EnglishRosiee

Good Girls and Bad Boys

The Original Bad Boy
The Original Bad Boy

Its fair to say I am a bit of a hopeless romantic (after all I did throw caution to wind and move to South Africa on a whim for the first guy who gave me a second look).  I’d like live in a fairytale world where life is all hearts and flowers and there are no cheaters, beaters, paedos or general dodge people, just puppies and pretty dresses. But there is one thing wrong with this picture and it’s that this particular good girl (and there are a lot of others like her) keeps letting BAD boys/men (remember I like those Silver Foxes) enter her little Kingdom of glitter and cupcakes.

It’s not easy to define a bad boy. Being bad doesn’t necessarily mean he is a drug merchant or serial killer (although I did go on a very brief Tinder date with someone who could have given Norman Bates a run for his money). On the lower end of the scale, you have those that may have just had a bit of a hard time in life (i.e. their folks got divorced which resulted in them being averse to wholesome relationships) or maybe they were just naughty at school, somehow wangled their way into university and then dropped out (although dating a guy with a limited education will have its own problems it doesn’t necessarily make them bad husband material).On initial examination, these ones seem pretty harmless, just a little rough round the edges.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the real Lotharios, those that are attractive and know it. In most cases it’s not their good looks that grab the attention of our innocent young minds but more their blasé attitude. These are the ones you really need to worry about. They’ll spot that impressionable student girl dancing the night away in a club and flatter her telling her how beautiful she is, ply her with a few too many drinks and next thing you know they are telling her the bank went bust and now they want her to wire the bulk of her student loan into their account. She’ll later find it was to pay for his kid’s school fees or his wife’s trip to Sierra Leone. True Story.

Then there are those that don’t quite fit any generic system. These are actually the worst of all. They are the clever ones that can read a good girl and play MIND GAMES with her. They pretend to be nice and make her feel special. Once they have won her affections, they disappear. If she starts to get on with her life, they reappear and make their smooth moves again. And so the cycle goes until she is left brokenhearted.

So, despite being aware of all the red flags, why do good girls like yours truly have a penchant for these bad boys? Well, here are some of the reasons I think why the bad boys always win:

a) There is a rebel in every good girl and the fact that our friends advise us against going for a douche bag simply sends us running into their arms.

b) Women like projects whether it’s the Two Oceans Marathon, the Argus Cycle Tour or simply the next player that walks past. The mother hen in us thinks we can fix them and we convince ourselves that these broken people sort themselves out for us.  But believe me ladies, it’s not going to happen. In the end we just waste our time boosting their fragile egos and getting them ready for their next conquest, while our biological clocks tick away.

c) It’s the thrill of the chase. We like what we can’t have. We like the challenge of trying to catch that emotionally unavailable dude. But let’s face it girls, you better have your best pair of Nikes on as you are going to be running after him for a hell of a long time.

d) Nice guys are boring. We know that they’ll always be there for a girl when we need help moving house or changing that flat tyre. But the bad ones keep us on our toes so on the rare occasion when they do something vaguely decent, it makes us feel special and as if we are their one and only (but the truth is we never are, bad boys have a million different girls waiting in the wings).

In the end, bad boys give us good stories (and butterflies). Its futile telling Miss Goody Two Shoes to steer clear of them because she never will. However, just be aware of what your getting yourself into and don’t ever let the ways of the bad boy take away your sweetness turning you into that bitter old women that swears off men for life and resigns herself to a life with her cats, the only people(!) that she can trust to never break her heart. .

Please enlighten us dear readers/rinsers with your advice on handling bad boys in the comments below.

71 comments

  1. I think you touched on something on the last two points that nice guys are boring and that you like what you can’t have and the thrill ofd the chase is what gets good girls to chase after bad boys …what I don’t get or never understood is why do women claim they want a good man then go for the bad boy and complain there are no good men around? When the good man is there all along??

