Somber moods

Why is our collective mood so somber (or is it)? I feel depressed. I don’t think this is because I wanted another bachelor to be chosen. I don’t believe that Jillian made the wrong choice for her. So why is this all so disappointing?

There are few reasons for me. I feel awful for Reid, of course. He was set up to take not one, but two falls. It’s hard to know what roles Jillian on the one side and the producers on the other played in this fiasco. It’s clear that Reid was hurt badly and unnecessarily so. Jillian rejected him the first time for his failure to say the right words. When he returned and said those words, she rejected him for a statute of limitations violation. In explaining her rejections, she twice dismissed their love as merely “fun”.

Assuming that Jillian was free to make the decisions she made, I see two possible explanations for all of this. One possibility is that she decided on Ed before she turned away Reid and then Kiptyn. In that case, the rejection of those two was preordained and there was little either could have done to change that outcome. The problem with this scenario is that it would mean that Jillian misused and mislead both men. Could she be capable of trying to force Reid to say he loved her, knowing that she would still send him packing? Could she allow herself such a romantic and highly physical date with Kiptyn if she was in love with another man but not him?

The explanation that makes more sense to me is that she had fallen in love with all three of them one way or another and had not made up her mind between them before Hawaii. In the ATFR Reid wanted so badly to know if Jillian would have picked him if he had said the “L” word on cue. She was clearly torn in her answer. She could not confess that she may have chosen the wrong man and so she reverted to explanation one. But none of us were convinced of this. We come away with the dread feeling that she made her final decision based on criteria that had nothing to do with love.

Another reason that I’m depressed is that Jillian made a decision that was diametric to what she said she wanted. I tend to take people at their word. I get burned by this time and again and somehow I never learn. I was foolishly surprised by her decision. If she told us that she wanted to be swept off her feet by a decisive, strong-willed man who would take care of her for the rest of her life, I would say that Ed was her man. I would have been thrilled for her. Reid would be entirely mismatched with such a woman. Do any of us believe that Ed is her best friend? That he makes her laugh regularly? That his main priority in life is true love? Can even Ed fans claim that he wants to be part of a team?

Jillian seems torn. I think she does want what she claimed. I don’t think she expected that this might require risk and sacrifice. Everyone in the world wants true love, happiness and fulfillment. How many are willing to risk comfort, security and the possibility of being hurt to achieve those ends? Jillian could have striven for something beyond her dreams, if she was willing to risk it.

I fear there may come a day in which Jillian will realize that she made a mistake of such magnitude that few of us will ever have the opportunity to make it. She appeared to have been given the option of true love. If she did reject this in favor of security then this show is tantamount to a Greek tragedy.

Jim