We know that marriage and babies were a huge part of Britney’s childhood dreams, and there can’t be many other women who have taken the step of proposing to all four of the men with whom she has had a relationship of more than one night, and marrying two of them, all by the age of 22. This kind of drive and initiative is perfectly typical of the woman in question, but it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that it may have been one on her list of unfulfilled ambitions - a goal to be achieved before moving on to something else rather than a desire to live the rest of her life as a housewife and part-time entertainer.

Even before she met Kevin, Britney was a wreck, a lost girl, rebellious, self-destructive, seemingly filled with self-loathing and low self-esteem. As every media observer, including those sympathetic to her, has observed, she went completely off the rails following the break-up of her relationship with the man who may in the end prove to have been her soul-mate, her Mr Right and her one true love, Justin Timberlake. She sought comfort and solace in religion, in therapy and in alcoholic and drug-fuelled endeavours to numb the pain.

It was obvious that there was a huge void in her life and had it not been filled there is no telling what state, either mentally or physically, she would be in by now, and how much sooner it would have happened. Maybe she would have suffered a total emotional and physical breakdown followed by years in the wilderness. Members of her entourage have admitted that by early 2004 she had become difficult to live with, and the arrival of Kevin Federline on the scene came as a relief to many people who cared about her.

It’s not hard to see what drew them together. Opposites attract, and the highly-strung, hyperactive, nervy, emotional Spears was instinctively drawn to the slow-talking, slow-walking, slow-thinking, thoroughly chilled out Mr Federline. She knew instinctively that this was the man she needed to calm her and settle her, someone whose life was not a high-pressure maelstrom like hers. In Britney, Kevin saw the sweet, affectionate, big-hearted, generous partner that every man knows is good for him - and it can’t have hurt that she also happened at that time to be one of the sexiest women in the world.

From her point of view there may have been a certain amount of Darwinian survivalism at play. It’s said to be a natural instinct for every woman to mate with the person who offers her the best prospects for successful procreation and nurture - whether material, psychological, emotional, intellectual or spiritual - and the National Enquirer reported more than once that Britney was telling her friends in admiring tones just what good breeding material she considered Kevin to be.

But she needed a lot more than that from the relationship she so desperately desired. She needed someone to love her for herself, to hold her, to cuddle her, to calm her. In equal measure, she needed someone upon whom she could lavish her own boundless and unconditional love. And it would only be fair to note that Britney is the kind of physical, athletic woman who is so often highly sexed, horny as hell, and anxious to have her needs satisfied on a frequent and regular basis.

But here’s the thing. Opposites may attract and come together out of mutual fascination. They may be exactly what is mutually required to provide short term therapy and to spark off a healing process. They may be rocks to cling to when you’re drowning. Someone too much like yourself just feeds your neuroses. An ideal relationship is one in which both people become part of a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. A whole which to both partners is a melding into something indivisible where each person receives from the other that which is needed to provide fufilment and completeness. Opposites can be complementary - but they can also be incompatible.

And Britney and Kevin just seemed like two people who would continually rub each other up the wrong way. Britney’s energetic, impulsive, hyperactive, mercurial, constantly dreaming and planning, bubbling with ideas and far too headstrong to be persuaded by somebody else that some of them may not be all that wonderful. She can’t be the best of company if you’re the sort of person whose idea of a good time is to do as little as possible and whose main source of exercise is a walk to the bathroom. This is a man who doesn’t like to be hassled. He doesn’t want to do things NOW, he wants to do them when he damn well feels like it. There must've been times when the driven, perfectionistic Britney was all his worst nightmares rolled into one. It would hardly have been surprising if he wanted to spend time with his guy friends and get that buzzing noise out of his ear for a while.

Britney knew what she needed from Kevin and her big picture was one showing the happy couple celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary with another three kids by her side. But on a day-to-day basis she must've been incredibly frustrated by her husband’s low energy levels, stoic perversity and general inertia. How many times must she have felt like slapping him upside the head to wake him up and yelling “Why don’t ya DO SOMETHIN’??!!!” And when all he did then was to get in his car and drive to a club somewhere out of town, that can hardly have been the kind of personal engagement she was hoping for.

Britney and Kevin may, in their quieter moments, have envisioned themselves as partners in the highest level of synergistic human bond, but listen to what Madonna has to say: “There’s no such thing as the perfect soul mate. If you meet someone and you think they’re perfect, you better run as fast as you can in the other direction, ‘coz your soulmate is the person that pushes all your buttons, pisses you off on a reguar basis and makes you face your shit. I thank God every day that I’m married to a man who makes me think!” I wonder if Kevin ever had that effect on Britney, and if so, precisely what she IS thinking about him right now.

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