Right Reasons
[EPISODE 1: Limo Exits]
I started watching The Bachelor during Nick Viall’s season. Nick had curly brown hair and an upper lip that reminded me of a gopher. Before he became the Bachelor, he was a contestant on two seasons of The Bachelorette. In both seasons, he fell in love with the Bachelorette, proposed, and then got dumped. His Bachelor tagline was “Third time’s the charm.”
Nick’s season aired in January 2017. A year prior, my College Boyfriend broke up with me at the Philadelphia airport.
“We’ll talk again,” he said as we stood in the freezing drop-off line in Terminal A. “I just need to figure myself out.”
We kissed. Then I boarded a plane to Peru, where I spent a year teaching a computer class at a technical school, fumbling in Spanish, eating ceviche, laughing so much it hurt, and missing College Boyfriend quietly. When I watched my host mother pin down a live turkey and saw at its neck with a serrated knife, there was only one person with whom I wanted to share my horror and surprise. When my room was invaded by giant beetles, I stared at my phone and imagined the message I would have sent him if we were still together. Woke up with a beetle in my bed, it would have read. Jealous?
He called me nine months after the breakup, begging to get back together. “I was in a bad place,” he said. “I’m ready now.”
When I moved back to the States, we got an apartment together in Philadelphia.
In an apartment we now shared, I started watching the Bachelor. I sat on a futon we called temporary (but that we kept for four years), drank wine, and watched Nick Viall choose his Future Wife. The three-hour finale filmed in Finnish Lapland, a wintry landscape where Nick wore turtlenecks and quilted jackets. In the last episode, Nick proposed to Vanessa in a cozy cabin, a fire crackling behind them, plaid blankets adorning every available surface.
College Boyfriend never watched with me; he said the show was stupid.
Nick and Vanessa ended their engagement five months after filming ended.
[EDIT: Nick Viall’s tagline was actually “Fourth time’s the charm.” He was dumped a third time during his stint on Bachelor in Paradise, the franchise’s Mexican resort spin-off, making his season of the Bachelor his fourth attempt at finding love on reality television.
But “Third time’s the charm” sounds better, don’t you think?]
[EDIT: College Boyfriend didn’t break up with me at the airport. We broke up a week prior, sitting on his twin bed in Princeton, New Jersey, in a house without working heat. He had a tiny space heater that warmed his room with a dry, suffocating air.
“I can’t do this anymore if you’re not in it,” I said.
He didn’t fight me.]
[EDIT: College Boyfriend didn’t call me first.
On my birthday, drunk on cheap Peruvian beer, I attempted an anonymous Google Voice call. But I accidentally used Google Hangouts. He didn’t pick up.
When he got the notification the next day, he called back.
“I was going to reach out anyways,” he told me. “I swear.”
I never believed him.]
[EPISODES 2-6: Dates + Rose Ceremonies]
At the end of Season 25, Matt James, the first Black Bachelor, decided he wasn’t ready to propose. He asked the winner, Rachael, to be his girlfriend.
While not an anomaly, this isn’t the show’s desired ending. Despite a cumulative 30 hours together, Matt was expected to drop to one knee in the finale, an absurdly large diamond ring in his hand, and ask Rachael to marry him.
Of the 26 seasons of the Bachelor, only one Bachelor who proposed in the finale has married the woman he chose. The Bachelorette statistics are less bleak; of the 17 seasons of the Bachelorette, three couples who got engaged are happily married.
It feels too obvious to point out that the show perpetuates harmful, heteronormative ideas of romantic relationships, spouting an unrealistic narrative about love and how it should manifest. It portrays monogamous marriage as a beacon that everyone should strive for. Beyond that, it makes contestants believe that if they are not prepared for engagement after six weeks, then their inability to feel the correct depth of emotion is a personal flaw, rather than a systemic one.
The show is also a microcosm of the destruction possible if we buy into these ideals. If we let ourselves succumb to feeling or societal pressure, then perhaps we, too, will dive headfirst into doomed engagement and suffer through a devastating breakup, the world’s derision at our backs.
A small part of me thinks it’s a pretty thought—being so sure about a person that you get engaged after six weeks. I find the idea of emotion overwhelming reason romantic, albeit unrealistic.
A year after I move in with College Boyfriend, he becomes Partner. I am too old to use the word boyfriend. It feels immature and unserious on my tongue. And we are Serious! We live together! I’ve used his toothbrush! I buy him groceries and don’t expect him to pay me back!
But we don’t talk about marriage.
The reasons for that are unclear. When a friend asks me, I say it’s because we have unresolved issues. He prioritizes work over me, I tell her.
When another friend asks, I say it’s because I’m not sure I want to get married. When I explain it another time, I say that marriage should not determine happiness.
