Welp, The Golden Bachelor is already getting a divorce
Three months after his televised wedding, Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner is back to bachelorhood
Hello all, it’s your resident Golden Bachelor hater signing on once again—possibly for the last time. And for the rest of the anti-rose hive, let’s join together in a resounding, cathartic LOL.
Okay, here goes: Gerry and Theresa are getting divorced. Yup! LOL! In news surprising only for its quickness, Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and his winner, “you’re the person that I can’t live without” Theresa Nist, announced their separation on Good Morning America today, only three months after their televised wedding was turned into the Bachelor Nation Met Gala back in January. (Seriously. One of Gerry’s “losers” and former Theresa-hater Kathy was even tapped as a “Gold Carpet Correspondent.”)
On the altar, Theresa vowed to Gerry that she would “stick with [him] throughout it all.” Apparently, that meant until squabbles over real estate became too much to bear. “Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation, so forth, and we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage,” Gerry told GMA’s Juju Chang with his ex by his side. Theresa later explained that they looked at homes in both New Jersey, where she lives, and South Carolina, where Gerry lives, “but we never got to the point where we made that decision.”
And this is where we get to say we told you so, you guys! Throughout all of our recaps of the septuagenarians’ inaugural season, this writer was rarely frustrated with the contestants themselves, but the producers’ willingness to put widows and widowers, many of whom were clearly still actively processing that earth-shattering loss, through such public emotional hardship all for a relationship that would, by definition, only “work out” for one of them, and would be an incredibly rocky road even if it did. Of course a 72-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman—both with children and grandchildren—weren’t going to willingly pick up their entire lives and move hours away from their families for someone they’d known for less than a year! Who didn’t see this coming?
During their announcement, Gerry insisted he “still love[s] this person” and “root[s] for her every day,” but notably without any of the tears that were so present during what felt like every single one of his in-season confessionals. If The Golden Bachelor taught us anything, it’s that you can chase fame at any age, but real life (thankfully) still has to come first. We just hope whoever is chosen as the Golden Bachelorette learns from her predecessors, and maybe spares herself—and the rest of us—all of this heartache well before it begins.