Boytoys fascinate me. And not for the reason you would think.

I just don't get the appeal of them. Whenever I see an official boytoy, like poor Ashton Kutcher, husband of 43-year-old Demi Moore, my first thought tends to be, "What does his dad looks like?" The father of someone young enough to be boytoy material for me, seems about right.

Why is that? Why, those who fancy boytoys aside, does our taste in the opposite gender tend to age with us? Why at nearly 43 do I think men in their late 40s are the supreme examples of the male of the species? Certainly, that hasn't always been the case!

My kids are fascinated by this phenomenon. Partly because they are repulsed by the idea that anyone could find someone over say, oh, 30 attractive. But partly because they see me as so out of touch with today's attractive men, like Jake Gyllenhaal and Zac Efron.

When they see a man they think is good-looking they point him out to me. My response is invariably, "I wonder what his dad looks like?"

The other day, one of my sons declared in desperation that he would need to take me shopping for a boyfriend in a nursing home if my taste in men got any older.

But I expect it will. And maybe he should. If I was in the market for a boyfriend that is.

You might need to sit down for this one. In Cambodia, people happily and routinely agree to arranged marriages.

We had a guide, a 33-year-old man, who was still living at home with his parents while he saved the dowry he needed to secure his 23-year-old bride that his parents had chosen for him.

It was going to take him three years or more to put the dowry together.

He was a well-educated, mature and experienced Buddhist adult male who described these circumstances to us calmly and with the awareness that we were shocked. Maybe it was when my jaw hit his shoe.

Apart from thinking arranged marriages were of centuries ago and of traditional religions only, I always assumed that they affected very young people — teenage brides and grooms.

Adults in a free world going along with mum and dad's choice seemed, er, foreign to me.

As I grilled the man with question after question, of course I wondered whether it was such a bad idea. Might be more successful than my marriage. Might work out better than the Australian divorce rate of more than one in three.

But what if it doesn't? What if he just doesn't fancy her? Or her him? I wondered how important that was as I believe successful marriages are based on shared values and aspirations. But mutual fancying has to at least be a small factor of success, surely.

Whatever festive feelings I could muster, and they were limited, were largely quashed by Christmas parties. Now I can relax. The next round doesn't start for the best part of another year.

It doesn't seem that long ago that seeing cute men at a party would be a good thing. Not anymore. The cute men at this year's Christmas parties might have been interesting but I can't talk to them to find out.

I can almost hear the David Attenborough voiceover commentating "...and she approaches the man not with the desire for a pleasant social exchange but as if she has not eaten for many days and plans to devour him. The females of the pack stop what they are doing and watch her every move."

Being a divorced woman makes me a predator, apparently, and it's exhausting as you have to work the room at a number of levels. You need to check out the men very quickly, looking for safe bets. Those you might consider safe to talk to. Those not attached to a woman. You need to look sideways as that's where the women are, glancing back at you, protecting their turf. And you have to do all of this while greeting the hosts enthusiastically and getting yourself a drink.

For the above reasons, a man can't offer you a drink and a woman is more likely to want to throw it at you.

There is an additional Australian complication. We call it the "Aussie barbecue" and basically it is the phenomenon that at parties, the men are in one corner or in the backyard and the women are in another corner or huddled in the kitchen.

What this means for divorced, single women is hanging out with the women, who for the above reasons are unfriendly, and maybe never talking to a man at a party again. A shame really. I quite like men. No wonder I don't feel festive.

When I look at married couples, part of me wants to get married again so I can apply all that I'm learning from observing them.

I'm convinced happily-ever-after is not only achievable, but pretty well bankable if — having chosen your beloved carefully — you let synergy do its thing.

The principle of synergy — two people working together to create more than two people could achieve working independently — applies perfectly to coupledom.

Yet I see so few couples actually benefiting from it, as they mostly don't seem to work together.

I see tremendous opportunity for couples to make plans for themselves and to achieve great things together financially, socially, career-wise, as parents and friends. They could so easily decide between them how they want to live their lives and talk about how they will make their dreams come true together.

But they don't. Most couples I encounter are dissatisfied with their lot as individuals and as members of a married couple. They concentrate on the things that niggle them and tend not to stand back and look at what they have together and appreciate it.

I have yet to meet a couple who could say how they were doing according to their plans, dreams, and aspirations as they've never spoken to each other to establish what they are, much less talked about how and when they expected to reach them.