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  2. First off, how formal of you to refer to drug dealers as drug merchants! Never read it quite like that before. Secondly, I like that you fully illustrated what a bad boy is. It differs from mine, which shows that we all have “good” and “bad” labels for people. My bad boy is more the typical James Dean character – a rebel, different than all the rest, and looks great in and out of clothes. They are sexy as hell. However, I don’t think that bad boys are necessarily guys who are intentionally deceiving. Those people are just assholes. Intention has a big role to define the two types. Also the beautiful and know’s it kind would not be classified as a bad boy, because they usually lack the rebel attitude and replace it with obnoxious self-obsession. They are also usually not too cleaver, which is another trait that defines bad boys for me.

    With that said, the reason why bad boys are attractive is: It’s the thrill of the chase. We like what we can’t have. We like the challenge of trying to catch that EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE dude. But let’s face it girls, you better have your best pair of Nikes on as you are going to be running after him for a hell of a long time.

    Cheers!

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    • I’m sure they make more money than I do, so I think its fair to call them DRUG MERCHANTS 😉

      Gosh, with so many different types of bad boy around there is no hope for any of us is there really? Oh well, lets embrace them. They need LOVE too. 🙂

      By the way, if you have spare James Dean types lying around…please send them my way.

      Thanking you.

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  3. I think you made some great points. And let’s not forget that men are attracted to the “challenging” girl as well–the one who doesn’t fawn all over him or sit on the phone, waiting for his call.

    As sexy and/or exciting bad boys may be, women eventually reach a certain age or maturity where the game is simply exhausting and no fun anymore. So while the “nice” guys may feel they don’t win in the short run, I think they end up winning in the long run.

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    • Thanks for your comments. Yup, I am learning that as a good girl you need to learn the play the game if you want keep the bad boys interested. The longer you sit at home pining for him, the easier it for him to have the upper hand and ultimately WIN the game. As soon as you make him aware that you have other options, he gets jealous and will up his game. But at the end of the day, even when you play, these games have to end at some point and someone, namely the good girl, is left brokenhearted. 😦

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  4. It’s so true. What I love about bad boys (TV & films I don’t know any in real life) are the rare sweet moments when only the girl (& the audience) sees. Of course, she wants everyone to see it so everyone will understand. But that never usually happens

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    • True that. Like when the Bad Boy strokes a girls hair and puts her to sleep instead of taking a dvantage of her drunken state. However, all her friends ever see is her complaining about his never ending mind game’s.

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    • Hmmm…I would define a good girl as the opposite to a biatch. Biatches are the ones that have men falling at their feet the whole time and know what do get men to do what they want. The good girls are the sweeter ones (probably because they haven’t been hurt as much YET), slightly bookish, head in the clouds type, more likely to give any guy a chance (thats why they get sucked in by these bad boys). Basically, the good girls are just a little bit more naive.

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  10. I found myself a bit confused when reading through your definitions of a bad boy.

    First of all, that guy who will flatter the girl all night, ‘telling her how beautiful she is, ply with her for a few too many drinks’, sounds more like a sleazy salesman and a kiss-ass than an actual bad boy, and I doubt that he with that behavior would only boost her ego. There are a ton of these guys, but that particular behavior strikes me more as a friend-zoned chump with low self esteem than a bad boy.

    Your final definition of a bad boy is however a spot on impression of what some guys do. This isn’t necessarily a definition of a bad boy, or at least not the obvious kind. Rather a definition of weird behavior, maybe even psychological problems of some sort. Having been in this position, I can actually explain how it is and what goes on inside the brain of a guy when this shit is going down.

    It usually starts off with some sort of attraction, most likely physical in combination with the fact that this girl actually gives you a challenge. Not necessarily that she won’t sleep with you, but she challenges you personally, rather than just agreeing with anything you say. After spending some time together, you start having pretty intense feelings for this girl, and treat her as if you are on your way to becoming something really serious, and while you are with her you are basically in love with her, which is good and all, but it is however short-lasting. At some point, all those feelings completely shuts down, and I can’t tell you why. It’s like.. one second you are basically in love with her, and the next you can’t stand looking at her for even a single second. Her voice and everything she says makes your stomach turn and you can’t wait to tell her you never want to see her again. Which honestly becomes a bit awkward when she asks for your reason for dumping her, because you don’t really have one. You make up some bullshit and act like you’re real sorry and stuff, even though you aren’t telling her that right now you can’t remember ever feeling even the slightest for her. This all turns out as a fucking disaster as she just threw your phone out the window and smacked the door on your ass, but you still leave her place with a smile because she didn’t cut your fucking ear off. A couple of weeks pass, maybe even a couple of months and you might run into her again, you might send her a text or she might even text you. None the less, all those feelings that completely vanished turns back up and you want her once again. The only difference is that this time they are gone ten times as fast and within a couple of days you are right back where you ended. I can’t think of a rational reason for this kind of behavior, but it still happens to me once in a while, even though I try to not let it happen.

