HAVE you ever noticed how boyfriends are a bit like buses? You wait around for what seems like years before the right one comes along – the one that will take you in approximately the direction you want to go in – then as soon as you hop aboard, a procession of others appears round the corner, tooting their horns and flashing their indicators like it's your lucky day.
You see, some men seem to be inexplicably attracted to women who are already taken. It seems there are few more powerful aphrodisiacs than a wedding ring on the finger of a woman who is not your wife.
Call me cynical (many people do – in fact, tha
t would be one of the more polite things I've been called lately – so you will be in good company), but I fear that these men's intentions are not entirely honourable. Could it be they are only interested in a convenient little bit on the side, someone who will make no demands for declarations of love, commitment or babies? Or perhaps they just want what someone else has – a competitive thing; the law of the jungle; men acting like animals to win their mate.
It happened to a friend recently. She has been seeing her beau for just three months, but already the exes have started crawling out of the woodwork. A text here, an e-mail there – how are you doing? Fancy a coffee? One even hand-delivered a postcard. It's all very flattering, of course, but as far as she's concerned, the timing is terrible.
It's not just men who are the culprits. Another chum of mine has left a string of broken hearts in her wake, all unceremoniously dumped because they ate too loudly, laughed too uproariously, drove too dangerously. No sooner do they start seeing someone new than she berates herself for rejecting the man of her dreams (at least he could have been, if she'd only been able to change whatever annoying little habit it was that made her chuck him in the first place).
Apparently Calum Best has been desperately trying to win back Lindsay Lohan with flirtatious text messages. Now, I'm only guessing, of course, but perhaps naughty Calum's attempt at wooing has something to do with his ex's rumoured relationship with Samantha Ronson.
Then there's Miley Cyrus, who plays the irrepressibly bouncy teen goddess Hannah Montana, declaring to anyone who will listen that she and ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas are still in love. Er, that's despite the fact that he's with someone else now, young Miley, you little minx.
Two exes of mine recently got in touch. On the same day. Out of the blue. I almost missed the e-mail from Mr New York amid the barrage of messages imploring me to invest in top-quality meds and cheap Rolexes, but I gave him the equivalent of a wave and sent him on his way. The text from Mr Middle East, however, will remain unanswered. Let's just say that we don't want to go anywhere near where that particular bus is going.
He could be a nice, shiny new bus with freshly upholstered seats and no empty Coke cans rolling up and down the top deck, but you can guarantee that, as soon as I think I'm on the ride of my life, he'll suddenly switch to part-route, dropping me off in the middle of an industrial estate in the dead of night with just a voucher for a half-price Whopper for my trouble.
And that's not very fare, is it?
The full article contains 597 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
