Tonight, ABC will be premiering the 11thseason of The Bachelorette, and yes, I will be watching along with my Bachelorette buddy in New York. However, I’ve still got one more post in me about the last season of The Bachelor with Prince Farming (Chris Soules) that I’d like to put out there. In episode 5, Chris took contestant Carly (who lists mascara and a curling iron up there with God in a list of things she can't live without) with him to see a self-proclaimed love guru named Tziporah for their first one-on-one date. This definitely was an interesting choice for a first date and not an adventure that most would have chosen. However, in contrast to the superficial nature of most of the dates on The Bachelor, I was actually really floored by the beginning of the session which I thought was amazingly deep and productive.
The love guru session was one which forced those participating to open up to each other in deep and meaningful ways. However, as Chris notes in his blog post, “I knew from the moment that I walked in and saw Tziporah that things were about to get weird.” That is because in our culture, anything associated with the metaphysical, many Eastern cultures, or even anything slightly outside the mainstream is immediately and unfortunately branded as “weird.” Our modern American culture has taught us to be closed-minded about anything out of our ordinary reality. A healthier attitude upon entering this situation might have been, “Wow. This looks really different than what I’m used to. I wonder what I can learn from this new experience.” Just as the various dates on The Bachelor/ette which involve jumping off of buildings or scaling high cliffs are seen as challenges to do something intimidating, different, and scary, so too could all new experiences be seen as something challenging to experience. However, the immediate reaction in this case of Chris and many others was to immediately brand this opportunity as “weird.”
The session with Tziporah began innocently enough with deep breathing exercises; these are used to ground and center oneself. It’s a great way to bring one's self into the present moment and to focus on the events at hand. However, even that was too far out of an experience for Chris as he claimed in his blog post about the session that he was ready to “pass out” from just breathing! Then, in the edited portions we saw, the love guru began having Carly and Chris engage in exercises to strengthen their intimacy and their non-verbal communication. As I watched the session play out, I definitely thought it would be a very awkward date to have on national television, but if I guy I already knew and had feelings for were to suggest a date like the beginning of this one, it would actually increase my admiration for him. The goals of this session were to build a deeper relationship that wasn’t just built on physical and sexual chemistry, though those still played a large part of the relationship building. A man seeking to connect on these deeper levels isn’t just looking for a one-night stand in a lot of cases: He wants his romantic relationships to be part of his personal growth.
I did agree with the rest of the nation that the date became very awkward at the end as shown in the third video of the segments linked below (click through the first to get to the second and third). At that point, the love guru transformed into a sex guru, and she was asking the couple to do things that were completely inappropriate for an early date on national television. However, for an already established couple looking to expand their relationship, the things she was suggesting were likely helpful. The context and timing was just completely wrong.
I wish the contestants on the show and the nation at large had been more open to a relationship being developed on physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual/energetic levels. Too often, the relationships on these dating shows are built on superficial sexual chemistry; it’s why they are doomed to failure fairly rapidly after the show ends. That’s not an uncommon reality in the dating world from what I’ve been able to assess, too: Physical appearances are what matter the most. When our society begins to open its collective mind to the idea that relationships need to be built on deep intimacy and spiritual connections, our dating world will change radically, and society will look radically different.
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC
The love guru session was one which forced those participating to open up to each other in deep and meaningful ways. However, as Chris notes in his blog post, “I knew from the moment that I walked in and saw Tziporah that things were about to get weird.” That is because in our culture, anything associated with the metaphysical, many Eastern cultures, or even anything slightly outside the mainstream is immediately and unfortunately branded as “weird.” Our modern American culture has taught us to be closed-minded about anything out of our ordinary reality. A healthier attitude upon entering this situation might have been, “Wow. This looks really different than what I’m used to. I wonder what I can learn from this new experience.” Just as the various dates on The Bachelor/ette which involve jumping off of buildings or scaling high cliffs are seen as challenges to do something intimidating, different, and scary, so too could all new experiences be seen as something challenging to experience. However, the immediate reaction in this case of Chris and many others was to immediately brand this opportunity as “weird.”
The session with Tziporah began innocently enough with deep breathing exercises; these are used to ground and center oneself. It’s a great way to bring one's self into the present moment and to focus on the events at hand. However, even that was too far out of an experience for Chris as he claimed in his blog post about the session that he was ready to “pass out” from just breathing! Then, in the edited portions we saw, the love guru began having Carly and Chris engage in exercises to strengthen their intimacy and their non-verbal communication. As I watched the session play out, I definitely thought it would be a very awkward date to have on national television, but if I guy I already knew and had feelings for were to suggest a date like the beginning of this one, it would actually increase my admiration for him. The goals of this session were to build a deeper relationship that wasn’t just built on physical and sexual chemistry, though those still played a large part of the relationship building. A man seeking to connect on these deeper levels isn’t just looking for a one-night stand in a lot of cases: He wants his romantic relationships to be part of his personal growth.
I did agree with the rest of the nation that the date became very awkward at the end as shown in the third video of the segments linked below (click through the first to get to the second and third). At that point, the love guru transformed into a sex guru, and she was asking the couple to do things that were completely inappropriate for an early date on national television. However, for an already established couple looking to expand their relationship, the things she was suggesting were likely helpful. The context and timing was just completely wrong.
I wish the contestants on the show and the nation at large had been more open to a relationship being developed on physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual/energetic levels. Too often, the relationships on these dating shows are built on superficial sexual chemistry; it’s why they are doomed to failure fairly rapidly after the show ends. That’s not an uncommon reality in the dating world from what I’ve been able to assess, too: Physical appearances are what matter the most. When our society begins to open its collective mind to the idea that relationships need to be built on deep intimacy and spiritual connections, our dating world will change radically, and society will look radically different.
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC
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