George Clooney: An Honest Heartbreaker

Poor Elisabetta.

Her relationship with George was going so well.

After two years and countless photos of her standing, beautifully, by her famous boyfriend's side, you could just sense that Elisabetta was growing pretty sure she'd one day be married to George Clooney.

So confident was she, that she gave an interview to Italian magazine Chi this month, in which she said that she definitely saw herself married and having babies. She also referred to her boyfriend as "my man" and said she couldn't be any happier than being with him. Which means she simply didn't believe George when he told her over and over again that, having been married and divorced once, he didn't want to repeat the experience. Neither does he want children.

George presumably had one of his staff translate the interview ito English and you can guess his response when he read the contents.

Elisabetta is 32. George is 50. Her interview and stated wish to marry and have kids will have focused his mind on her age. If he stayed with her, he faced years more pressure to offer a commitment that he chooses not to offer. He'd face years of pressure to make her pregnant and he doesn't want to do that either.

Sorry Elisabetta, but far from marrying George Clooney and raising a family with him, the only future for the relationship after that interview was through the door and back to your folks in Sardinia.

"That George Clooney" her family may well say "is nothing but a Hollywood heartbreaker."

It's true. But Clooney comes out of the affair, or the relationship rather, with a lot more integrity than many of his contemporaries. Think of those cads Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kelsey Grammer, Jesse James... They all committed to marriage, and Mel, Arnie and Kelsey committed to raising a family too. Then they cheated on their wives and betrayed them as well as breaking their hearts. It's far harder to recover from a relationship breakup when it involves betrayal and infidelity.

Or take Owen Wilson's recent breakup. Wilson is a lovely boy, very funny, and amusing in all his films. But having impregnated a young woman last year, and raved about his baby son's birth, he promptly announced he didn't want to stick around to raise the child because he wants his freedom. He's 42 for heaven's sake. He should have known his own mind before he got involved in creating a baby. Once he'd had the child, he could have decided to stick around, face the responsibility and raise it.

In all these cases, the men gave the women commitments and then reneged on them.

Clooney, though, was perfectly honest with Elisabetta from the start, as he has been with other girlfriends. "I don't want to marry or have kids" he tells his partners. Which leaves the girlfriends perfectly free to accept or reject this terms. No cheating or lying or leading them on.

Clooney may create a few broken hearts in the wake of his relationships and healing a broken heart is never easy. But, since his marriage/divorce with Talia Balsam, he's been determined no to create distraught ex-wives, abandoned babies, secret 'love children' and broken families.

And good for him. It's perfectly likely of course that he isn't really thinking of the women at all when he sets out his terms and conditions. Maybe he simply likes his freedom, doesn't want the commitment of marriage and kids and doesn't want to risk losing half his huge fortune and his villa at Lake Como in a divorce settlement. Even so, the result is that he tells women what his terms are for dating them and that gives them honest information.

The girlfriends can then decide whether to accept that George is not the marrying kind and just have the time of their lives for a year or two.

Elisabetta's mistake was in accepting George's terms at the start of the relationship and then deciding she could change his mind. Sometimes men do change their minds about marrying and having kids. But if a rich, famous, handsome, divorced man in his 50s is telling you he doesn't want a wife and family....it's a pretty big gamble that he'll have a change of heart.