I’m hooked on The Bachelorette. I wrote last year about how hooked I was on Bachelor In Paradise. It then extended to Colton’s season of The Bachelor and now to Hannah B.’s season of The Bachelorette.
In a show that is full of staged scenarios and clever editing and puppetmaster producers trying to stoke drama and people who probably just want to get on TV, there’s one cliche that annoys me that most. It’s when people say they’re going to fight for it.
But before I get to that, I feel like I should address a crucial issue. Why do I watch this crap? Good question. It’s not because it’s so stupid that it’s funny. It’s not because so many people are a trainwreck. It’s not because I feel superior to these people making fools of themselves to get on television. That stuff is part of it, but it’s not the reason.
The reason is because it’s heightened human drama. You’re watching people behave as people. They scheme and fight and they make friendships and enemies. It’s a soap opera drama with little bits of genuine humanity sprinkled throughout.
Last season on The Bachelor, I hated Demi. Hated her. She was young, arrogant, stupid, and rude and there was nothing redeeming about her. But when she went all in for Colton and he said he didn’t feel the same about her, she cried and I really felt for her.
She still sucks but I liked that moment.
But you do have to sit through a bunch of lowest common denominator cliches about love and relationships, the worst of which is “fighting for it.”
This season, the gaslighting psycho Luke P. keeps talking about how he will fight for his relationship with Hannah. Last season on The Bachelor, Colton kept talking about fighting for Cassie. In a Bachelor In Paradise episode where Kamil broke up with Annaliese on air, she said how she was going to fight for it.
It’s such a pervasive concept but if you press someone, they won’t be able to tell you what it means. It ranks right up there with “be yourself” and “follow your passion,” cultural messages that are widely accepted – even venerated – but have no practical meaning.
With regards to fighting for it, I think we can all agree that you don’t literally fight anyone.
I won’t play dumb. I suppose it means that you’ll do anything to make it work (not a fan of “make it work” either) even if it’s uncomfortable or you have to face some painful realities about yourself. Take an honest look at yourself. Make changes. Have difficult conversations.
But that’s not really fighting, all of that sounds slow and incremental.
This probably hits me because that’s what I was told when my girlfriend of four years dumped me a few years ago. You need to fight for it!
Whenever anyone brought up fighting for it, I always asked, “So what do you want me to do?”
“Fight for it!”
“No, what actual action should I take?”
“You just need to, you know, fight. For it.”
When you’re the one who got dumped, there’s a fine line between fighting for it and begging to be taken back. And when you get dumped over the phone after four years – as I was – it makes you question whether there’s anything there to fight for. When someone is that clear that something is over, fighting for it is like performing CPR on a dead body. Fight all you want, it’s not coming back.
One time someone gave me a specific action that I could have taken. Want to know what it was?
Take her to dinner.
That was it. That’s what fighting for it amounts to.
To be fair to the ex, she wasn’t wrong to end it. When she dumped me, she listed every time I had been anxious or every time I had lost my temper. It was a good chunk of stuff (though not that a particularly long list for four years).
I remembered every incident that she mentioned. They all dealt with me not letting something go when I thought I was right, me getting angry when I thought I was getting taken advantage of, or me getting scared when I thought something was wrong with me.
I’m not proud of any of those moments but all these years later, I can honestly say that I’m not ashamed of them either. That behavior is part of my personality. I can minimize my anxiety but it’s never going to go away.
So, why didn’t I “fight for it”? Because I could see that she really couldn’t handle that side of me. And a dozen roses or a bunch of pleading phone calls or the most romantic gesture of all – a dinner – wasn’t going to change that.
As you progress through each season of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, the breakups get tougher. From the comfort of your couch you can see when someone just isn’t into someone or when there are personality traits that are going to be problematic later on. So, they get denied a rose and they drive away in a town car and they get to cry about rejection into a camera. But no one ever fights. Sometimes it’s just time to go home.
