2/17/15
Top 5 Love Lessons from “The Bachelor” (Iowa + Hometowns)

from “The Bachelor’s” hysterical Twitter feed

It’s kind of ironic that “Fifty Shades of Grey,” with its helipads and helicopters and gliders and penthouses and fancy cars, came out the same weekend “The Bachelor” aired its least glamorous episodes ever, featuring the scent of manure in the air, the shuttered businesses of a 400-person town, the fluorescent-lit high-school hallways of one’s glory days, the tattered drapes and 80s-style couches of three-star midwestern hotels… (Seriously, shouldn’t these ladies be traipsing quaint European villages by now?) In a first for the show, the producers pulled back the curtain to reveal the real Bachelor with all the bells and whistles removed — in this case, Chris Soules in his natural habitat, a ghost of a town called Arlington, Iowa. The ladies quickly learned that life with Prince Farming would include fifty shades of corn and not much else. That only one of the remaining contestants expressed a real impulse to run just goes to show how lights, cameras, too little food, and too many cocktails can really impair one’s judgment.

Don’t let your romantic judgment be impaired, either: learn the dating lessons from this week’s double feature of  “The Bachelor” right here, right now:

  1. Beware the man who’s main method of communication is silent bobble-heading. Also, look out for someone who, when he’s at a loss for words, immediately starts making out just to fill the long, awkward pauses.
  2. Talking shit about other women to your date is unattractive. Only do it if you want to get dumped.
  3. If you feel you are being mistreated in your relationship, by all means speak up and speak your mind to your partner. But do it in private, not in front of other people — especially if those other people are interested in your partner for themselves.
  4. Everyone makes mistakes. Even if you have regrets in your past, own them. Don’t treat them like a mutant half-sister you secretly keep locked in your attic (unless, of course, your regret is enslaving your monster sibling). So, you took some nude photos on a lark — so what? The bigger the deal you make of these kind of mistakes to your date, the worse they’ll seem.
  5. Don’t throw your friends and relatives under the bus in a paternalistic effort to protect them from getting their hearts broken. Let them make — and learn from — their own romantic mistakes.

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

MORE LIKE THIS ON EMandLO.com: