After years of ghosting him and dodging his calls, The Bachelor has finally taken the hint: we’re not interested.
It took a while. He kept showing up at our houses, unannounced, usually at dinner time while we were trying to chill with our new fling of the moment — Ted Lasso, Paul Murray, Costa.
He’d peer in through the glass and try suck us back into the drama we escaped. There was always theatrics with him. Some big new drama every week. When he wasn’t involved in love triangles and petty scandals, he was stringing us along before washing his hands of commitment.
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The amount of reputations he destroyed is astonishing. It’s crazy to think we once spent weeks analysing a whodunit regarding a pot plant that got used as a toilet. And then, after the endless histrionics, he’d try to make everything OK by tossing out a few roses.
It got to the point where we were just embarrassed by him. His wardrobe was filled with obnoxious suits from Tarocash and he was always hanging out at a share house with a rotating cast of girls. He also had a weird obsession with nasty cheese platters from the Coles deli.
We needed distance. It was a toxic situationship that we sorta just fell into. It had become a bad habit. Did we ever enjoy it? We can’t remember. After so much time together — laying on the couch every Wednesday and Thursday night while listening passively to his lame stories — we just didn’t want to lose what we’d already invested.
Our friends would cringe. Are you STILL seeing him? Eventually, it became clear we had to cut things off.
The plan to phase things out began slow — only seeing him one night a week. Then we started to cancel – promising to catch up online later but never following through.
Just when we thought he’d finally taken the hint, he moved to the Gold Coast and got a neck tattoo. It was a cry for help as he tried one final time to get our attention, attempting to show us the fun we were missing out on.
But we had no pangs of FOMO. When we’d catch glimpses of his new life on social media, we’d just wince a little and feel sad.
There was a time when he was fun and cool, with low commitment. The kind of guy everyone wanted to be around. But he stayed too long at the party. He didn’t grow up.
And the further we moved on, the clingier he became. Back in the day, he himself would have described it as Stage 5 Clinger behaviour.
Somewhere along the way, he forgot the number one rule of dating: stop trying so hard. Nothing is more of a turn-off.
Facebook: @hellojamesweir