Is your man Mr Right or Mr Write Off?
By AMANDA PLATELL, Daily Mail 00:02am 28th July 2006
When Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn’s relationship finally collapses in their new movie The Break-Up, there is always a stunned silence in the mostly female audience — a sigh of collective sadness, of universal recognition.
This is not because the film reminds women of the utter heartbreak of a doomed love affair, but because in real life the adorable Jennifer Aniston reminds us of a newer, more devastating social trend: the emergence not of Mr Right but his wicked twin Mr Write Off — as in he’s a total write-off. He may not be a womaniser, but he is a serial swine.
He woos a woman in her 20s, stays with her for eight to ten years — long enough to give her every expectation that they will marry, have a family and spend the rest of their lives together. Then — and here’s the rub — he dumps her for a younger woman with whom he usually promptly has the child his ex so longed for.
The most devastating aspect of Mr Write Off, who has a highly developed ability to move on without a backward glance, is that he dumps a woman literally in no-man’s land.
Bitter and desperate, in her late 30s, she must start all over again to try to find another partner and, more urgently, a father for the children she may soon be too late to have.
So when women cry watching The Break-Up, they are actually identifying with Aniston’s real-life dilemma. She met Brad Pitt in 1998, but after nearly seven years together — but no children — they separated. Just months later he was in Angelina Jolie’s bed — producing a bouncing baby girl.
Brad Pitt is the ultimate Mr Write Off. He was 41 when they split. Jolie was in her late 20s and Aniston in her mid-30s. Within a year of their separation, he and Jolie had a child.
And whereas it is easy to dismiss this as a tale of Hollywood heartbreak, we see the same social trend all around us in Britain. Most women dumped by Mr Write Off are left with literally nothing but the memories.
These women, in the twilight of their fertility, who believed they had their lives sorted, are dumped with no no partner and, crucially, no babies.
Most interesting is that this is not a problem predominantly on our council estates, but a middle-class phenomenon.
It is happening to well-educated, highly successful, post-feminist women who thought they could have it all when they wanted it; who postponed their families to enjoy the ‘me’ decade in their late 20s and early 30s. Families and commitment could wait.
But they didn’t. Or at least he didn’t. Of course, men are mostly culpable for this trend. But women must shoulder some of the blame, too. As a society, we have loosened the obligations on both men and women to commit to one another permanently.
It is an inevitable and long-predicted by-product of a co-habitee society. With our ultimate desire for a father for our children, and a fertility window that slams shut sooner than any of us ever expect, women were always going to lose out when we replaced marriage with co-habitation.
Marriage protects a woman in a way that living together does not. We have made it so easy to move in together, to have the appearance of a stable relationship — but one of the reasons marriages work is they are harder to get out of.
And who can blame men for taking advantage of a system women created? The feminist movement wanted to break women free from the chains of marriage; and it succeeded. The Government, especially this Labour Government, finished the job.
You don’t have to look far to find the heartbreak caused by Mr Write Off.
Vanessa Short, 35, is a media executive and lives alone in Wimbledon. Her 38-year-old boyfriend Peter, a businessman, left her for a 26-year-old ten months ago.
‘For the past ten months, I’ve found myself looking at every man I meet as potential husband and father material, rather than letting my hair down and enjoying dating again,’ Vanessa says.
‘All I can think is: “I’m 35, my biological clock is ticking loudly, will I ever meet The One?” ‘Peter left me in October 2005 when I discovered he was having an affair with a colleague nine years my junior.
‘We’d been together for five years but had endured a rough six months after both being promoted in our respective jobs. We were each working up to 12 hours a day and would barely say a word to one another before we collapsed into bed at night.
‘I suppose that was why we never got round to getting married. Sex was off the agenda as we were so tired, and resentment started to build at the lack of time we spent as a couple.
‘And as Peter began to work an increasing number of weekends, I grew suspicious that he might be seeing someone else. But I could never muster the courage to ask outright.
Affair
One night, I’d been for after-work drinks and I let rip, demanding to know if Peter was having an affair. When he said that he was and that his mistress was only 26, I was devastated. He moved out of our home the same night. ‘As he slammed the door behind him, I cried. I couldn’t believe the man I’d built my hopes and dreams around, and whom I wanted as the father of my children, had just abandoned me to be with someone else.’
Vanessa’s story follows a well-worn pattern. The couple had been introduced at university, dated for a year, drifted apart and then met again when his career was established.
‘Peter was as handsome as ever, 6ft 5in tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was considerably wealthier than when we’d dated as students. ‘He called the following day and asked if I’d like to go on a date. A week later, after dinner and drinks, we made love and it was better than I remembered.
‘“I knew I’d come back to you eventually,” he said. Everything was falling into place and my mind whirred with thoughts of weddings and babies as our relationship sped along. After six months, he moved into my three-bedroom flat in Wimbledon.
Over the next few years, we went on fantastic holidays to places like Italy and Slovakia. We’d often talk about spending our lives together and he always said he wanted to have babies with me.
‘Then came the six months from hell, the affair with the 26-year-old and the end of our relationship. Now, I worry terribly that I won’t find Mr Right in time to enjoy being with him and have a family before I hit 40.
‘When I meet a man, I feel as if I have to know at once whether things might get serious, because if not then I haven’t got time to waste on him, which is a terrible thing to have to say.
