But boy is it ever worth watching. A typical Bachelor finale is an hour and a half of intense tension building followed by a complete emotional trainwreck in the last half hour. Because real feelings are seemingly involved, the final eliminations reliably reach levels of savage brutality that you simply cannot get anywhere else outside of a Taliban hostage video. Watching someone's heart get demolished is dark, prurient television at its very finest. I love it.
The post finale reunion, while less visceral, is equally compelling. The scorned contestant has weeks (months?) to mull over what they will say to their former love interest and usually comes up with something interesting. Last night's installment was no exception. Amidst all of the typical assurances that they would remain friends and the desperate but futile pleading for a concrete reason why Jake made the choice he did, I was struck by something that Tenley said near the end of her time on stage. I'll have to paraphrase here because I don't have the actual quote, but she told Jake that she felt sorry for Vienna because she could never marry someone who had such strong feelings for someone else at the time of the proposal. Basically she was saying that if Jake was truly in love with both of them as he repeatedly professed to be throughout the final episode, then at the best he should marry neither and at the worst, all of his feelings were rendered invalid.
At first blush, I completely agree with Tenley. It has always been my position that one cannot simultaneously be in love with two people strongly enough to consider marrying both. It seems to fly in the face of everything I've ever believed to be true about the concepts of monogamous love and marriage. If Tenley and I are wrong, if you really can love two people that much simultaneously, then the concept of love is a lot less special and rare than we belived it to be. Further, the age-old and worldwide accepted concept of non-polygamous marriage completely flies in the face of human nature. The concept of "The One" would be rendered laughably moot. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that if Tenley and I are wrong, we all have a lot of re-thinking to do.
Which is why it's scary to think that our position does seem to be incorrect. Taken at face value, The Bachelor consistently proves us wrong year in and year out. Unless the words he was saying in last night's episode were lies, Jake was deeply in love with two women to the point that he was not able to choose which one to marry until hours before the proposal.
At this point, you may disagree with me. Perhaps you would like to argue that Jake "loved" Tenley, but he was not "in love" with her. You are wrong, and here's why. If Vienna had never been born, then Jake would be engaged to Tenley right now. There was only one woman in the entire world standing between Tenley and Jake and she happened to be another contestant on The Bachelor. In addition to being extremely boring, Tenley also has rotten luck. Jake would've married her if Vienna was not on the show. This is a fact, so he must have been in love with her.*
You may further disagree with me by arguing that Jake merely got caught up in the beautiful location, the extravagant dates, the conceit of the show, or any other external factor that would effect his ability to actually fall in love with any of these girls. You would argue that two people could not possibly fall in love in such a ridiculously contrived situation. You are wrong again. At its core, love is nothing more than a subjective emotion that occurs entirely within a person's head. Once a person truly believes that he or she is in love, then he or she is in love. That's all it takes. It doesn't matter where you are, how old you are, or how many times you've been in love before. In the face of love, all external factors are rendered moot. If Jake truly believed he was in love with both women, and he said that he did, then he was in love with both women.**
Finally, you may agree with the last sentence, but feel that Jake never actually believed he was in love with Tenley. You may argue that Jake was simply lying to Tenley and to the cameras during his confessional interviews when he said that he was in love with her. Perhaps the producers told him to say that he loved Tenley because it made for good television. Perhaps he didn't actually believe that he loved Tenley, but merely said that he did in order to spare her feelings when she later watched the show. I do not believe any of these points to be true and if you watched last night's episode, surely you cannot believe them to be true either. I know Jake is a bit of a dandy and is extremely prone to bouts of tears, but it just didn't look fake to me. Either Jake is a terrible person capable of the most insidious of lies, he is one of the great dramatic actors of our or any generation, or he honestly believed that he was in love with these two women and therefore was in love with these two women. Maybe I'm naive, but having watched last night's episode, I can only believe the third statement to be true. Still, unlike your other two arguments, I cannot necessarily say that you are wrong here. You may be right. Jake may have been lying all along. We will never know.