    Meant for this to be a real short reply but I got carried away, my bad.
    Anyway, it was a great read, keep it up 🙂

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      • Makes it pretty hard to hold a guys attention, when the only thing his mind is set on is keeping himself satisfied, wouldn’t you say? If I said that the person in this scenario was in fact in love with the girl, then I apologize. He thinks he is, and acts as if, until he realizes he isn’t. How you can come to the conclusion that the mistake lies with the girl, is mindblowing to me.

        Unless that was sarcastic. I don’t do well with sarcastic.

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  24. […] According to most of my cool kid friends it’s not OK to admit that you appreciate the musical genius of Taylor Swift. So, basically I am committing social suicide by admitting that Taylor Swift’s 1989 album was what got me through an epic break-up, where I spent days driving around Cape Town with tears streaming down my face while blasting ‘Shake it Off’ on a rude boy sound system. At some point, I felt that every single song on that album was written about my life (a lot of the tracks are about girls who wear pretty dresses and fall in love with bad boys). […]

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  37. If you are going into a relationship with a bad boy, I think a lot of it can be arrogance on the part of the girl to “change” him or her. However, as a married women, I have very attractive male friends who would fit the bill of “bad boy” but what I like about them is they always have a plethora of women so there is a mutual friendship without it getting complicated – typically friendships of the opposite sex can only occur in such extremes if the friendship is to remain without one person developing feelings. I feel safer in friendships such as these as long as it does not violate girl code by upsetting wife/girlfriend or whatever – but bad boys are typically non-commitment oriented if there is commonality like a work project or interest of study, etc.

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    • Hey again. You make a good point about good girls trying to ‘change’ the ‘bad boy’… we see potential and set out to solve all his problem. Little do we know all we are doing is sorting him out for the next lady that comes from.

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      • While that may be true, if two people gain knowledge from one another, what is the harm? People influence other people. If you sort someone out for the next relationship, great – maybe that knowledge from one side can be used to make it better and last longer while also on the other side for the person giving, help them understand something that God called upon their heart to understand – I suppose I do not see the harm?

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      • Not bad necessarily. But its just that time is pretty precious and you see many women investing a lot of time in men, who time and time again, just take, take, take. But yes I do see your point something good does come from every action.

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      • Well, we all choose what we want to devote our time too – I assure you, I did not wake up as a child and choose this direction, but when life leads you on a certain path, I travel down it until I don’t – I am not putting up with ridiculousness either but when I see people in need of help (in a subject I am actually trying to understand) I will try to assist – I will say that my last project has been a little harder than most – but the way people communicate does have the potential to elongate relationships and maybe just maybe someone can benefit and meet the right person or at least make it the maximum benefit…the problem is not the goal as much as how the goal is being accomplished….and when I see people shooting themselves in the foot, yes, I will try to help but it’s just another perspective – nothing more and nothing less. But as stated, we all have our limits and if not wanted and respected, whether needed or not, is a contingent factor for me.

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  38. For the sake of an example, let’s say the bad boy was a Narcissist. NPD and the sense of entitlement typically result, in part, from not being mirrored correctly as children. When they do mirror someone, they adopt certain characteristics that they found to be of use or they don’t – I certainly have adopted characteristics of others that I find to be of use in my life including some inspired by Narcissists as I give too frequently – if those qualities were to work and be of use to people and helped further both sides in their individual exploration, I see any dissenters as more conforming with the status quo for personal gain – we you act to be is who you are. Givers learn from takers and vice versa – would you not agree?

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