‘The Golden Bachelor’ Divorce Has Killed My Belief in Love

Like the rest of groggily caffeinating America, this morning I woke up to the wild news that Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, the first Golden Bachelor couple, have decided to divorce. The news comes just three (yes, three!) months after ABC's first-ever “Golden Wedding” aired. And listen: That special was not short.

Viewers have been left utterly stunned. “I still have milk in the fridge from when this was on,” one comment on an article about the split posted to Instagram read. As a faithful viewer myself, I am right there with the rest of Bachelor Nation. Shocked. Mystified. Feeling a little… uh, dare I say, duped? Even if it is reality TV, which, at the end of the day, is made for our entertainment, it is spectacularly tough to wrap my head around just how short-lived this marriage was. I’m not saying seventy-somethings should stay in unhappy marriages just because they are, ya know, so old. But I am also saying: What in the fresh hell happened?

That stunned feeling is absolutely ringing through the internet today. It’s especially boggling, perhaps, because The Golden Bachelor’s first run was exceptionally full of hope—far more than previous seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Women fell in love with Gerry, and he fell in love with them. And the recurring line we heard over and over again was also an optimistic one: “You can find love at any age.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.