Relationships 

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Why we love bad boys

The bad boy is your new boss, your sexy ex, the client you've been warned off, the friend of a friend who 'everyone knows about'. We know they're bad news, but we're charmed every time. Louise Candlish reveals why

So Bridget's got her Darcy but she's still wobbling back in the direction of Cleaver. Why? We all chorus? She'll only get her fingers (and other extremities) burned again! Doesn't she know it's her duty to women everywhere to know a good thing when she's got him?

The real question, of course, is why are we even still asking why. There's no mystery to it, we all know Daniel Cleaver and his breed are bad news. If they were good for us we wouldn't call them bad boys, would we?

We crave their badness, that's the thing. It gets the juices flowing. Bad boys are our water cooler men: we enjoy dissecting them with the girls the morning after as much as we enjoyed being charmed into bed with them the night before.

The predator...
People often refer to the bad boy as wolfish or foxy, which are just fun ways of saying he's a predator. Of course you know you shouldn't go there but you're driven by the sexual excitement, the cachet of being with someone extremely handsome and charming and, let's face it, the fantasy that you might be 'The One' to break through the cynicism and change him.

Bad boys make us feel sexy instantly: the gorgeous siren we've always wanted to be and that the good guys don't always convince us we can pull off.

He's not in love with you
The real bad luck is to fall in love with a bad boy. Do that and what should be a sweet pick-me-up becomes a lengthy bout of food poisoning. Always remember: he is not in love with you. If he says he is it's to get you to do something (possibly still illegal in some European countries) you're not sure about doing. On the plus side, if you do fall hard for a bad boy, you're unlikely to do it more than once (OK, twice), which is why any happily married woman in her twenties almost certainly had an affair with her Lothario tutor when she was nineteen - it's called learning your lesson.

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