I forced my adoring husband to watch The Bachelors last episode, not that either one of us had ever wasted our time watching it prior; we hadn’t. For almost two hours I watched my husband alternately squirm and moan, shaking his head,  muttering ”Stupid…Stupid,” and watched what’s-his-face make a complete fool of himself and the two young women he dragged under the bus with him. It was like watching a porno movie—without the sex. At one point I asked him if he thought they were actors, or maybe it was a joke? He didn’t answer. Bottom line, he’ll never watch TV again. As I see it, it would have been a more valuable investment of time watching paint dry—we are still trying to  recover from it. I don’t know how the cast ever will. It’s a shame,  too, because it could have been something. It could have been a real show instead of a fake, sickening display of stupidity.    So why the sudden curiosity? Why did I tune in and why such  a strong, judgmental reaction? First, in my business, helping educate men and women about relationship and self-esteem  is what I do. So in a sense this show was like the anti-Christ  for me. Abolishing all hope for humanity. I just needed to look  in the eyes of the shadow, so to speak. Okay, that’s extreme,  but it did occur to me for a second and then I thought better.  I suppose I needed a potent, ghastly, indelible reminder of why I do what I do. I needed a reminder of how desperate  most of us are to be seen and loved. How desperate I once was. To remember and have compassion for what lengths we are willing to compromise and prostitute ourselves in order to have someone want us. At first I thought, what a jerk-off this guy was, reciting the same canned lines to each of the final contestants, and  then realized that these young women got what they deserved, a guy who had no respect for two young women who clearly had no respect for themselves. Tough lesson, particularly in  front of seventeen million people. Hindsight is like birth control—when you use it, it works!  And the benefit of having been there and done that, having  been desperate, naïve and insecure, having compromised my soul time and again, gives me the invaluable vantage  point on which I now perch and from where I can say with all my heart: I am grateful beyond words for what I searched  for and found. Real and true love. And have learned one of  life’s most valuable lessons; that great relationships  begin within—not on Channel 7.