strictly partner Jowita Przystal. Despite all of this, though, he’s proved popular with the show’s voters, making it through to the semi-final even though he’s previously placed bottom of the leaderboard. It’s a sure case of bad boy charm overriding competence.
Campbell-Black, meanwhile, plays naked tennis and has an illegitimate daughter – he’s the archetypal wealthy bad boy, a mash-up 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, he’s been completely irresistible to viewers.
It’s understandable why we love men like this. They don’t represent domesticity or mundane kinds of stability. You don’t talk to them about who’s going to wash the car at the weekend, or take the dog out for a walk. They’re for having fun with, or to giggle with as they make another mortifying but ultimately forgivable faux pas.
It seems, however, that I no longer need to give myself a hard time for my romantic choices. Wanting a bad boy is all due to primal instinct – according to psychologist Jessen James. He claimed in the Daily Mail that, as humans, we are “drawn to a challenge” and chained to the idea that “we can tame the untameable”. It’s as if these men are lions, and not just a basic pain in the neck.
“You’re the saviour 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 about strong, capable mates. Even if they’re not the right choice for long-term stability, they spark an emotional and physical response that can be hard to resist.”
I had an eight-month honeymoon phase with my first bad boy. Then he lost interest. Perhaps it was my fault. I became insecure and needy – and he pulled further away. The next thing I knew, he wasn’t including me in his new group of friends. At his parent’s glitzy country house party near Oxford, I noticed – to my absolute horror – he’d actually given his Rolex to another female guest, who he’d been seated next to all evening. I tried to keep my jealousy under wraps and talk myself down from making a scene in front of 50 people – but my paranoia was not all in my head.
A week later, I jumped on my moped when I couldn’t get hold of him and caught her at his 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 any more. But it still broke my heart. I had hoped it was just a one-off bad boy experience, but no such luck.
The bad boy returned in many various guises throughout my life. There was the waterskiing rake who fled to the US; the drop-dead gorgeous free-spirit who shot off to Lapland and had dated my sister first; the Eighties guitarist in a well-known band who I tamed for a month.
They broke all the rules – and I admired them for it. And they kept me on my toes, mind you. My bad boy relationships all lasted a year or more – they weren’t flashes in the pan. Some were even more significant than others. I remember when I first met the father of my children, if not at the best location – we were outside an AA meeting. He was tall, dark and handsome and a few years sober. I could see him playing the room expertly, but it 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’d often wonder where he was half the time. I knew if I kept tabs on him, it would drive him away, so I tried to play it cool. “Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey” was my catchphrase. It took 10 years.
I was convinced I could rescue him from his addiction – after all, I’d been through it too. By then my maternal instinct had gone into overdrive. The fact that he didn’t even want to commit to a relationship – let alone want children – was a red flag. But did it put me off? No.
He had intimacy issues, and often sabotaged our relationship by breaking it off. Yet somehow we always worked through it – largely because I didn’t ever give up. We tried to have a baby, then resorted to IVF. Years later it all ended in disaster when he tragically killed himself after a bout of depression. I had his two children after his death via IVF, but at least before he died we’d committed to each other. When it came to my experiences with bad boys, it was a first. I’m so happy about that.
I don’t regret any of the bad boys, but spending one’s life dating them has now lost its appeal. They are far too complex for me, and I think I’ve outgrown them. I think of them like fairground rides, which I used to love – since I’ve had children, I can’t stomach spinning around in one. All it does is make me feel queasy.
