In my experience many women tend to fall for the "Jack The Lad" types, even when they get older. A lot will *say* that they're looking for a loving, reliable, straightforward partner, but when it comes down to it will time after time select a more "edgy" type.

A while back when I was going through some relationship difficulties, a friend (an old school friend) who's a serial (actually parallel) womaniser and who *never* lacks for a string of women hanging on his every whim wrote me a note about "how to succeed with women" if I got to a situation where I was "back on the market".

I'd been saying to him that most of my good friends were women, and that I tend to get on with women better than men in general, though they never saw me as potential partner material.

He very much propounded the "treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen" philosophy, saying that he would never ever treat a woman to dinner or a night out until they'd been to bed...he insisted on going "Dutch" with them before then, but would do the odd treat after they'd had sex.

He was never successful with women at school or university, but told me that he'd made a conscious effort to become "a bit of an arsehole" with women when he realised that nearly all the guys who were most succesful in that department treated women badly.

He did say that he thought I'd have real trouble adopting his philosophy as I was "too nice", empathised too much with women and listened to them too much. His comment was: "they can get empathy, a shoulder to cry on and someone to talk to from their girlfriends. From a partner they want someone more "manly" who's a bit wild and exciting. Let's face it, they don't see you as a potential partner, just as a girlfriend who happens to have a dick!".

Looking around, there seems to be a lot of truth in that, and it depresses me :-(