The truth is this: logically, I know marriage is a societal construct that I have been conditioned to want, something that, statistically, won’t result in happiness or a successful relationship. As a feminist, I believe it’s my responsibility to interrogate this practice and question whether it’s right for me.
The truth is also this: I wonder if the kind of intense feeling that spurs a couple to get engaged after six weeks exists, and I just haven’t experienced it yet.
I know it’s a fairy tale. A version of reality carefully edited and spliced together. A narrative designed by producers, pandering to people like me.
Then the question becomes: what happens when you want something you’re opposed to? Something that probably doesn’t exist?
[Edit: Partner and I do talk about marriage. Peripherally.
Example: Once, he drops to one knee to tie his shoe in Washington Square Park and I scream, as a joke, “Oh my god, are you proposing?!” At least five people swivel their heads to look. “I hate you,” he mumbles as he shoots to his feet.]
[Edit: Matt James and Rachael Kirkonnell broke up a few weeks after the season aired. Why? A photo of her attending an antebellum sorority formal surfaced, causing widespread internet backlash.
At the After the Final Rose Special, Matt was somber, composed.
“The most difficult thing for me was having to explain...why [that] was wrong,” he said. Rachael nodded so hard her earrings swung.
Several months later, they reunited. Now they roam New York City, making Instagram videos for millions of followers.]
[EPISODE 7: Hometowns]
Parents are a hot topic on The Bachelor. There are two camps: either your parents have a perfect relationship, and you aspire to their type of love, or they don’t, and your resulting emotional baggage gives you something personal to share with the lead.
On the show, perfect parents are portrayed as a virtue, while coming from a broken family is painted as a hurdle to overcome. Producers push contestants to share dysfunctional family narratives to endear themselves to the lead (and the viewers), to dump their trauma as evidence of their vulnerability.
The show has been criticized for using familial drama to draw viewers. Dean Unglert, a contestant on Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette, had a strained relationship with his father, who became a Sikh after Dean’s mother passed away. When Rachel and Dean visited Dean’s hometown, millions of viewers watched Dean’s father lead a gong meditation, insist they eat on the floor, and shut his son down when Dean brought up his feelings of abandonment after his mother died. Fans criticized the show for using Dean’s dad’s eccentricity to boost ratings, for manipulating Dean’s trauma to create drama.
Similarly, on Matt James’s season of The Bachelor, the show used Matt’s absentee father as an opportunity for tension. This choice was particularly harmful; it perpetuated a racialized narrative of absent Black fathers to The Bachelor’s mostly white audience, simultaneously opening Matt up to the emotional turmoil of confronting someone who abandoned him on national television.
My parents have been together for 35 years. My father is a loving guy, very goofy, very funny. Every Christmas Eve, he turns to me and says, in a hushed tone, “you better go to bed or Santa won’t come.”
He also expects to control everything that happens under his roof. He never does the dishes; I don’t think he knows how to do the laundry. I’ve never seen him clean a toilet.
My parents love each other. They go out to dinner every Friday night. They frequently plan weekend getaways. My dad posts pictures of my mom on Instagram—there she is with her salad at the brewery down the street from their house, there she is with a green apple martini on their back patio, there she is with the new workout top my dad bought her.
Their occupation of traditional gender roles wouldn’t bother me if I believed my dad valued my mother as an equal. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, and after my brothers and I moved out, she returned to school to get a master’s degree. Since graduating, she has found it difficult to find work. My dad’s response to her struggles: “you know you don’t have to work, right?” a comment which devalues her search for purpose beyond wifehood and motherhood.
Partner’s parents almost divorced while we were in college. After Partner moved out, they realized how diametrically opposed their political views were. The smallest disagreements escalated into heated arguments on religion, conservatism, morality. They separated for a couple months; his mother hired a divorce lawyer. But they went to couples’ therapy and decided to stay together.
If either of us were to go on The Bachelor, I wonder how we would spin our families. Since my parents have been together for 35 years, would I lie and say I want the kind of love they have? Or would I say that I resent their dynamic?
Would Partner frame his parents’ separation and reconciliation as a flaw? Or would he say he aspired to the kind of marriage his parents had, because they worked hard, every day, to choose each other?
[EPISODE 8: Fantasy Suites]
The Bachelor has its own vernacular–phrases and concepts only those familiar with the show understand. The most central phrase is: “Here for the right reasons.” Contestants use this line to call out suitors who aren’t on the show to fall in love with the lead, but instead seek Instagram followers, brand deals, and pseudo fame. In Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelorette, the men decided a man named Thomas wasn’t “here for the right reasons.”
