3/3/15
Top 10 Life Lessons from “The Bachelor” (The Women Tell All)

via The Bachelor’s Twitter feed

Last night, we came to the cat fight portion of the season with “The Women Tell All” episode of The Bachelor, in which producers gather together all rejected participants in a room with a live studio audience to watch — and defend — their most humiliating, offensive, mean-spirited and basically indefensible moments. Your mother catching you in your teenage bedroom naked with a bowl of Jell-O would be less awkward. There were new hairdos (Kelsey), new extensions (Carly), new cleavage (Ashley I), and new boobs (Jade) — and we learned that new doesn’t always mean better. We learned a lot of other decent life lessons, too — ten, in fact. Because just watching The Bachelor to make fun of other people’s highly entertaining foibles and personality flaws would not be honorable. Bettering ourselves in the process makes it meaningful. See, this is God’s work we’re doing here, people!:

  1. Live life like the cameras are not watching: be authentic, honest, unselfconscious, and unafraid to ugly-cry. That said, if you’re going to fake cry, do it better than our 7-year-old daughters.
  2. When someone asks you a question, don’t pussyfoot: be direct, forthcoming and honest. (Lady: “Can I ask a question?” Chris Harrison, channeling his inner Christian Grey: “No.”)
  3. Closure is overrated…and often an illusion: you’re never going to hear what you want to hear.
  4. Stealing kisses = a big no no. You must give you’re intended the chance to decline your generous offer of osculation. Otherwise it’s basically mouth assault — even when done by someone old enough to be your mother.

  5. Being a space cadet from your own planet is better than being a Barbie from L.A.
  6. Having a sense of humor is the most attractive quality, not only in the next Bachelorette (Kaitlyn!), but in any human being.
  7. When someone asks you for forgiveness, accept it graciously, even if you think they’re full of shit. You can take measures to distance yourself from them going forward to avoid further harm or hurt, but you’ll have ended things on a positive note, with you looking (and feeling) like a decent person.
  8. The best “Bachelor” drinking game for getting plastered: Drink when 1) anyone says “amazing,” 2) the craziest person on the show does something crazy, 3) the Bachelor/ette kisses someone, 4) tears, or 5) anyone says “the right reasons.” (Credit: the “hardiest” of the party girls Prince Farming and Host Charming busted in on.)
  9. When life gives you onions, use your magical thinking to turn them into pomegranates.
  10. If Chris Harrison can write a novel, so can you.

Read up on last week’s love lessons learned from “The Bachelor.” 

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