A mythical quest for a perfect soulmate

There are, according to a member of the Cabinet Office Forum on Gender Research, 27 types of men. After a decade and a half of exhaustive research into the fascinating subject of masculinity, Dr Stephen Whitehead has divided men into Murdochs, Jeffreys, Waynes, Rottweilers, Sigmunds, Zebedees and so on.

If the press reports are correct, these personality types are variously power-crazed, duplicitous, needy, confused, bullying or wet but, with the exception of the Libman, described as "a pro-feminist male, politically correct, very well read" (no prizes for guessing to which group Dr Whitehead would seem to belong), few are in good psychological shape.

Yet, here is a mystery. In spite of the inadequacies of the contemporary male, as expressed not only by the Cabinet Office Forum of Gender Research but by virtually every peak-hour drama and cheap-laugh comedy on TV, women everywhere are still heroically searching for a decent man with whom to share their lives.

Some take their quest rather too far. There will, for example, have been few men who will not have experienced a sharp, intimate pang, deep down where it matters, at the news this week that Petrina Khashoggi is suffering from love addiction. Young, willowy and beautiful, Petrina has confessed that "I am a girl who just loves being in love, but not necessarily for the right reasons", and has booked herself into a clinic to tackle the problem.

The reaction of most men, I imagine, will be similar to that of Philip Larkin when, late in life, he received fan-mail from sixth-form schoolgirls - "Where were you when I needed you?" Others will be more sympathetic to Petrina. Heaven knows, we have all been there. One moment, you might be living your life in a perfectly quiet and respectable way when, late at night at a party perhaps, you meet someone and discover that you suddenly have serious love addiction issues.

Sometimes the result is embarrassment and rejection. Occasionally addiction is only cured the next morning when you open your eyes to experience intense feelings of shame, self-loathing and a need to escape, and are obliged to "do cold turkey" as love addicts call it. Until recently, such experiences were part of growing up. One day, if you were lucky, you would meet someone whose amorous dysfunction matched your own and then you would graduate from pitiful addict to contented lover.

Now it is more complicated. From about the time when Michael Douglas checked into a clinic in order to deal with the terrible affliction of having too much sex, the process of finding a partner has become increasingly problematic. Our fast, acquisitive culture has led to a hysterical, hurried, all-or-nothing approach to romance. As the great myth of the moment - that somewhere out there is the One, the perfect soulmate - has been perpetuated in the media, so the business of dating has become more accelerated, restless and impatient. Such is the fear of being single, that speed-dating clubs, with their succession of hurried three-minute chats in a crowded room, have become the prevailing metaphor for the way we love now.

In fact, according to New Scientist, even a speed-date might soon be regarded as unacceptably leisurely. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a computer programme that will help provide an instant partner-alert for anyone with a mobile telephone. Users of a dating service will be able to feed their photograph and personal information into a central database so that each time someone with a compatible profile is near, the phone will ring.

But if love addiction, with all the sense of in-built dissatisfaction that it implies, is something that requires the attention of a clinic, then most of society should check in. The quest for that instant but perfect partnership, which miraculously combines laughter, warmth and kindness with hot, wild sex, is all around us.

It is an odd paradox that one of the few settings where a relationship develops in a sensible, old-fashioned way is on the internet. There, because any conversation will occur before any meeting, the less superficial areas of compatibility - a shared sense of humour, interest in similar things, a general sympathy - are revealed over time. By the time any physical encounter takes place, a relationship beyond looks, class and status may have been established.

But on the dating circuit, approaches to finding the right lover have much in common with the new attitude to property - there is a perfect home waiting for you and all you need is to know how to find it, negotiate for it and then make the best of it. So there was a certain inevitability to the news of the latest makeover show.

Esther Rantzen, apparently, is to have herself spruced up, trained in the art of flirting, and will then, accompanied only by a BBC TV crew, go out looking for a man. "I would like to meet someone, but who, and why, and how, I really don't know," she says.

From Petrina to Esther, from 23 to 63, the quest is the same. One of those 27 male varieties must contain the One. And they wonder why men have that strangely hunted look these days.

Terblacker@aol.com