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We asked our mums what fuckboys were like back in their days

Ah, so they’ve always existed

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The modern fuckboy is the absolute worst – there are so many different types, you can't even predict how they're going to fuck you over anymore.

What are they going to do next? Beyond leaving you on read for days on end, ghosting you, and hooking up with every other match on tinder, what will they start doing in 2018?

That I'm afraid, we cannot answer, but we can give you a short history lesson into what fuckboys were like back in the days when your mum was on the dating scene. We asked our mums what fuckboys were like back in their days:

Niamh and her mum Gill

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Mum of UWE Journalism student Niamh, Gill, aged 50, said that in her day "we didn't have any of these weird terms like fuckboy, back then I think we would have just called them a 'two-timer'".

Gill said another major difference was that "when I was your age, we didn’t have stuff like Tinder and Facebook, so boys didn’t really have the opportunity to speak to other girls, unless they went out of their way to do it in real life."

Because of this lack of technology, she said it wasn't easy for people to discover if they had been cheated on, "unless we, or a friend, saw them do it".

"I remember once when I was 20 my boyfriend kissed another girl at a party in front of me, but I pretended to forgive him, and then when we went to another party together I got with another boy in front of him. That was my way of ‘dumping’ him."

Corrine and her mum Norma

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Norma, Corrine and younger sister Loretta

Norma, mum of second year English student Corrine, said the fuckboys of her day were usually called a "ladies man" or "players". Norma claimed "guys definitely played around back then too, but it must be less effort now" due to social media and dating apps.

She said boys "definitely had to put more effort in because there was no internet etc." Norma added that communication was limited, "you had to call the house phone."

Norma also told us lorry drivers were especially notorious. This was because "they were always driving to different places and would just go from woman to woman."

Lydia and her mum Sarah

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Sarah, mum of history student Lydia, said they would be called other phrases too, such as 'two-timers' and 'wide-boys'.

Unlike in the 2017 fuckboy era, where a fuckboy can go about his day-to-day life being seemingly unnoticed, Sarah said you could always tell who was one, simply by their appearance. They would have "blonde streaks in their hair, wear baggy trouser and own a car".

Apparently wide-boys were often those who worked from an early age, they "tended to be more of a player because they had the money to spend." These 'two-timers' stayed clear of Sarah, however, stating: "they didn't mess with me – they always wanted to see me."

Emily and her mum Rosemary

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Like mother, like daughter…

Rosemary, 62 year-old mum of Warwick History student Emily said fuckboys were referred to as a cad or a casanova. She described them as boys who were "terrible flirts".

Typical fuckboy behaviour back then was "going out and sleeping with them, then dumping them" or "only going out with someone for their money."

Rosemary described that the culture she grew up in was very different, with the pill having just been introduced and the huge stigmas of pre-marital sex still persisting.

It was a lot harder to ever find out if you were dating a cad, as "you would only know by word of mouth and rumours. You had no way of messaging people, and you were restricted to the use of the home landline.

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So there we have it, who knew fuckboys had been around for so long and in so many different forms? If our mums managed to get through without them, maybe there's hope for us too.