What We Learned From Juan Pablo
This season on The Bachelor we met Juan Pablo, a hunky Latin reject from the previous season’s Bachelorette. He was presented as a single father looking for love and a potential stepmother for his adorable daughter, Camilla. We quickly learned that Juan Pablo wasn’t the dreamboat that we’d all hoped for when he started treating the girls on the show badly and blaming his inability to relate to others on the fact that English was his second language. Here are a few things we learned on our adventure with Juan Pablo:
Don’t Be Overly Charmed by an Accent
I know, we all love a man with an accent. It makes him seem intriguing, worldly and every familiar word he says is somehow completely new. He pronounces your name in an exotic way and makes you explain figures of speech to him in a way that is kind of adorable. With all of that said, this guy should still be able to communicate with you. Don’t let dreamy eyes and a charming voice let you forget that. Whether it’s an Aussie accent or Venezuelan, you and your guy should speak enough of the same language to see if you have any values in common. It’s easy to find out that you both like McDonald’s fries and listening to Kanye, but it’s harder to see if you’re compatible on a deeper level.
Listen to Your Intuition
Bad guys are bad and it’s easier to see it at the beginning of the relationship because we’re not emotionally invested yet. Once you start seeing lots of red flags, it’s better to leave while you can rather than stick around to see if they go away. Those flags don’t go away- they only disappear if you choose to ignore them. When the voice in your head tells you that there’s something fishy going on, there probably is. Time to get up and go – you don’t want to be the boiled frog.
Listen to the People Around You
It’s not always easy to see all sides of a situation when you’re in the middle of it, which is why an outsider opinion can be really helpful. In the last episode of The Bachelor, Juan Pablo’s family warned the final two girls that Juan Pablo was a difficult person to be in a relationship with and that he wasn’t a great partner in the past. The girls ignored his family’s warnings, believing that they were different than all the other girls he’d dated. Well, they might be different than the other girls, but he’s the same person. When a person’s entire family warns you to get away, take the advice and leave.
Never Be A Contestant On The Bachelor
Why would anyone want to compete with 26 other girls for a date? If I’m competing with that many other girls, I’d rather not know about them. Living in a house with a group of girls that all want to date the guy you’re crushing on seems absolutely terrible to me, and that’s just one part of it. You also have to be in a bathing suit all the time and talk about your feelings in intimate interviews all the time. Any one of these things would send me running. For the show to pair up all these girls with a terrible guy is the cherry on top of a nightmare sundae. No thanks.
Nikki Jagerman is a writer and podcaster living in Los Angeles. She likes videos of puppies rolling around on their backs and prefers an omelet over waffles. You can listen to her podcast at http://talltalespodcast.com or follow her on Twitter @nikkijagerman.