OK, so maybe that's not the best reason to get married, but if I do ever marry again, I expect synergy will play a role in its success.

Women who have been drinking seem to enjoy the sport of picking out men in the room, that I guess they fancy, suggesting to me that's "he's cute" and that I should pursue him.

Men who have been drinking take a more philosophical approach. They don't focus on individual males in the room but seem to talk conceptually about men in general and the endless benefits to a woman — by which they mean me — of "getting" one.

I dislike both approaches equally. Recently, one of the men pointed out by a woman seemed to me to be roughly half my age. I asked her if his likely interest in me would be based on his Mum being out of town and needing dinner cooked for him. I explained that I already have children to cook for and left it at that.

Men's appeals to me about the merits of men in my life seem always to suggest that as men, they understood how all the women they've ever been involved with have been better off for the experience. One needn't be fussy, just grab any man and be better off, too.

Usually, these matchmakers and philosophers are married, surprisingly often to each other.

While it would be nice to think that their concern for me is genuine, and sometimes it is, these encounters tend to have a sleaziness about them — fuelled by alcohol — that suggest these are men and women describing their own fantasies.

I wish them well. But their fantasies are not my own.

I don't know if Americans are familiar with Shane Warne, a very famous Australian cricketer.

While there is no doubt he is a genius on the cricket field, he has become just as famous for his extra-marital indiscretions, often involving provocative text messages that invariably end up in the media.

"Doing a Warnie" has become part of the Australian vernacular for any embarrassing use of a mobile phone.

Reading the recent post of the Chinese couple who got divorced via text message, I was reminded of my own text message story. Long after we were no longer married, I found out about my ex-husband's relationship with his new girlfriend when he "did a Warnie" and mistakenly sent a text message to me that was meant for her.

Text messages hadn't been invented when he and I were courting, and I don't date, so getting such a message on my phone was quite a shock.

I was in no doubt that the message was not for me but remember being taken aback when I read it.

Let's just say it wasn't about picking up bread and milk on the way home from work.

I would love to know how others have learned that their exes have moved on.

I was shocked. These guys were a part of the married elite. Four kids, still madly in love after about forever together. I wasn't buying it.

She went on to tell me her quickly patched together plans for her life as a single mother. Her business was starting to take off, so she would be okay for money. There was the house to sell and that would work out. She could buy food in bulk and freeze meals and that would help with running the family.

Through her sobbing, she sounded almost dedicated to the cause. I got the impression that being divorced and a single mother was what she wanted to be when she grew up.

I was puzzled by this and asked her what she thought she was thinking. She told me that she had been watching me "do it all" for a couple of years and she thought she could do it too. I was horrified. I do not want to be the poster girl for divorce.

She calmed down a little – even talking about being a single mother is tiring. We talked about some of the realities of divorce, that it is the path forward only when all other options have been exhausted. Divorce is not about a choice. It is about no other choice left.

In time, the figured out they still had other options to explore. They were committed to each other. They started to look in love again, after having gone through so much together.

I'm supposed to write what I want First Wives World readers to know about me. The request stumped my usual decisiveness — I'm not sure exactly what I want you to know about me!

A couple of song titles serve as great ice breakers. I am woman. I will survive.

I was a first wife, so I feel comfortable in this world. I have been separated, now divorced, for six years. I was married for almost eleven years.

Some fantastic things came out of my marriage. My sons are 15 and 10, and my daughter is 13. They all live with me. Life is full to overflowing, and I am truly happy with my life as a single mother.

That doesn't mean I think it's easy, because it certainly isn't. I work more than one job so that we can live the best possible life, and am responsible for every facet of my life and my children's. It's exhausting. But I am woman, and I will survive.

I'm Australian — I live in Melbourne. Hopefully there will be perspective I can offer that demonstrates what first wives have in common, wherever we live.

I am not sure that I will ever be a second wife. Although I am very clearly single, I don't describe or define myself as such. I'm a single parent, sure, but live such a full life that the absence of a partner is irrelevant to me.

I guess I should never say never. At 42, there is plenty of time for a second marriage. I always joke when asked about dating — and that's often — that I would need to go on a date first.

It is unlikely, therefore, that my posts for First Wives World will be about dating or wanting to date. They will be about embracing single parenting, getting on with a great life, being woman and surviving.

Perhaps I can throw in another song title. I want to look back on my life and say I did it my way.