The Bad Boy: The lust and the drama

"My niece had decided to cut off contact with her family to lay up with a lazy bum who doesn't want to work and had already fathered kids by at least 2 different women and doesn't support them. Before these twins (he is having with her) he has also an infant who may be about 1 now." This is what one of my friends wrote. She is taking care of that niece's child right now as the aftermath of her niece's bad choices.

Why do so many women turn their backs on their families so they can be with the "bad boys?"

Chasing Mr. Bad Boy
When we were little girls, none of us said, “Mama, when I grow up, I want to go out with a bad boy," yet oddly enough, many a woman has dedicated herself chasing and attempting to tame bad boys with more ferocity than they dedicate to their careers.

What's wrong with Mr. Nice?
The frightening thing is that women chase men that treat them mean , get hurt, but still won’t try a "nice" guy. When they do, the "nice" guy spends a lot of time working on and attempting to repair the damage created by her experiences with "bad" guys. The women that chase the bad guy often penalise the future partners for the bad choices that they’ve made in the past.

It hurts so good
I see so many women that appear to love to be treated badly, it’s bewildering. Why have some women become conditioned to believe that love comes in the form of a man that can't be good to her in any way, shape or form--except possibly in the bedroom? Is it possible that we have watched so many movies, read so many books, been impressionable so young, that we have become convinced that there must be a roller-coaster drama for it to constitute the big love and if there isn’t sparks flying and fireworks shooting out of our va-jay-jays when we get with a guy, then it can’t be meant to be?

Thrill of the chase
The reason why women chase bad boys may be because of the thrill of the chase, the occasional hints of a better character, and the twisted notion that these guys are "men."

Bad boys can manage to be nice to these women and give them just enough attention to keep them hanging on. The attention may come in the form of sex, gifts, taking them out from time to time, but then they disappear leaving the woman confused. There are bad boys who make the woman the legitimate girlfriend, but their behaviour makes it clear that they have other interests.

Nice friends
In my book, The Dirty Seven: Ladies Beware, I address the weird notion that guys seem like more of a man when they treat you like crap. If a guy is really nice, women discard him into the "friend" pile with the word "nice" cropping up repeatedly. He’s also often completely disregarded as boring and some women will wonder if he’s gay because he’s being so nice. It seems that a guy can be "nice" but not nice to us in a relationship capacity.

If we have to work for his attention constantly and we’re never really quite sure of how he feels about us, we want him. It’s as if we have an in-built mechanism where the attraction seems to kick in when they guy is elusive, misbehaves, or just has a general disregard for us. All of this translates to exciting. The "nice"’ guy is made to feel inferior for having good intentions and the manners and respect he was raised with.

Ms. Fix-it
We need to let go of this idea that we can fix and change these bad guys. We need to develop self esteem. It is frightening to think that we would take a guy walking all over us and treating us like crap, over a man that wants to be nice to us. We thrive on drama but we need to switch our focus to building relationships with men that want to love us properly. If we changed our attitudes and addressed our individual fascinations with men that mistreat us, I think that we’d find that our eyes would open up to guys that aren’t creating a load of drama to keep us in their lives.

Soap operas
Lust, big ding-dongs, dependency, and even a misguided need to prove to yourself that you can nab him are just some of the reasons why a woman will keep chasing the drama. But these are not the foundations of solid relationships. It’s no wonder relationships fail and marriages fail. The very basis of our relationships is built on ridiculous, soap opera values.


For more info: See The Dirty Seven: Ladies Beware.