" No offense, but...

... I can't stand your boyfriend." If I had a dollar for every time a friend of mine has said that to me, I would:

* be retired
* be writing this from my charming villa at Lake Como
* scratch that - I’d be writing this from my neighbour/part-time lover George Clooney’s villa at Lake Como (in order to facilitate this, obviously, I would buy him and the reason that he’d only be my part-time lover is because I’d also buy Clive Owen and they’d be competing for my attention…)

For some reason, my friends have no problem sharing their thoughts about my partners. Granted, I haven’t always made the best choices, but I also have never dated a serial killer or anything…… (well, to my knowledge, anyways).

One of my closest friends, a smug married (actually, she’s pretty realistic about life and love), recently admitted that she felt badly having dissed every boyfriend I’ve had in a 10 year period. Not-So-Smug Married took offense to one of my mates in particular - the infamous and regrettable Mr. Hello Wall. She had no problem telling me that she didn’t like him right from the start. I was offended at first, but her intuition turned out to be pretty keen. In fact, she’s been pretty right to dislike many of my suitors. She was not alone – many of my other friends were also brutally honest with me. When everyone is telling you he’s bad news, he probably is. Just look at the lovely Anne Hathaway – she was dating a criminal and her friends were honest about disliking him, however it wasn’t until the police threw his arse in jail that she realized he wasn't a good guy for her.

Is it right to tell friends if their boyfriends/girlfriends suck??? My mother used to warn me against ever doing that, as she figured that if you tell someone that their partner is a loser and then they end up staying together, it would be very awkward. I used to feel that she was right, but now I worry that by keeping quiet, I might be enabling my friends to stay with bad boyfriends, and that’s just not right! Having recently learned that much of the wisdom bestowed on me by my mother now needs to be UNLEARNED (date married men; get him to “dump the bitch”; if a boy teases you it’s because he likes you… ad nauseum………), I’m thinking I need to be more:

* honest
* judgemental
* preechy
* verbose

Note: the book pictured above is an actual book – I know this because I bought myself a copy of the classic ’50 Extended Family Members Worse Than Yours’ a couple of years ago and it was a fantastic read.