Thomas was a tall Hispanic man with curly hair and an unironic goatee. He spoke exclusively in corny phrases, telling Katie that “he had never felt like this before” and that “everything changed when he met her.” In episode 4, the other men became suspicious of Thomas. They saw his cookie-cutter language as a sign of disingenuity. They asked Thomas if he had ever considered the possibility that he might be the next Bachelor.
Silly Thomas, he answered honestly. He said yes.
This is a cardinal sin. Never mind the fact that all the men have considered the possibility that they might be the next Bachelor (statistically, it’s as likely as ending up with the lead). The men rallied against Thomas, telling Katie he “only came on the show to become the next Bachelor.” In response, Katie publicly humiliated him, calling him “selfish, unkind, and a liar.”
It’s strange in romantic relationships, the lies you’re supposed to tell. The contestants on The Bachelor are supposed to say they are solely motivated by love. Of course they have no ulterior motives! They don’t care about Instagram followers or fame.
Partner doesn’t lie to me. When I ask him hard questions, he answers honestly.
“Have you ever thought about breaking up with me?” I ask one afternoon. We’re holding hands on the futon, watching a Serious HBO Show.
“Yes,” he says.
“How would you respond if I were to break up with you?” I ask another time.
He pauses, frowning. “I would be upset,” he says. “But I wouldn’t fight you on it.”
In our fifth year of living together, we begin couples’ therapy. We are laughing a lot. We are both graduate students and we spend weekends at a coffee shop a few blocks away from our apartment, working on our separate projects but pausing occasionally to talk through an idea, or procrastinate. We barely fight.
My best friend gets engaged at a vineyard. I help her fiancé plan the proposal. I pick a spot in the vineyard and hide, creeping around the vines to watch as he drops to one knee. I bring a Polaroid camera and take photos that emerge filmy and gray. Her engagement ring glitters ostentatiously in the fading daylight.
Her fiancé doesn’t believe in marriage. He did the whole thing — buying the $30,000 ring, planning the elaborate proposal at a vineyard—because she wanted it. He says to me after, “She is the only person I would do this for.”
When I get home, I am drunk on wine. I’m washing my face in the bathroom and Partner is there, listening to me narrate the proposal. I show him the pictures.
Then I ask, “If I were to say that marriage was really important to me, would you propose?”
He doesn’t say no directly, but he evades the question. Because I am drunk, or because I am wounded, I cry.
[EDIT: The next morning, we lie side by side in bed. I am embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “that question was unfair.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he wraps his arms around me. I burrow my face into his neck. “That question was a softball, and I whiffed.”]
[EDIT: Five months before my friend's wedding, her engagement ends, and the wedding is cancelled.]
[EPISODE 9: Proposal Day]
Partner and I have been together eight years—longer than 90% of the couples that emerge from the Bachelor.
I have issues with The Bachelor franchise. I hate how the show encourages women to turn against each other (on Matt James’ season, a woman named Anna spread a fake rumor about another contestant “entertaining men for money.”) I hate how the show puts people of color into harmful situations for the sake of drama (for the first Black Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, the show cast a man who tweeted, among other terrible things, that Black Lives Matter was a terrorist group). I hate how there are rarely disabled contestants, fat contestants, neurologically
divergent contestants, or queer contestants. I hate how there is always a date that sexually demeans the contestants (a game of “strip dodgeball” for a group of men. For the women, a pillow fight in lingerie.)
But.
I love how manufactured and predictable it is; in a world where stress and change are constant, I enjoy a dependably low-stakes story line. I love cringing from secondhand embarrassment when contestants behave terribly. I love trying to parse the editing to see which version of reality is real. I love seeing rare, genuine moments of connection.
I believe I can consume something, be aware of the harmful ideas it perpetuates, and enjoy it anyway. I believe I have the intellectual capacity to parse a piece of culture and decide what I agree with and what I do not, and the agency to act according to those beliefs.
But I wonder if it’s possible to consume something without a piece of it lodging inside me. I wonder at what point, after an idea has been shoved down my throat for my entire life, I lose control over it.
Partner watches The Bachelor with me now. When I asked him the other night whether he thought our life would be better without it, he thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe. But let’s not decide until after this season. We have to figure out who Charity picks.”
[EDIT: I never asked Partner whether we should stop watching. If I did, he would probably say yes.]
[EDIT: My relationship with Partner ended seven months after I finished this essay.
But I didn’t change the ending.
Better to leave it out, don’t you think?]
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Taylor De La Peña (she/her) is a mixed Filipina-American author. She received her MFA in fiction from Rutgers University – Camden in 2022. Prior to the MFA, she worked in various nonprofit organizations, including an economic development nonprofit and a legal services nonprofit. She now works as a paralegal in the Housing Justice Project at the Rutgers Camden Law School, where she assists New Jersey tenants facing eviction. She lives in Philadelphia.
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