But after all this, if your position is that Jake was lying and that he was only truly in love with Vienna, you have to ask yourself, do you really believe that or do you just want to believe that? Do you think Jake was lying because you just aren't comfortable with the reality that one could be so in love with two people that he would marry either? After all, if this is true, then it deals a pretty damaging blow to both the concepts of love and monogamous relationships. Either Jake Pavelka is a complete sham as a person, or monogamous love is a complete sham as a concept. You can only logically pick one. Choose wisely.
P.S. On a a lighter note, another absolute truism was once again validated by last night's finale: when it comes to men's taste in women, crazy beats pretty every time. Crazy trumps everything. No matter what other misgivings or questions you may have about male/female relationships, this will always be true.
P.P.S. I made it through this whole post without making fun of "On The Wings Of Love" and how unbelievably hilarious it was when they played this song after Jake made his choice. Aren't you proud?
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*You may counter this argument by contending that love is destined. That Jake and Vienna were always destined to be together and that if Vienna hadn't been on the show, then Jake would've ended up with her anyway somehow, someway. This argument opens up a giant can of worms regarding the role destiny plays in every arena of life. It is beyond the scope of this particular post to delve into this particular worm can. For now, we will have to agree to disagree. Also, you may argue that Jake would have indeed married Tenley, but it wouldn't have worked out because he didn't truly love her. I disagree with this as well. A divorce or breakup does not invalidate the fact that you were in love with the person when you entered into the marriage/relationship. It is possible to fall out of love, but this does not invalidate the love you felt before it was gone.
**It always irks me when people try to marginalize the love that high schoolers feel for each other. I believe that all people are capable of love all of the time regardless of age. Whatever love you felt for your high school significant other is no less valid than the love you feel for your spouse now. It may feel different and the adult you may perceive it to be a deeper, more authentic brand of love, but that does not invalidate the intense love you felt in high school. If you feel it, it is real. This is necessarily true because love is nothing but feelings. Who are you to say that another person's feelings are invalid? Even if that other person happens to be the you of 15 years ago.
The validity of the concept of monogamous love completely depends on the douchebag pictured above.
7 comments:
I'm not sure if being Mormon makes my viewpoint on this less valid, but... I was actually surprised that you seem to believe in the "one true love" idea, or at least a more romantic notion of love than the one I've arrived at (and the one I thought most people eventually arrived at). I think once you get older and realize that there are billions of people on the earth and in your lifetime you'll only ever meet a tiny fraction of those people, and yet you're still likely to fall in love and get married at some point, then it must not be that there is *one* person meant for you, because if that was the case, then statistically almost no one would ever get married. A huge number of Americans would have a "one true love" that lived in India or China, statistically speaking. Or even if they were just one high school away you would still have a very high probability of never meeting them. That shows that love is much more fluid. I imagine the average person could fall in love with somewhere between tens of thousands and millions of individuals, given enough time and opportunity.
Of course, you may believe all that yet believe that loving one person precludes you from loving another. I don't know what in the nature of love would make that the case. Once you've entered into a committed relationship with a person, as a manifestation of your love, you generally actively avoid cultivating romantic love with others as a gesture of your love towards the one you're committed to. But that is a conscious decision made in order to strengthen the relationship rather than due to an actual inability to love someone else at the same time. It's just that loving two people at the same time doesn't work very well given our other human emotions of jealousy and such. Also, there just wouldn't be enough time in the day.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
Jacob:
On a personal level, I agree with pretty much everything you said in your first paragraph. I will however take issue with your parenthetical statement early in the paragraph that most other people agree with us. I think people who intellectualize love and consider it thoughtfully as you and I do will agree with us, and I think that one could make the argument that increased globalization has led to more people agreeing with us now than ever before, but at the end of the day, I still think most people willfully avoid intellectualizing love because they are subconsciously aware of the damage it may do to their fundamental beliefs on the subject. This was, in part, why I wrote the piece. I wanted people to intellectualize their thoughts about love and I thought that putting that argument within the context of a show that overtly ascribes to more romantic notions would make my point all the more effective.
My views on the amount of people who agree with us may be arrogant. I may be selling the unwashed masses short by assuming that they aren't thinking intelligently about love the way we do. I can tell you that at least every girl I have ever dated seems to ascribe to the more idealistic, romantic version of monogamous love that I put forth early in my piece. Perhaps this is why all of those relationships have failed.
