I never believed I would say something like this, but I’m finally ready to admit it:
The Bachelor is my guilty pleasure.
It’s a bit strange for me because I always looked down on reality shows — If I’m being honest, I still do. Whenever people told me they watched, let’s say, The Kardashians, I felt an intense urge to roll my eyes.
Since The Bachelor first aired in 2002 in the USA, a lot of countries followed with their own spins on the extremely popular reality show, with Greece being added to the list this year.
And although I had never been able to watch a whole episode of the show before, I ended up watching every single episode of the Greek version.
What can I say? People like to watch a competition and they also love to watch romance. Combine these two together and you create something irresistible.
Or maybe, the list of the things 2020 ruined includes my taste.
Whatever the case may be, The Bachelor, as any reality tv show, has to do with people — their behavior, their conversations, the psychology behind their actions. That means that by watching them, we can learn a couple of valuable lessons about certain aspects of life and how the human mind works.
What follows are five — surprisingly — valuable things I learned about relationships by watching The Bachelor.
1. True Chemistry Is Evident Right Away
You can’t fake chemistry — that’s something that when is there, it’s evident right away.
I’ve always said that you can easily understand whether you’ll “click” with someone from the very first date, and that’s something the greek version of The Bachelor proved to be true.
Out of the 20 first dates The Bachelor went on, I only saw sparks flying on one. And guess what? That one date was with the girl that he chose to be with at the end.
Of course, you could see there was also chemistry between him and a couple of other contestants, but none like the one he seemed to have with the girl he ended up choosing.
On the other hand, some of his first dates were so awkward that they made me cringe just by watching them.
The takeaway is, there’s no point in trying with someone with whom you have zero chemistry from the very first beginning. Things won’t change — you either “click” someone or you don’t.
2. First Impressions Matter
At the end of the very first episode of the reality show, the Bachelor gives the girl that left him the best (first) impression a rose, called “the first impression rose” — obviously.
Since I never watched the Bachelor before, I don’t know what happened in the US or other versions of it, but in the greek version, the girl that was given the first impression rose ended up being among the last four contestants.
The Bachelor liked her from the very beginning and his attraction to her continued almost until the end of the show — something that tells us that a first impression can go a long way.
As is explained in Psychology Today,
“Human beings are built to size each other up quickly. These first impressions are influenced by a number of factors, such as facial shape, vocal inflection, attractiveness, and general emotional state. People tend to get attached to their initial impressions of others and find it very difficult to change their opinion, even when presented with lots of evidence to the contrary.”
3. We Often Fall for the Idea of Someone
The Bachelor (clearly disappointed) rumbled on more than half the season’s episodes about the following thing: that what he initially thought of some of the contestants was radically changed once he got closer to them.
You see, sometimes, when we first meet someone, instead of seeing them for who they really are, we check some boxes we have in our minds about the perfect partner.
As Mariana Bockarova explains in her article in Psychology Today,
“Through our life experiences, the way we are nurtured, and our genetics, each of us develops a set of standards we have for romantic partners. These “ideal partner preferences” put forth a benchmark from which we evaluate the person before us in terms of suitability…If, upon first meeting, we only glean surface characteristics about a potential partner that matches our ideals — as exemplified in the case study above — we may blind ourselves to aspects of that person which would otherwise pull him or her away from the ideal we have in mind.”
Athletic? Check.
Green eyes? Check.
Pretty smile? Check.
A business major? Check.
You tell yourself, “Hey, it seems like the perfect match!” But, it usually isn’t.
Because, when you focus only on whether the other person meets the qualifications you have for the “perfect partner” in your head, you aren’t actually seeing them for what they really are.
You end up falling for the idea of someone and not for the person themselves — and that means that one day you’ll wake up thinking, “Who the hell is this person I’ve been spending my time with?”
4. The Need to Find the Balance Between Talking and Listening
One of the things that seemed to always get on the Bachelor’s nerves was when one of the contestants talked too much on a date.
You know, rumbling about her work, her family, her friends, her exes, even that dress she bought last month on her trip to Italy.
I get it, really. Although I prefer it when people are more talkative than I am — I’m shy and introverted, so I struggle to initiate conversations — I find their inability to find the balance between talking and listening a huge turn-off.
Listening is an integral part of communicating and connecting to others. For me, listening instead of talking wins every single time. When you talk too much without listening you give the impression that you don’t care about your date and what they have to say and the same happens when you don’t talk at all.
So, what should you do?
At the end of the day, when it comes to the success of a date, it’s all about finding the right balance between talking and listening.
5. We All Express Our Feelings in a Different Way
One thing I saw the Bachelor talk about like, a hundred times, was how he wanted the contestants to talk more about their feelings and to “open up to him more”.
That made me think that we all experience and express our feelings in a different way. Some fall in love quickly, while others need to take their time to develop feelings for the other person. Some can be completely open about their feelings from the beginning, while others can’t open up that quickly.
The greek Bachelor seemed to value (and expect) from the girls a declaration of love made in the heat of the moment, even though some of them had told him that they needed time in order to come to terms with their feelings, let alone talk about them.
And, you know what? That’s okay — after all, everyone is different and expects/wants different things when it comes to love and relationships. What matters is to find someone who will either be willing to try and understand the way you approach your relationships or will approach love the same way as you do.
There’s always something new to learn about dating and relationships. If you look hard enough, there are things you can learn from everything around you, even a trashy reality show.
The more you open up your mind — and eyes — the more wisdom you’ll gain about the complicated, yet fascinating way human relationships work.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Tom The Photographer on Unsplash