by Sean Lowe
© 2015 by Sean Lowe
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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.
Published in association with Stéphanie Abou, Foundry Literary+Media, 33 West 17th Street, PH, New York, NY 10011.
Interior designed by Mallory Perkins.
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
The names and identifying characteristics of some individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.
ISBN 978-0-7180-1881-8 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lowe, Sean, 1983-
For the right reasons : America’s favorite bachelor on faith, love, marriage, and why nice guys finish first / Sean Lowe with Nancy French.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Lowe, Sean, 1983- 2. Bachelor (Television program) 3. Television personalities--United States--Biography. I. French, Nancy. II. Title.
PN1992.4.L72A3 2014
791.4502’8092--dc23
[B]
2014023723
15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my beautiful wife, Catherine:
Your love, encouragement, and friendship inspire me to be better than I am.
CONTENTS
Prologue
1. The Guy with Potential
2. Answering the Call
3. What a Way to Make a Living
4. A Not-So-Memorable First Impression
5. The Big Baby
6. Getting on My Soapbox
7. The L Word
8. The One Where I Got My Heart Broken
9. Newfound Notoriety
10. The Driver’s Seat
11. Moving Out of the Friend Zone
12. One Step at a Time
13. Warning Signals
14. The Decision
15. Down on One Knee
16. Trying to Dance with the Stars
17. The Big Day
18. Bachelor No More
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Authors
Photos
PROLOGUE
I’d been kidnapped.
I was stuck in the back of the Suburban, and my heart was about to pound out of my chest. Several emotions swirled inside me—anger, embarrassment, hurt. But mostly, I felt shock.
I’d just been dumped.
Of course, everyone experiences heartbreak in life. If I had been back home in Texas, I would’ve gone to the gym, grabbed some weights, and worked my way through it. When I get angry or upset, I need some space.
But I was hardly alone.
I was in a vehicle with a driver, cameramen, and two producers—all of them watching my every move. And they weren’t going to let me out of there without talking.
To make matters worse, this moment would soon be broadcast to millions of viewers across the nation as they tuned in for season 8 of The Bachelorette. The show is a spin-off of ABC’s dating game show, The Bachelor, which debuted in 2002. It goes like this: one pretty, available woman dates twenty-five eligible bachelors—sometimes on group dates, sometimes on one-on-one dates, and sometimes on the dreaded two-on-one dates. Will her future husband be in that group? The people at home watch eagerly as she gets to know the men and sends them home, one by one. As the weeks progress, the choices get harder. Eventually, she meets the parents of the remaining few bachelors on hometown dates, chooses whether to get even more acquainted with them on overnight dates, and—if all goes as planned—gets engaged on the show.
My sister and brother-in-law were the ones who encouraged me to get in to all this. They submitted my name to the show, helped me make my audition video, and even bought me a tailored suit. (The guys on The Bachelorette have to buy their own clothes, and I definitely didn’t have the funds to splurge on an expensive suit.)
People come from all walks of life, and it’s interesting to see how everybody gets along in the house. Of course, the ultimate criticism of contestants is that they didn’t come on the show “for the right reasons.” For example, in season 5 of The Bachelorette, the “singing cowboy” Wes Hayden made it to the final four even though it was said he had a girlfriend back home. Apparently, it took Jillian Harris awhile to figure out he was there to promote his music career. In season 6, there was the infamous wrestler who had a girlfriend back home. In fact, it was rumored he had two! Then, in season 7, episode 3, a guy named Bentley admitted to the camera he fantasized about a different bachelorette and then called his season’s potential wife an “ugly duckling.”
Presumably the only “right reason” for going on The Bachelorette is to find true love. As terrible as the lies and deception in the above examples are, I guess I might as well admit it now: I didn’t go on the show “for the right reasons” either.
I went on the show to meet fun people, travel to interesting places, and then get on with my life back in Dallas with a few good stories to tell. And, in fact, I did travel. I proclaimed my love for Emily Maynard in London’s Hyde Park, I ran through the streets of Prague to get a few extra minutes with her, and I ended up on the island of Curaçao, located in the southern Caribbean Sea just off the coast of Venezuela.
No, I didn’t go on the show to get married.
But before you judge me, wouldn’t it be a little crazy to think your path to the altar might go through a reality TV show?
I was as surprised as anyone that I fell so hard for Emily and made it all the way to the last rose ceremony. It came down to me and two other guys: bad-boy, racecar driver Arie Luyendyk and entrepreneurial do-gooder Jef Holm. Even though I had stiff competition, I was convinced Emily would choose me.
