“Mad, bad, and
dangerous to know” is how Lady Caroline Lamb described her object of obsession,
Lord Byron, in 1812. In a way, Lord Byron was the originator of the bad boy
hysteria. “Byromania” was the word his future wife used to describe the scene
of women fainting when he walked into the room, clamoring to be in his presence,
and committing stalkerish acts to meet with him. Yet Byron was well known to be
a misanthrope and a flagrant womanizer, an abuser of alcohol and laudanum. Did it
matter? No. Women—and men as well—loved him. His thoughts on marrying Annabella
Milbanke were telling: “I have great hopes that we shall love each other all
our lives as much as if we had never married at all.”
Two hundred years
later, people are really not all that different. Women are still overwhelmingly
attracted to the dark and dangerous male with the aloof demeanor and the
devastatingly intense stare. But WHY?
Suburban Dangers, my YA novel dealing with sex trafficking will
be released in May of 2017. In that story, my main character, Katherine, is
lured into gang-controlled prostitution by a “bad boy.” My most recently
finished Regency novel, Dangerous to Know
(working title only) is also actually based on Lord Byron and his
relationship with Annabella Milbanke (his future wife), and my two current
works-in-progress also deal with bad boy attraction, so this topic interests me
at present.
Turns out there’s a
psychological and physiological reason why we’re attracted to bad boys at
large. Apparently it’s about what happens in your brain when you meet someone
mysterious, dark, and unpredictable. The brain sends out pleasure responses—so in
a way, we’re rewarded for our illogical desires. Kind of like a drug.
Studies show that women
may become attracted to a potential partner when they have to work for them,
suffer for them, even. Check out this article in the New York Times about
Professor Berns and his experiment on unpredictability. When people were
administered orange juice versus water in an unpredictable manner, their
brain chemistry was more reactive. When the reward was predictable, not so
much. It’s all about that dopamine.
So are we sick or what?
Ultimately, I think it comes back to desiring what is withheld or denied us. Bad
boys tend to be elusive and not quite obtainable. We never know exactly what
they’re thinking or what their next move will be. That’s attractive to our
brains, which become so easily bored with the usual and mundane.
How do we get over it?
Well, maturity and age helps. In my forties, the bad boy may be somewhat
attractive from a safely removed place (like, watching them on TV), but I’ve
had enough turmoil in my life. Upheaval and chaos is not what God
intended for us. A peaceful relationship is really where it’s at. It’s how we
grow in our abilities to compromise and sacrifice and work through relational
difficulties. Annabella Milbanke found that out the hard way. Byron may have
been attractive in that dark, mysterious, brain-synapses-firing sort of way,
but in the end, their marriage lasted a
year (and this was no small thing since separation and divorce were nearly
unheard of in the Regency era).
Bad boys are considered
bad for a reason, and we would do
well to remember it. They may have learned pretty words and charming come-ons,
but actions always speak louder. As Shakespeare so aptly put it, “Sigh no more
ladies, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever; one foot on sea and one on
shore, to one thing constant never.”