‘I’ve even been asking myself whether I really need a man to have a child and am thinking about adopting, such is my fear of not meeting anyone soon.
‘I don’t think men my age want a woman my age. Their instinct is to go for someone younger — especially if he has reservations about having children.’
And she’s right. While men can easily delay becoming a parent until their 40s and well beyond, women cannot. And there are few things that turn a single man off quicker than a woman desperate for a child.
Paula Bass, 33, knows that well. She works in PR and lives in Fulham, West London. Her boyfriend Julian, 36, a media sales executive, left her nine months ago to have a string of flings with younger women. They’d been together for four years.
‘I’m petrified I won’t meet Mr Right before my body clock stops ticking,’ says Paula. ‘I’m constantly being asked, “Why are you single?” — but it’s not through choice.
‘I’ve always been hugely maternal. I’d imagined that by the time I was 30 I’d be married and have kids.
‘When I met Julian in a bar in autumn 2001, I thought: “This could be it.” He was dashing, tall, had a great sense of humour and was wealthy to boot. The chemistry between us was indescribable.
‘He was the perfect gentleman. After our first date, he took me home and kissed me on the doorstep. I knew I could really fall for him, and when we went to his parents’ apartment in Paris for New Year two months later, we came home totally in love.
‘We had amazing holidays together and talked about marriage and children. But a couple of years into the relationship, he admitted he wasn’t too keen on the idea of children and said he wanted to focus on his career.
‘He felt I should, too, and emphasised that, being younger than him, I shouldn’t worry about having a family just yet.
‘That set alarm bells ringing. But I was caught in a vicious circle of loving Julian to death and just hoping that one day he’d change his mind.
‘As I approached my 32nd birthday, I began to panic. What if Julian didn’t change his mind? What if we didn’t have children together and I missed my chance to be a mother? I was consumed by the horror that I may not have children, while he threw all his energy into his career.
‘In November last year we separated. He said he couldn’t continue with the relationship because he did not want children.
Flings
‘Julian began a series of flings with women in their 20s and moved to Paris. By dating women younger than me, I believe he was evading the subject of having children for that bit longer.
‘Now I’m single again and one of the last remaining girls in my group to settle down. I’ve had a few disastrous dates with men who just want sex — but I’m not interested because I’m looking for a husband and father now and my experience with Julian has finely tuned my antenna.
‘I’d love to meet a softer, less career-focused man now because my agenda is so different. But in my deepest, darkest, Bridget Jones moments, I’m terrified I won’t find Mr Right in time.
‘And anyway, I thought I had found Mr Right in Julian — except he turned out to be Mr Write Off.’ Of course, women can have children throughout their 40s, even up to their 60s now with donor eggs and IVF. But the chances of having a child naturally decrease drastically every year over 35.
One in four 40-year-old women does not have any children — and most of these are not by choice. Mostly they are left without the families they long for because they’ve made the wrong choices about men.
Another woman abandoned by Mr Write Off is Maggie Briggs, a 37-year-old publicist from Barnes, South-West London. She says: ‘I had a volatile relationship with Jerry, a 36-year-old engineer, for seven years.
‘In all that time, we had never got round to getting married. I suppose we had both thrown ourselves into our careers and wanted to focus on them in our early 30s.
‘Then, about two years ago, Jerry was sent to Manchester on a big contract and we started leading separate lives, meeting up only at weekends.
‘After a while, he started making excuses not to come back to London some weekends, and it wasn’t too long before I found out he was seeing another, younger woman he’d met in Manchester.
‘When I found out, he begged me to forgive him — and because I was so desperate to marry him and to start a family, I did. However, it was only a few weeks before I discovered that he was still seeing her.
‘And then she played her trump card. She found out where I lived and sent her friend round to tell me that she was pregnant by him.
Faced with his infidelity and the profound repercussions for my future and my chances of motherhood, I realised that I didn’t want any more to do with him.
‘It was a devastating betrayal because he’d always been meticulous about making sure that I didn’t fall pregnant.
‘I knew that for him to have got her pregnant meant that, despite his protestations, he must have felt more for her than he made out. Sure enough, he has now set up home with her and they have a baby boy.
‘I feel incredible bitterness that I wasted my best child-bearing years on him. But something inside me died when I knew his girlfriend was pregnant, so I don’t regret the fact that we’ve split.
‘Now I’m resigned to the fact that, unless I’m extremely lucky, I’ll probably go through life childless.’
Part of the problem, surely, is that feminism taught a generation of women that they did not need men and they did not need marriage. We enabled men to become commitment-phobes.
What man wouldn’t at least consider trading in his 30-something partner for a nubile 20-something, given the opportunity? What man would not hang onto his youth until the very last minute?
It is part of the modern Alpha male psyche to hunt and gather — but now he hunts women and gathers partners.
And with so many women putting motherhood off, they can make themselves vulnerable to the Alpha male who simply cuts and runs. The simple fact is that it is more difficult for a decent man to leave a relationship if there are children.
That’s why Mr Write Off avoids them at all costs. And what are we left with? An increasing number of men who think nothing of robbing a woman of the best child-rearing years of her life. And a new set of women left not holding the baby. It’s a social tragedy in the making.
