Day 1, The Mystery: The Sob Stories

So...I was going to cap off this year's advent calendars with some gratuitous pictures of a half-naked Juan Pablo with perhaps some commentary on the unnecessary and ludicrously porn-y soft-lit shower and workout and half-naked puppy rescuing scenes we had to look forward to this year. But...I don't know guys. I know that Juan Pablo is supposed to be the most attractive candidate that said the fewest words possible or whatever, but for whatever reason, I just don't get it. So instead, I've chosen to end the countdown, not with a celebration of half-naked men, but with one of the real reasons that I worship at the alter of The Bachelor much to my husbands hopeful disbelief: The Sob Stories. 

Presenting a good sob story on the show is really less of an honest revelation of oneself and more of an incredibly nuanced and difficult-to-master art form. And while I'm more of a patron of the arts than an artist myself (especially if patronage involves somewhere between zero dollars and five cents of financial contribution), I've come up with a helpful guide of issues that contestants must consider when deploying their strategic tragedies for the betterment of romance and, indeed, mankind.

When Should I Come Clean?
 The first issue that any contestant faces is one of the most difficult. The revelation of a personal tragedy can be parlayed into a pity rose and might save you from being just another faceless beauty on the early nights, but you have to weigh that against the awkwardness wrought by telling a veritable stranger that you once woke up in a bathtub missing your gall bladder and both kidneys. On the one hand, you don't want to get too deep into a relationship before you confess certain things (I have a kid, I have trust issues, I once was on Flavor of Love), but on the other hand, talking about the eating disorder you battled as a youth or the mocking you faced in third grade or that time you killed an MTV veejay on Spring Break on Night one or two is just as likely to earn a "Why are you telling me this?" as a "Will you accept my rose?"


How Sad Should it Be?
This is what separates the poseurs from the truly great. A sob story needs to strike a balance between sad enough to be worth telling (And guess what, James? - cheating on a significant other of more than, say, five years past really never makes the grade) but not so sad that the Bachelor is more wont to tuck you into bed with a cup of cocoa and a Xanax than to makeout with you. The recency of the event, its life-altering nature, and the highly nuanced and wildly complex "Squirminess" quotient (the extent to which hearing about it makes the listener want to be anywhere but here - including but not limited too making out with the slutty-looking blonde in the hot tub) are all important factors in determining its appropriateness for airing on the show. But as a quick rule of thumb that's easy to remember even in the midst of first-night jitters, if they've made a Lifetime movie about it, it's probably too sad.

How Should I tell Him?
You can certainly wait for your one-on-one (because nothing pairs better with scaling the side of a building and champagne than a confession about your college lesbian phase - which, sidebar, why don't more contestants go to this?) but then you run the risk of getting sent packing before you get the chance to share. You can pull him aside during a group date when there's a rose up for grabs but it's hard to know what tragedies the other girls will share - plus, you run the risk of discovering that the fact that you have spent your life battling a chronic disease and have emerged stronger for it ranks somewhere below some other chick's wicked volleyball skills. Ultimately, when you tell him doesn't matter as much as how you tell him, conveying the story not in terms of your lasting damage but in terms of your admirable, life-affirming strength. Also, while tears are okay, it's important to make sure the story prompts a pretty cry, not a body-wracking, face-contorting sob.

How Often Should I Remind Him?
Never. If you're smart about it, you'll parcel out the sob story in small doses, so that you're adding to it from week-to-week, building an admirable portrait of increasingly impressive strength. But seriously, once you've shared your sob story, you should probably lay it to rest unless the private Lenny Rae Shaver concert that he arranged just happens to include your father's favorite song that was also played at his disconcertingly recent funeral (which would be surprising as Lenny Rae Shaver is mostly someone I just made up). Because repeatedly harping on how men have mistreated you or how your parents abandoned you or how you have a crippling life-limiting fear of price tags, while legitimately tragic (mostly), makes you seem like you're not ready to find love. And once your conversations are fully consumed by lamentations on how the tendinitis in your wrist meant the end of your promising knitting career rather than the important stuff like your willingness to move to Miami and your eagerness to start a family immediately and whether or not to accept Chris Harrison's pervy invitation to the fantasy suite, well, you've already lost.