We draw up lists of imagined character traits (liking pina coladas and getting caught in the rain), impose height (must be over 5'8”) and other restrictions (crooked teeth, ginger hair) and rigorously apply them to any date who comes our way. But all that careful planning means diddly when Mr Inappropriate enters our lives.
Inappropriate relationships are a long way down the line from your average diversion off the path to finding your carefully chosen Mr Right. It's like thinking you'll just pop out to the shops in London and ending up in Macclesfield instead. Mr Inappropriate will be your teacher, your mentor, or your dad's best friend. As such, he'll never slip under the radar as a Mr Right Now or even your bog-standard badly chosen Mr Wrong, something to chalk up to experience before you move on.
One of the main reasons for this is because inappropriate relationships aren't just judged as such by you and/or your friends. Rather, they are unsuitable in the eyes of society at large – and that's an awful lot of people to be telling you that you and your behaviour is wrong. Notes on a Scandal, the feature film starring Cate Blanchett as a beautiful boho teacher caught up in a passionate and shamefully improper relationship with a 15-year-old teacher is a case in point.
There is a touch of the sexual predator about many inappropriate relationships. And certainly in such affairs the traditional balances of power are usually skewed out of all recognition (teacher/student, boss/employee, doctor/patient), on the surface at least. But just as these relationships are judged by society, so does society have the power to change them.
Marriage between first cousins is largely frowned upon by western society, for example, but is a perfectly acceptable way to choose a mate in other cultural groups. And while a boss who's having an affair with a much younger and less senior member of his workforce was, until relatively recently, generally considered to be the instigator of a such an affair.
The rise of ambitious women in the workplace, however, has gone some way to put paid to that. A new kind of predator willing to use anything – including her sexual power – to get ahead, has taken over in the popular imagination and in the process such relationships are not viewed as inappropriate (except, of course, when company policy dictates) so much as tragic these days.
Likewise, while no one is about to condone sex with underage youngsters, the idea that much younger partners can have the upper hand emotionally and sexually is gaining ground (indeed, in Zoe Heller's book upon which Notes on a Scandal was based, the 15-year-old male protagonist is not only up for the affair but the one who ultimately controls it as well). In theory, this addition of grey into the once strictly black and white palette of what constituted an appropriate or an inappropriate relationship should breed a new spirit of enlightenment and understanding between us all. In truth, however, it just goes to underscore our hypocrisy even more.
