It's Only Television

It's been an interesting week. First, the Atlanta area was hit by a freakish snow "storm" on 3/1/09. I use the term storm with some creative license, but for Atlanta, anything more than frost in the morning is cause for concern. Since there was actual snow on the ground for more than 24 hours, apparently all we had to do was watch television.

Monday night was the season finale of "The Bachelor". I have to tell you that I followed the show the first two, maybe three, seasons. I watched until Trista found her true love and my almost true love, Mr. Former, emailed me wistfully how he so would like to be like Ryan. He discreetly told me how he longed for the ability to open up and pour his feelings out for me like Ryan did for Trista. My remembrance of the show was that he drew her a picture. Regardless, I stopped following for a while.

This season, Jason (last season's reject and a cute guy from Seattle) and the first single parent to ever be on the show, was there to find true love. He had the garden variety contestants, which contained a few weirdo's, some lovely ladies, one or two psychos and at least a "ho" or two. In the end, it came down to Melissa and Molly. Everyone at work was rooting for Melissa and quite frankly, by T.V. standards, they looked like the perfect pair. She was charming, beautiful and had a pretty good day with Jason's little boy. In the end, he dropped to one knee and presented Melissa with a fantastic Neil Lane engagement ring. Unfortunately, the next thing we saw was him breaking up with her on national television, a mere six weeks later. Oh, the horror! Not only did he break up with Melissa, he told the host he still had feelings for Molly.

Now, I am far from perfect and I have never had the opportunity to have my pick of 25 men at one time, but I do know that finding love, for me, has not been easy. Is it possible to fall in love with the two people at the same time? I honestly do not know. What I do know is that it sucked to have my marriage come apart in my "public arena", which included family and a few close friends. I feel bad for Melissa but suspect at the tender young age of 25, she will have many opportunities to find someone who takes the time to get to know her, outside of the TV arena, and fall in love. My best guess is he won't propose to her in New Zealand, but more likely over a romantic dinner or maybe at the beach. Melissa needs to cut her losses and run. The saddest thing isn't that Jason was conflicted and changed his mind, it's the fact that the Neil Lane ring was to die for!