I can't believe I'm copping to this.

Copping to what? I've watched The Bachelor also... wait... only when my wife turned it on. Yeah, that's it.

On a more serious note, I can't let this go just yet, as my highbrow houseguest and I just finished a fascinating conversation about who Andy should have chosen. With all the editing on that show crafted to keep us guessing and surprised, we don't get to see the behind the scenes nuances. Instead, we get these superficial (I hope)cameo confessionals where things are said that get me wondering about the clashes these people have with their own values, or perhaps I should say it's the clashing of conflicting values within each individual. For example, it was clear that Andy had serious feelings for and strong chemistry with the woman he didn't choose. His family saw the electricity between the two, but while we didn't get to see it, I suspected his family, who asked each woman about her religious affiliation, was more comfortable with Tessa because, although she was a lapsed Catholic, she was not a Bahai, as was Bevin. Andy's confessionals indicated his decisionmaking exercise consisted of constructing a portrait of himself with a space by his side where he kept switching the images of the women between whom he had to choose. My sense was that he was trying to decide which picture made him look better.
"I could see myself with Tessa because she's elegant and refined..." and something about how she would fit into any situation in which he might find himself.
I'm not knocking Tessa, and I'm certainly not saying people shouldn't seek mates that possess qualities that are important to them. However, had anything about Bevin set off his alarms (e.g., her religion or her divorce, that we know of), I think he would have rejected her sooner.
I remember an Oprah episode many years back where she had spouses in troubled marriages as guests. One woman, in love with a husband who acknowledged he didn't love her, listened to her husband explain to Oprah how he didn't understand why he didn't love his wife. After all, he had made a list of all the qualities he wanted in a wife, and of all the women he had known, this one woman possessed all of those qualities - good housekeeper, good mother material, compatible political and religious views, attractive, etc. It was gut wrenching to watch. The guy was truly suffering over his failure to be able to be in love with his wife, and she was in agony over his inability to be in love with her. He was also so clueless. He repeated so many times all of the good qualities he sought, acknowledging she possessed them all. I just wanted to scream, "You picked her off a list, dumba**, what did you expect?" This phenomenon was evident in a prior season of the Bachelor when Doctor Travis chose the girl-next-door schoolteacher over the exotically beautiful and vulnerable Moana who was so totally in love with him. He chose the woman who fit in his picture, and they didn't even last to the "After the Final Rose" show. In fact, I don't even think they had one, since their breakup was announced the day after the final rose ceremony. Rod, you've written a lot about your meeting and falling in love with the VERY beautiful-in-all-ways Julie, saying it was pretty much love at first sight and that she hadn't been the type with whom you'd been associated in prior relationships. Of course, you had the Holy Spirit working within you on that. Point is, you didn't have to scour the earth for the woman who would fit the checklist and then try to force some feeling for her so that she would make that picture look just the way you wanted everybody to see it. I sensed that Andy's grandparents might have had what you have as well. Highbrow Houseguest and I thought the GP's had more chemistry than anybody on that show, and it was apparent that they also shared each other's values. Grandma also gave herself away as a Bevin fan when Bevin responded that the pivotal moment for her in terms of her feeling for Andy was when Andy brushed her hair behind her ear. Grandma melted, and HH and I knew Grandma didn't pick her man from a list, although, who knows if Grandpa chose her by the picture.

In all seriousness, we don't watch much TV in our house, but there's usually one show (maybe two) that qualifies as a guilty pleasure, usually because by the time we've had dinner, bathed the boys and wrestled them into bed, we need something completely idiotic to watch to turn our brains off and rest. "The Bachelor" filled that bill this spring. Rachel, I think you and your friend were onto something. Julie, who was a Tessa partisan ("Bevin was the girl you date, but Tessa is the girl you marry"), said that it bothered her that Andy couldn't seem to talk about the women except in relation to himself. "You make me feel so... . Whenever I'm with you, I see myself... ." And so on. It was as if he were, as you say, trying to pick the girl who fit his list. When he said, on the final show, "I can see Tessa going with me everywhere, to have fun, or to a formal ball," etc., I knew the fix was in.
Of course the old saw about how if you want to attract a guy, you have to make him work for it was vindicated by this result. Leaving aside the inherent ridiculousness of choosing your life mate through a TV contest, it seems to me that a couple needs that deep passion Andy and Bevin had to get them over the difficulties of the first few years of marriage, as they're transitioning into a life together. If a marriage is built only on passion, when it fades (as it must), they'll have nothing left. But if a marriage doesn't have that passion, if it comes together as a sensible merger of two companies, it probably won't last either.I didn't see that one of these women had more to offer in terms of virtue than the other. But Bevin did apparently adore that Andy unreservedly, and he seemed to do the same with her ... but he chose the woman who obviously had to work to love him. I bet he's going to end up with his heart broken.
Anyway, that Bevin was rather classy last night on the "After the Rose" show (recognizing that this entire enterprise is irredeemably trashy).

OK, Rod. Considering that you have a serious reading list a mile long, I'll go easy. I watched some of the early Bachelors. I didn't know it was still being produced. That show always left me a little depressed. I'm not sure that I can explain why. It might be that the contestants were so shallow. I hated watching a man make out with woman after woman, and then struggle to decide whom to marry. I hated watching all of these beautiful women fall in love with some egomaniac, and I really hated seeing them making out with some guy whom they'd fell for and whom they knew would be making out with someone else on his next date. It sort of confirmed & fed into the low opinion stereotype that I have of The Beautiful People.

BWAHAHAHA! Can't believe you watched that. Of course I did too. "But if a marriage doesn't have that passion, if it comes together as a sensible merger of two companies, it probably won't last either." I made that mistake, and the marriage didn't last. Not hard to guess exactly how a marriage like that is likely to fall apart. Ugh. I too think he should have gone with Bevin. The grandparents were great.

A titbit: - The Japanese have a divorce rate I think of 2% or so. They don't marry for romance, they marry for family. Many are arranged. They call romantic love a "temporary" condition. - Our divorce rate is about 50% or so. We worship romance, pimp it to the young and old alike, and even make twisted reality tv shows about it. I'm not making a pitch one way or the other, but there's gotta be a balance.

How socially acceptable is divorce in Japan? I suspect that, even if it isn't difficult to obtain legally, it's far less socially acceptable than it is here, which might account for the lower divorce rate. (But, for that matter, how easy or difficult is it to obtain *legally* in Japan? I'm asking; I really don't know.) I have to believe that the availability and social acceptance of divorce have had a direct effect on the willingness of couples to stick it out and work things through. Though this isn't a perfect analogy, I see this in some of my students when they get to a point where they're having trouble with a class. If it's at a point in the semester where it's easy to drop the class without any real penalty (and they might even get a partial refund), some students just drop the class when they start finding the material difficult. On the other hand, if the semester is further advanced and it is harder to drop the class (more bureaucratic hoops) or even impossible without getting a bad grade, these students are willing to work harder to learn the material and get at least a passing grade. In other words, their willingness to stick it out and work through their difficulties depends to a great extent on the ease with which they can hit the "escape" button. I suspect that another reason underlying our higher divorce rate is the fact that young people aren't raised with the idea that marriage is the "normal" or "expected" way to spend one's adult life. It is just one option among several -- and, if it doesn't appear to be working out, just take it back and get a refund, as one does with a defective product. On the other hand, when my parents were young, I don't think the idea of going through life without a spouse ever occurred to either of them. It was just part of what one did, and you did what you had to to make it work. They knew they were going to get married, it was just a matter of finding a compatible person with whom to built a life and a family. They didn't expect their spouse to be some sort of "magic bullet" who would "fulfill" all their "needs". I think the poster who referred to Andy as an "egomaniac" had it right (not intending any slight to Andy personally). Our culture's whole obsession with a certain notion of "romantic" love is, paradoxically, egocentric. We idealize our potential mate and put that person on a kind of pedestal; but, really, we focus on what that person can do for *us*, how that person can fulfill *us*. Of course, I can speak about all of this with great authority, since I've never been married or even close. ;-) *** Having said that, I thought Dr. Travis should have chosen Moana a couple seasons back. ;-) (I would have gone with Moana in a minute!) I also felt that the editing of the current season was transparently manipulative -- I thought it was obvious that the producers wanted the viewers to expect Andy to choose Bevin, and I felt that the editing was so obviously manipulated to create that impression that I *knew* he was going to choose Tessa. (But, then, maybe I was projecting, since I have a thing for exotic-looking brunettes. ;-) )

ScurvyOaks, M_David, any data on infidelity in Japan? Zing!
That was my first real good laugh today. I surrender. Uncle.

I can understand guilty pleasures but the Bachelor? Where's the pleasure in it? The whole thing is so sad. I feel sorry for everyone on the show and repulsed by them at the same time. I and my wife married very young and don't regret it. One advantage is that we have kids. Another advantage is that we grew up together, so to speak.

Isn't that the secret of long marriages that were arranged, or where the husband and wife didn't know each other very well when they got married? From everything I've read about it -- and, as I've admitted above, I have no personal experience in this area -- people *choose* to make it work and learn, over time, to love one another.

David J. White said, "People were "older" at a younger age than they are now, and I think the more predictable nature of the economy was part of the reason." I agree, but I suspect another reason younger people were "older" then is that they didn't have the generation above them being told that they were the greatest, most marvelous, most wonderful, most enlightened group of people ever to grace the earth; and when *their* elders reached the age of sixty or sixty-five they started to slow down and enjoy life a little, not demand that the whole world continually readjust to the ridiculous "sixty is the new thirty!" paradigm being shoved down our throats everywhere we turn. Congratulations to your parents, btw!