Reality Dating TV: A Sociological Experiment?

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with an embarrassing interest in reality TV. (Thanks Washwords!) I won't even try to justify it. It is what it is.

This is the first season of the Bachelor/Bachelorette series that I've watched in a long time. Not sure why I got into this time except that it has corresponded with the times that I need some background noise for some work I'm doing. (There- I justified myself anyway!)

What interests me about this franchise is some of the things it seems to suggest about the genders and their pursuit for love. A few things I've noticed over the years:

* When a Bachelor chooses a woman after "dating" 24 other women, he rarely stays with her very long after the show. (Or in the case of Brad Womack, he decides he's done with all of them by the last episode.)

*When a woman is doing the choosing amongst 25 men, the relationship more often results in an engagement, long term relationship and/or marriage.

What conclusions could we possibly draw from this? That once men have a taste for multiple women, it's a hard habit to break? That whenever men are knowingly competing for the attentions of one woman, they tend to "fall" harder?

Ick. Hope not.

Yet as I watched this season, it was hard not to think that was the case. The men get to spend very little one on one time with the Bachelorette, and not only do they know she's dating others, they know exactly who, what, when and where it's happening!

Deanna, an attractive, nice-enough girl, actually had four men fall pretty deeply in love with her during the course of this show. Which takes place over a matter of weeks. Weeks. Deeply in love. Declaring their love on national TV. Crying over the prospect of losing her.

Three of the men wanted to marry her. Were practically begging to marry her.

So which one(s) did she fall for?

Hmmmm...first it was the super hot, sexy Graham who was emotionally distant and had trouble with commitment. Somehow, Deanna got up the courage to cut him loose, but everyone could see she was WAY into him.

Of course, Jeremy never stood a chance. He was declaring his feelings for her from the get-go. He was uber-attentive, extra romantic, very vulnerable. Supposedly everything Deanna wanted on paper, yet "something" was missing.

Poor single-dad Jason actually went as far as getting on his knee to propose, before Deanna said "wait! I can't!" The words she used to describe him? "A great father, stable, comfortable, loving, safe."

So she goes with Jesse, the wild snow boarder, who had no intentions of getting married when he started the show. But after getting caught up in the pursuit, the competition, or whatever it is, he walks away engaged to his "soul mate".

I thought love was a magical, chemical, indescribable thing that happens only rarely and in the right conditions? Because it seems to me that in this case, the love was manufactured and generated by the circumstances. Master manipulation. Tell me, does that mean the love wasn't real?