There was something about the show’s atmosphere that fostered romance: candlelight, exotic locales, and producers telling me there was an obvious connection between us. Plus, I wasn’t able to communicate with friends and family back home after the producers made us give up our cell phones, tablets, and laptops. (I heard on set that former bachelor Brad Womack somehow got a phone toward the end of filming his season, contacted his old girlfriend, and convinced her to give him another chance. That season ended up without a proposal for either of the final contestants.) Because I had no contact with the outside world, I was either with Emily or thinking about Emily. I had already considered what I’d say when I was down on one knee. I would think about my life with her and wonder what it would be like to become an instant dad to her daughter. Never, in all my daydreaming, did it cross my mind she’d send me home.
But on
that night, in a picturesque Caribbean locale, she did just that. I was riding away from Emily for a final time.
It’s sometimes called “the limo ride of shame,” but I was in a black Suburban. This is the time after every rose ceremony when the rejected bachelor gets to react to the news of his elimination. It’s usually a desperate moment, with crying and blame. But this felt different from every other ride I’d witnessed from the comfort of home, and not just because it was happening to me.
First, I wasn’t the only person who thought Emily and I would end up together. The producer assigned to me, Scott Westerman, was supposed to ask me probing questions on the ride. But he was completely choked up. So was another producer with whom I’d grown close, Jonah Quinn. He may have had a glass of wine too many, but he was also bawling.
Second, the ride was unusually long. Getting to my hotel should’ve taken about ten minutes, but we were still rolling after half an hour. That’s when I realized the producers intended to drive until they got good footage. After all, we were making a reality television show. It might have felt like a breakup to me, but my heartbreak was ratings gold.
“Sure is a long way to the hotel,” I joked when I realized they had effectively kidnapped me. In spite of it all, everyone laughed. I definitely wasn’t mad at them. They had made my time on The Bachelorette a real pleasure. I was touched everyone seemed to be taking it so hard. It sort of made my heartache seem justified. I hadn’t imagined the connection between Emily and me, had I? No, I could tell by my cameraman’s face that we’d all gotten blindsided.
In our conversations, Emily always flattered me. She’d said I was a “nice guy” and that I was “good.” Even more, she frequently used the word perfect to describe me. She said I was perfect in every way—that I possessed the qualities any woman would want in a husband. When she went on my hometown date, she met my two dogs, who are admittedly very well behaved, and said, “Even your dogs are perfect.”
That was just one of the not-so-subtle hints that made me think we were destined for each other. Another was that—in spite of what the viewing public saw at home—I did see the inside of Emily’s “fantasy suite,” but more on that later. What I’m trying to say is that I was shocked when Emily called out Arie’s name instead of mine.
The producers had taken out the Suburban’s middle row to accommodate the cameramen and staff who would take this final trip with me. The cameras were positioned about three feet from my face. This production team had been together for ten weeks, and I had grown very close to them all. But the last thing I wanted to do was spill my heart to the cameras.
I put my hand on my face and didn’t speak. As the Suburban wound through the island, I went through the evening in my head. What did I do wrong? Didn’t Emily give me every indication that we’d spend the rest of our lives together?
“Sean,” one of the producers gently said. “What’s going through your mind?”
There I was, in a moment that would be televised to millions, in the unenviable position of explaining one of the worst moments of my life.
“It hurts,” I said. “A lot.” I could tell they needed more for the cameras, for the viewing audience at home, so I went on. “A lot more than I can probably describe. I’ve had all week to think about this. Never did I think I’d go home. All week, my thoughts were consumed with being a father, being a husband.”
“Why do you think it hurts so much, Sean?” the producer prompted. I could tell he didn’t want to be asking me these questions almost as much as I didn’t want to answer. Almost.
“I want to love someone with every ounce of my being,” I said sadly before looking out the window.
At the time, considering Emily had kept bad-boy Arie, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that nice guys finish last. Somehow my image of being “good” and “perfect” seemed to hurt my chances for true love.
Of course, that ride of shame was not the end of the story.
If you watch The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, you know everyone is on a journey. That word is thrown around on the show a great deal, even more than the phrase the right reasons. But this book is about the very real journeys we all have to take. More times than not, our personal journeys are big disappointments. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve learned the hard lessons of life: being good is right, but it’s not enough; betrayal is so commonplace it’s almost expected; and that thing called perfection is a cruel myth.
But I’ve learned a few things from my two seasons on the hottest romance shows on television. I’ve learned that good does eventually win, that lies will be discovered, and that nice guys do ultimately finish first.
So, together, let’s take a trip toward life, joy, and—yes—love.
one
THE GUY WITH POTENTIAL
“What if we transferred you to Lamar?”
