You and I Are Too Old To Believe the Golden Bachelor Bullshit...Neither Did They

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Did anyone honestly expect this charade to work?

It was a bad wrap and it’s getting a deservedly bad rap: after a hopeful start, some seriously bad starts-and-stops for Gerry who turned out to be tarnished. After ninety days, the much-ballyhooed Golden Bachelor and his bride are already divorcing. Barely minutes after swearing to love one another forever, well…..

This is America, where the only real thing is to GET THE GUY, no matter what, forget the real work of relationships, right?

You and I are WAY Too Old to have been sucked into this shitshow as a model for over-sixty fairy tales

In no way, shape or form do I believe the lie that there’s no love after sixty or beyond. That’s not my point. My point is that this isn’t the way to do it: get a bunch of high-end, shrink-wrapped older women to compete for a questionably medium-end guy who turned out to be patently dishonest….and then put on a ridiculously boring, overblown media circus of a blah wedding, and expect it all to work.

Aren’t we all grownups here or is it just me?

This beat-down by The Daily Beast is precisely why this thing was utterly ridiculous from the start. From that piece:

Still, while rumors about Gerry dimmed The Golden Bachelor’s glow, the bigger disappointment now is that the cheery discourse about late-in-life love just got totally dismantled. Ripped apart. Decimated. Absolutely no one was anticipating a Britney-length marriage from seventy-somethings (okay, except maybe Leslie Fhima). Yet, just three months in, Gerry and Theresa are no more. While they vowed, before the entire country, to love each other until death, to stand by one another through thick and thin, it took a mere 90 days for them to completely change course. And it almost feels like, while attempting to prove you can find love at any age, and perhaps even a deeper love, born of wisdom and knowing yourself better later in life, they proved... exactly the opposite. (author bolded)

This writer claims that this circus proves that there is no such thing as late-in-life love. Killed it stone dead.

Is she just silly or is this intentional clickbait (or both?)

We’re going to declare love dead for us after forty because a reality show couple tanked? Is that where we are?

Anyone who honestly believes that a (fake) reality show is a snapshot of real life is already a fool. Anyone who bought into the hype around this show, and thought that two older folks could leap right in and make a forever match on the basis of purely superficial contact under a national microscope, is an even bigger fool.

Said Al Roker, of Today: “It just goes to show that old people can be just as stupid!”

Photo by Brandi Alexandra on Unsplash

Adults, real adults, do indeed fall in love late in life, have wonderful intimacy, great sex, meld their families and find ways to make stuff work all the time.

What it takes is WORK. Emotional maturity. Losses, gains, give and take, all that hard stuff that doesn’t make dramatic television. But it does make for a damned good life.

A reality show is all about smoke, mirrors, white-hot competition to see who wins, dishonesty, and an utter lack of personal responsibility around what commitment and real relationships look like.

Hence, quickie divorce in 90 days.

Call me a grinch but I’m not one bit surprised.

My closest friend has been in a love relationship for four years this July. She and her partner are in their late sixties. It has been really challenging for both of them, given their very different family dynamics, independence, the tug and pull and push of who gets to stay at whose house and pouting contests when someone needs private time.

In other words, the same issues that adults all get to juggle when they are trying to sort out differences while also loving and genuinely desiring that deep connection.

Tell me how you do that in front of millions of viewers, the hot cameras and the pressure to WIN AT ALL COSTS.

There was no way this was gonna work. And for the sake of future shows, and the genuinely silly people who were looking at Golden Bachelor for hope (GTFU, will you please?) I hope they shitcan the whole idea.

Those of us who have been through the online dating grinder and have left it where it belongs, in the trash, and returned to living active lives, let’s focus on what’s real. What’s real are those we meet, get to know, respect, and like. People we are curious about, laugh with, who earn our trust over time.

Time, togetherness, risk, exploration, disappointments, a willingness to give up some things to get others are all part of wearing Big People Panties.

The DB writer Sara Bregel adds:

Coupling certainly was too big a task for Gerry and Theresa. Maybe it is for me—and for many of us post-first-marriage singles, too. And while maybe you can find love at any age, the truth is, you probably have to give up a lot in order for it to stick. And there is nothing golden about that. (author bolded)

You do have to give up a few things to have that, Sara. That’s what adulting is. Each of us gets to choose precisely what and how much we’re willing to give up to have ———, whatever ——- is, including love.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment to me is that anyone, anyone, would look to a reality show to give them hope about love.

There are no formulas, magic tricks, no special sauces. We bumble around, find each other, stick, unstick, try again. That’s just life. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t.

Looking to an idiot reality show to validate our lived experience is the tragedy. Not that these two people failed at what was a canned, pre-destined to fail marriage.

None of that was surprising at all.

That we believed any of it is what keeps me gobsmacked. It’s also reported that they miss out on their big payday because they couldn’t stick it out long enough.

Apparently their differences were just so seriously bad that they couldn’t even stay together long enough to get paid, forget getting laid.

We want easy, we want happily ever after and the magical horse-driven coach into Never Never Land.

Never going to happen.

Love, real love, deserves real work. Meanwhile,

Let’s play.

Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash

Thank you for joining me to take a poke at our cultural silliness. I hope you had fun, and I also hope you got inspired to do something for yourself that was joyful, especially if you’re single, like me. When we are in joy, we are magnets. If so please consider

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Either way, let’s be fully in life, married or not, partnered or not.