Bad Boyfriend — A Debt With Lifetime Interest

"Having an unresolved Bad Boyfriend issue is like carrying around old credit card debt." That's what I tell a friend who is having these issues.

It's like one of those store credit cards you only got in order to receive the instant discount but which still can show up and wreck your rating years after you believed all your outstanding emotional and sexual accounts were settled.

He's the male version of the siren, the guy version of the femme fatale. We're drawn to him like butterflies to an electric bug-zapper. The Bad Boyfriend is the one who got away. If only we could have left him, everything would have been perfect. If only we could have become bored by him, fed up with him, immune to him, then he could have been filed among the happily ordinary boyfriends of the distant past.

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Even the memory of him remains tantalizingly out of reach. He's the man that you're always afraid to see on the street, the one that you're afraid that you're going to run into when your hair looks lousy, your nails aren't done and you have a temporary cap on a visible tooth.

You remember everywhere you went with him, every meal you had and how every argument ended. You can map out every vacation you took by remembering how many hotel pillows you cried into.

He changes with age.

Through age 21, the Bad Boy is at his most basic: he's hardly more than child. Despite the fact that he has already passed his reproductive peak, his emotional fontanel has not closed. He has no idea who he is and he really has no idea who you are. Write this one off; reassure yourself that in better books the central characters are older than those in romance novels.

In his 30s, you're going to deal with the non-committal man as Bad Boyfriend. He sees himself as vitally independent and suavely mature, which sets him up for a kind of guaranteed unreliability. Remember that anybody can be in a relationship if she's willing to be on somebody's else's schedule, abide by somebody's rules, and put up with somebody else's mess. Is that what you want?

At 40, the Bad Boyfriend is already committed; you're going to end up making out in a car like teenagers, which will be very exciting, except that there may well be baby toys on the backseat, which you are going to try to avoid letting into even your peripheral vision. The man who tells you what a terrific husband he is as he's putting his hand down your blouse is not a man you should trust.

In his 50s, it's the powerful man as Bad Boyfriend. He has a lot of experience, which can be defined as "recognizes his mistakes as he starts committing them again." Secretly he thinks a 27-year-old might still fall for his charm and not for his bank account, status or influence, and hopes never to have to settle for a woman his own age (whom he regards as far older in "women years").

At age 60, it's the mature man as Bad Boyfriend. His emotional fontanel has closed off, true, but so has the rest of his mind. This is somebody who's now figured out exactly who he is, which might allow him to be interested in who you are — but don't sell your condo yet. He expects you to offer him a lifetime achievement award.

At 75 plus, it's grandpa as Bad Boyfriend. He wants a nurse with a purse: a woman who has her own money (so he doesn't worry about siphoning off his retirement, social security or his will) who'll be able to look after him in his "old age." She should have a loud voice, long legs and a good hand for poker.

"The Bad Boyfriend remains part of every woman's imagination no matter how old we get," I remind my friend, "But as long as our own emotional credit history and sense of humor remain strong, we don't have to make him part of our lives."

(And yes, there are Bad Girlfriend versions of all of these, but Tolstoy, Roth, Thackeray and Fielding have them well covered.)






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