My spoon filled with Cinnamon Toast Crunch paused, halfway between my bowl and my mouth, and I looked at him. It was a Sunday morning, I was a junior in high school, and I was scarfing down a breakfast of champions. My mom and sister were getting ready for church.
I should’ve been surprised that my dad had suggested such a thing. He is so stable that we’d lived in the same house on Woodenrail Lane since I was two, we’d never changed phone numbers, and we’d sat in the same pew at the same church my entire life.
But there were two things my dad loved more than stability.
Me and football. Almost always in that order.
When I was seven years old, he signed me up in a community peewee league. I’ll never forget walking onto the field that first day, knowing nothing about the game. My coach taught us how to throw the ball and how to run for a touchdown. It was basic stuff, but I thought it was fun to hang out with my friends, and I grew to love the sport. Some of my fondest memories happened while tossing the ball with a neighbor before my mom called me to dinner. On Friday nights when my sister was in high school, we’d go to the football games, and I’d stand behind the end zone imagining what it’d be like to play under those lights. I dreamed of being in the players’ cleats and wondered if I’d be tough enough to withstand my own bumps and bruises.
As much as I enjoyed playing football, my dad loved me being on the team and was thrilled I had a knack for it.
By the time I got to Irving High School, a Class 5A school with two thousand students, I’d gotten pretty good. When I was in tenth grade, I was one of two sophomores to start on varsity. I loved being a Tiger, going to the pep rallies, and helping my team win games in front of a loud home crowd. When I was a junior, colleges began actively recruiting me. Then my coach moved me to defensive end, and it threw me off-kilter. Defensive ends are usually big, sometimes 275 or 280 pounds. I was only 180 pounds, and maintaining that weight was full-time work. I’d take two sandwiches to school every day, along with protein shakes. I ate constantly and drank weight-gain shakes every chance I could. My frame just couldn’t maintain enough weight to make me a good defensive end.
After every game, I was frustrated. “If I want to get a scholarship to a good school,” I told my dad, “I need to be a linebacker. It’s what I know . . . what I’m good at doing.”
It was halfway through the year, and I’d been wearing Irving’s black and gold for my entire high school career. I had a schedule, friends, and—honestly—a lot of fun at Irving High School. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my new field position was going to limit my college choices.
That’s why my dad brought up the far-fetched idea of transferring schools. Irving was the only home I’d ever known. More than just a Dallas suburb, we were a community in our own right, a community that loved football. In fact, our town hosted the Dallas Cowboys in our notable Texas Stadium with its iconic hole in the roof. Originally the roof was supposed to be retractable, but the engineers had misjudged how much weight it could bear. Instead, they left it open, which caused all kinds of problems—and jokes. People said the hole existed so God could watch his favorite team.
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We lived about three miles away from that landmark, in a modest neighborhood. Mom never let me sit inside playing video games like some of my friends. “Go outside and play,” she’d say. My friends and I played basketball, football, and anything else every day until dinner. My sister, Shay, had graduated from Irving High in 2000 and was living with us as she attended college. Dad operated his State Farm office on MacArthur Boulevard. And we attended Plymouth Park Baptist Church every time the doors were open.
I had a strong lineage of Christian believers. My grandfather, a pastor, had the entire New Testament memorized. He baptized me when I was eight years old.
“I take Jesus into my heart,” I said before my grandfather plunged me into the cool water. Looking back, I’m not sure I really understood those words. I knew I shouldn’t lie, cheat, or steal, but I’m not sure I was quite old enough to understand fully what it meant to be a Christian. It didn’t hit me until a few years later, when I was at Latham Springs Camp and Retreat Center. We had scheduled events during the day—recreational time when we played softball and kickball, followed by group activities.
One night, the camp brought in a guest speaker who stood at the front of what was probably a pretty smelly group of kids. His message cut through the excitement of camp and washed all over me. It’s hard to recall the details of that night, but I vividly remember I cried at the thought of Jesus and his sacrifice for me. The gospel wasn’t about the fact that my parents were churchgoers or that I could—sometimes—make it through the day without lying or being mean to my sister. This is what sank in that day: I messed up all the time, but Jesus lived a perfect life. He loved me so much that he was willing to pay the penalty for the things I’d done wrong. He did that by dying on the cross. That meant I was forgiven. The cost had been paid. I was saved.
As he spoke, I felt forgiveness—and joy—wash over me. At the end of his talk, the guest speaker gave an invitation for us to come forward to commit our lives to God. As a sixth grader, I made my way out of my metal folding chair and went forward. Tears streamed down my face.
