Men crave constant and attention and cannot handle being alone – why do they always need an overlap?
ARE men scared of being alone?
If famous blokes are anything to go by, they will often have a woman waiting in the wings before calling time on a soured relationship.
We told yesterday how former This Morning host Eamonn Holmes, who announced his split from TV presenter wife Ruth Langsford in May and moved out last month, is now close to a new woman.
And when golfer Rory McIlroy announced he was to divorce wife Erica Stoll, it emerged he had been linked a TV reporter – although he is now back with Erica and the divorce is off.
Writer Rebecca Tidy, 37, speaks from personal experience about why men crave constant attention and cannot handle being alone . . .
SITTING on the sofa in my Cornwall home, I feel blissfully happy. I’ve spent the day working and will soon go off to pick up my daughter from school.
The house is tidy, my plants are soaking in the sink and the fridge is full of the vegan food I love.
I’m without a man in my life to mess up the house, fill the fridge with meat that I hate or complain about my plants cluttering up the sink.
I’m very happily single — and under my new rules, I will be for a long time.
I recently vowed never to date a man who hasn’t been single for at least two years — that’s the only way I can be sure they’re a grown-up rather than a needy “boy”.
Unfortunately, in my experience they are as rare as unicorns.
Most men I know seem to jump hastily from one woman to another and I suspect more often than not when they finish a relationship there is someone else lurking in the wings — whether they’ve actually cheated or not.
They seem to need the validation of a woman in their life, and someone to look after them.
Just take a look at some of the recent celebrity splits.
While there is no suggestion of an affair, Eamonn reportedly had a mystery woman comforting him as his marriage to Ruth broke down.
And Rory was linked to another woman during his brief separation from his wife Erica, while a source commented: “I’ve known the guy a long time and there is always an overlap.”
The word “overlap” is a particular trigger for me. I recently heard on the grapevine that an ex of mine, Jon*, had walked down the aisle with the woman he had got together with following our split.
I heard that the best man had jokingly described their relationship as having had “overlap” with the previous one.
I don’t know if the speech was reported accurately and I doubt I will ever know what the true nature of their relationship was while I was still with Jon, but he seemed to move on with haste.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have seen it coming. When we met he had a girlfriend, which of course should have been a warning sign.
But I was young and naive.
He told me he wanted to finish with her, but that he had to wait until he could afford to visit her in another city and do it in person.
That took a couple of months. Now I wonder whether he was waiting to see how it went with me before he ditched her.
Certainly I should have taken more notice when one of his friends told me they thought that Jon was incapable of being alone.
Eamonn & Ruth’s marriage allegedly ended after the discovery of his secret messages to another woman
But in that first flush of romance I was blind to anything else.
I even nicknamed him the “wife guy” — in other words, someone who constantly talks about what a loving partner they are.
He even had “devoted husband” in his Twitter bio despite the fact we weren’t actually married.
Now I wonder if he was doing it just so he seemed like a loving and committed partner and thus a good catch for other women.
Whatever the case, I sometimes wonder if there were other women that he may have developed feelings for during our relationship.
He’d have very good female friends that would suddenly appear.
Grass is greener
I remember one who was the daughter of a work colleague who he’d go out with constantly.
I didn’t question him at the time, I took it at face value that they got on and had similar interests, even going to museums together.
But now I wonder if he was auditioning for my replacement.
In the last few years of our relationship we weren’t happy.
If I’m honest, I think he stayed because he hadn’t found a better option.
But eventually he left and I wonder if there really was overlap with his now wife.
I think a lot of men explore their options while still in a relationship, particularly once their friends are all coupled up.
Blokes are more needy than us, they like having someone at home to look after them, feed them and clean up after them.
They don’t want to be alone.
I think they are afraid to be without someone to be their cheerleader and bolster them.
And they don’t want to be perceived as the “sad” singleton.
They also hate failure, they don’t want to be seen as the one who was dumped, so they’d rather leave and be seen to be a success with another woman.
Men don’t have the same support network as women, with lots of friends they can confide in.
They also like the validation that they are the sort of person a woman can fall in love with.
I sometimes think they never grow out of being teenage boys — wanting to spread their wings but come home to their mum and be bolstered up and told they’re wonderful.
I’ve had three relationships where, unbeknown to me, I’d been the “woman in the wings” for all of them.
None of them were serious. I met Dan at the gym and it was casual, but then a friend was talking about him a few weeks later and mentioned his girlfriend.
With the second one, I noticed he had no social media, so I became suspicious and then one of his colleagues confirmed he had another woman.
Golfer Rory is now back with wife Erica but was linked to reporter Amanda
And the third one I met on a dating app. He was local, so it never occurred to me he’d be playing around on his doorstep.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in too deep with any of them, it was all at the early stages.
Looking back, I wonder if each of these men had been checking whether the grass was greener on the other side, who else was out there if they made the break and whether they had still “got it”.
Once I realised they were attached I stopped seeing them. DID SHE CONFRONT ANY OF THEM?
Most of my female friends are my age and have only just got married and had children. But I suspect many will be like me should they break up.
They won’t feel any need to have another man immediately, if at all.
To be clear, my recent relationships weren’t because I felt the need for another man in my life.
I enjoy my own company — and my friends, family and daughter fill my emotional needs.
When I dipped my toes back into dating, it was for a bit of fun, not validation.
And until I find that rare beast — a man that is as self-sufficient as me — then I’ll carry on being happily single.
I feel married women should be aware of what men are like — I see other relationships going the same way.
I do think men and women can be friends, but within a group dynamic.
Alarms should be sounding
But as soon as a man is going off with another woman to do things between just the two of them, the alarms should be sounding.
And to other women who suspect they are waiting in the wings, well, what the man is doing to their partner is eventually what he will do to you if you hit a rough patch.
Men have patterns and I don’t believe they change.
The only safe way to check that a man isn’t needy is to wait until a he is completely disentangled from his previous relationship.
The excuses such as “we’ve got separate lives but we can’t afford to live apart” or “the divorce is taking a while to come through” don’t cut it.
They just hate being alone.
- *Name has been changed