I admit it, I like bad boys. In fiction at least.
There’s something irresistible about the dark and tortured soul; about the guy who you know is going to break your heart, but you want him anyway. The romance novel industry thrives on that very idea and the idea that the love of a good woman can tame a bad boy’s wild ways.
This so not true. It just isn’t. You can’t change someone, no matter how hard you try, that’s something they have to do themselves. No matter what happens in fiction, in real life if you mix with a bad boy you’ll probably get hurt. That’s okay, that’s why fiction exists, so we can indulge in our bad boy fantasies without actually having to deal with the painful reality.
As I said, my bad boy fascination started young. I remember having a crush on Jake from California Dreams because he wore a black leather jacket and drove a motorcycle. I was 9 or 10 at the time. Now he wasn’t inherently bad, but he did break the rules and rebel against authority which is basically what the bad boy does.
This fascination continued through my teens and into my twenties. I’ll write another time about fictional crushes (I’ve had many), but for now I’ll just say that it was always the bad boys that fascinated. Not always men that broke the rules, but ones that were dangerous and bad for the heroine in some way. Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a huge crush for me and while he is one of the good guys, he’s still dangerous and he’s still bad for Buffy (and I actually kinda liked him best when he was Angelus, I’m a little twisted, I know that).
What was the appeal? A lot of it is the forbidden nature. You always want what you can’t have. These men are dangerous and they aren’t good for the women in their lives, but they love them without question and there’s something so appealing in that, so compelling that you root for them anyway.
In real life it’s not so simple. In real life, the bad boy is never a good idea. Dark and dangerous might be sexy, but they are also part of the recipe for a broken heart. Avoid the bad boy, no matter how tempting he is and go for the good man, the one who will still make you smile in thirty years. Besides, he’ll age better, anyway. In twenty years either the bad boy will have matured or he’ll be over the hill and still trying to pull the same shtick that made him appealing at 25. Either way, the bad boy appeal is not long lasting, at least not in real life.
So if you need your bad boy fix? Grab a DVD or a book and settle down and dream away. After all there is something so sexy about that brooding bad boy. Root for him all you want, just don’t be fooled into thinking he really exists and that you could be saved him. Because unlike fictional bad boys, real life bad boys don’t want to be saved and they’re not going to change.
We All Fall Down 