Guest Post : Everything I Know about Love I’ve Learned from Watching The Bachelor

Today's Guest Post is from Cindy McDonald and how "The Bachelor" teaches us about Love.

Cindy McDonald is a guest post author who enjoys writing about love and relationships.  Ellie also writes for Catholic Dating Sites where she contributes articles about how to date safely on the web.

Everything I Know about Love I’ve Learned from Watching The Bachelor

We are almost through another horrifyingly tear-ridden season of ABC’s hit show, The Bachelor, and despite the fact that we’ve seen the same emotional instability, helicopters and “the most shocking rose ceremony ever” on repeat for the past 16 seasons, we continue to watch and we continue to believe that maybe, just maybe one of these relationships will actually make it past the filming of After the Final Rose.  And maybe there could be hope for us to find love too…

Well as a single girl looking for ‘the one’ myself, here are a few things that I’ve learned about love just from tuning in to watch the train wreck that is The Bachelor unfold every Monday night: 

Real love isn’t forced.  If signing up to a reality show with the goal of meeting a man and landing him as a husband in a matter of two months doesn’t sound forced then I don’t know what is.  Relationships should ignite and progress naturally over time while two people comfortably get to know one other by being themselves; relationships shouldn’t be marked by awkwardly rehearsed introductions or the exhaustion of trying to impress some guy in a suit.   

Games have no place in dating.  When a relationship starts out as a game, someone is always bound to lose.  Like on The Bachelor, us single ladies in the real world often feel like we have to beat out all of the competition to score the prize— instead, the trick is to be confident in your awesomeness and trust that when you find the right guy for you, he won’t engage in petty-game playing or compare you to others (and you won’t have to worry about publicly humiliating yourself on national television after one too many flutes of champagne).

Dates don’t have to include helicopters to be great.  Every little girl dreams that her Prince Charming will whisk her away on luxury five-star dates that could only be made possible by ratings-hungry reality TV shows.  Unfortunately the cold, hard reality is that Chris Harrison can’t be everyone’s fairy godmother.  Regardless, we are tricked into thinking that’s how true romance should be—and so are the people on the show.  Then when they get back to the real world it’s like, “What?  There’s no million dollar firework display over this lame-o dinner that couldn’t be held on the highest peak in Fiji overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Pacific?!  This blows, I’m outta here!”  The truth is that when you have a real connection with someone, it shouldn’t matter where you are or what you are doing—all that matters is you are with the one you love.

  ‘Fantasy Suite’ invitations should only be accepted if you are in a monogamous relationship.  Sure, if there’s a candlelit dinner and a dreamboat of a man staring deep into your eyes offering you the key to spend the night with him in the ‘Fantasy Suite,’ it can be difficult to refuse.  Okay, in real life it’s most often a guy looking at you crossed-eyed on a bar-stool asking you to come check out his ‘crib’ after being over-served at some hole-in-the-wall sports bar.  But the point is, if you haven’t defined your relationship status with a man as exclusive, you mustn’t be tempted…he just may have 20 other girls to whom he plans on giving a tour of the ‘Fantasy Suite.’