THE BACHELOR's Jason Mesnick broke off his engagment for the right reason: uncertainty.
Hi, John, Do you watch the”Bachelor” series? I was just wondering if it’s a MARS trait to be fickle and engage a woman’s feelings at the drop of a hat? Jason changes his mind and then pursues another girl! Is it at all possible for a man to love two women with the same intensity?—Vicky C., via Facebook
For the past couple of months, American television viewers have had an ongoing love affair with the single-dad star of the reality show The Bachelor. Jason Mesnick, a good looking thirtysomething everyguy came off as both Prince Charming and Cinderfella as he wined and dined, then eliminated a field of 24 beautiful and accomplished women in order to find his very own happily ever after ending.
But last Monday, America’s new prince became a pumpkin when, live on prime time, he dumped the woman who had supposedly won his hand in marriage: Melissa Rycoff.
Then, to add insult to injury, he asked the next runner up, Molly Malaney, to take a chance on him.
Despite protesting that he was under contract by the show’s producers to do so on camera, he’s been condemned on TV and radio talk shows, and fan blogs, for being so callous to the girl who got the ring.
While I certainly don’t condone how he publicly broke it off with Melissa – or, for that matter, how he publicly tried to reconcile with Molly – I do feel he had the right to have cold feet about the first proposal. Here’s why:
1. Reality TV is not reality. In fact, it’s the furthest thing from it. It’s hard to be yourself when you have a camera in your face, because you don’t necessarily want to say or do something that makes you come off as indecisive or mean.
2. He never went through all five stages of dating. As was written in yesterday’s MarsVenusLiving.com’s article on cold feet, real romance goes through five stages: Attraction, Uncertainty, Exclusivity, Intimacy, and Engagement. Whereas most of the girls originally presented to Jason may have been attractive to him, even throughout the winnowing-down process he rarely had a chance to be exclusive with most of them, let alone intimate.
And obviously, his uncertainty, stage two, came only after the camera finally shut off: sometime during the six weeks between the time he popped the question on camera and the live show, in which he dumped her.
3. Jason wasn’t in it for his 15 minutes of fame; he was in it for the rest of his – and his son’s lives. All the more reason to consider any serious degree of uncertainty. In fact, he did Melissa a favor by speaking candidly before their TV induced-marriage became a divorce statistic.
Bottom line: in the real world, there is no way in which you can woo 24 girls over a few weeks’ time, then choose your soul mate from them. It might make for good audience ratings, but it’s no way to establish a deep, and lasting relationship.
