The Bachelor: Surprise!

November 20th, 2007 by Nina Atwood

In the season’s final episode, Brad the Bachelor surprised everyone when he chose . . . no one! That’s right – he passed up the opportunity to marry (or at least propose to) either sweet Jenni or dynamic Deanna. The question is: why?

Maybe he felt too much pressure at the last moment. He picked out a ring, said good-bye to Jenni, but then folded in front of Deanna. Perhaps he placed too much significance on the television proposal moment, unwilling to put something out there that he might feel bad about retracting later. After all, the culmination of the series is basically the beginning of a real dating relationship, not the moment of real commitment. The truth is that only time will tell if there’s real glue between these couples who are artificially thrown together in a make-believe environment.

Brad comes from a family of divorce and the resulting trauma, as his family was dislocated and thrown into near poverty. Like many people who grow up in a splintered family, he may have a fear of commitment. Adult children of divorce often swing to one of two extremes in their own love lives – marrying quickly in order to try to capture the feelings of security that they missed, or avoiding marriage in order to avoid the risk of divorce.

Maybe all the emotional and physical connection that he displayed with Deanna and Jenni along the way was nothing more than dating fun. Perhaps he wasn’t really falling in love with either one of them, but he sure did act like he was. And maybe that’s the problem – he may have been forced to act like he felt more than he did because of the pressure of fulfilling the agenda of the producers. Hearts open naturally over the course of time, and everyone’s timetable is different. In a forced environment, it’s easy to see how Brad may have struggled to feel genuine emotions.

Brad boldly declared at the beginning of the series that he was ready for marriage; that he was there to meet his soul mate, find a wife, and propose at the end of the show. But maybe he failed to realize his own vulnerabilities. At the point of choice, he was unable to follow through. Tonight, on the season’s re-cap, we’ll hear from him the inside story. Maybe. It takes a high level of self-insight to unravel the real reasons for our behavior. Does Brad have what it takes to do that?

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