As far as the second paragraph goes, I take issue with your statement that you "don't know what in the nature of love would make that the case." This implies that love is a universal, objective concept. I believe that it is entirely subjective and that the "nature of love" is different for everyone. If, as I believe, most people ascribe to a more romantic concept of love, than there is something in the nature of most people's version of love that would preclude them from loving another.
Also, if we both agree that our views of love say that you can love thousands of people in our lifetimes, then why do we ever commit to monogamous relationships at all? It is seemingly against our nature. We can have multiple deep friendships. We love multiple family members. Why can we not love multiple romantic partners? I would argue that there is something in the nature of love, even the intellectualized version of love that you and I ascribe to, that wants us to love only one other person. Not so much "the one" as "a one."
But then again, it may be as you said, that other emotions like jealousy supercede the fundamental nature of love and cause us to enter into monogamous relationships.
Ok. I watched the entire season and thought Vienna had some weird eye/smile twitch and thought Tenley reminded me of a disney princess + my college roommate heather. Anyway, I don't think that if Vienna weren't born he'd be with Tenley right now. First of all, I think the season would've ended with Ally and Vienna because Tenley and Jake had no physical chemistry.
I like to think of the Bachelor as like Jake is dating two people seperately at the same time (that might've sounded stupid but the emphasis and gestures I'd make if I said it in person would make more sense). Neither has to do with the other. YOu can't compare the two because they're so different. Tenley is like that person you dated that you thought you loved that you look back on later and realize you didn't romantically love even though you had every reason to.
Jake wasn't lying. I don't think it's physically possible for him to.
YOU KNOW WHAT THIS REMINDS ME OF?! Enchanted. The princess (Tenley in this case) was supposed to marry her prince (Jake in this case) but it was too much moosh for one relationship so the princess married Patrick Dempsey (Tenley's future husband that isn't soooo Disney) and the prince marries the fiesty girl (Vienna).
I am just now realizing that my post has very little to do with YOUR post and more of a rant of a person whose brain is leaking because she watched an entire season of the Bachelor and didn't talk to anyone about it until now.
Speaking of Disney princesses, did you see the mean girls thing that Stephanie Booker tweeted? It is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQeTlxhhmEo
On to your comments. Tenley is a Disney princess, but not a hot one like Ariel or Jasmine or Nala. More of an old school lame one like Belle or Snow White. Also, yes she does look a lot like Heather. Actually, Heather is more like some kind of mix between Vienna and Tenley. She sort of looks like both.
And yes, it was a lot like Enchanted. Disney owns ABC. Coincidence?
I don't see how you could say that Jake wouldn't be with Tenley if Vienna hadn't been born. The only argument that you could make in support of that is completely at odds with your second paragraph. Here's what I mean. If you think things would have ended up differently if you took one of the girls out of the equation, than that must mean that all the girls do have an effect on each other and the differences between them have an effect on Jake. He is not dating them separately, the fact that he is dating one influences his feelings about the other.
I believe this to be the case and think it may explain why he eliminated Ali. Vienna was on one end of a craziness/slutiness spectrum and Tenley was on the other. Ali was in the middle. Since our brains prefer to comprehend absolutes instead of shades of gray, the idea of Vienna or Tenely made more sense to Jake, so he had to pick one of them. Ali, while perfect, was just too complex a person. A relationship with Tenley or Vienna would subconsciously seem easier to Jake, therefore he picked those two without knowing exactly why.
Wow. I'm always impressed with your level of logical reasoning on otherwise illogical matters like this. I mean, the entire premise of the show is a farce; go into something KNOWING that you'll fall in love and subsequently marry someone.
I'm no "Bachelor" historian, but I do believe there has only been one time that someone has NOT picked someone.
Anyway, it's the end of the day for me and I don't have the capacity to fully digest and comment on your logic here. All I will say is that I did watch the finale and I'm very impressed with your restraint in not going in depth with the "Wings of Love" performance... because that was great television.
Also, PROPS on the "Temptation Island" reference. That was such a good, under-appreciated show.
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