The Real and Bizarre Relationship Rituals That Show Up on The Bachelor

In Victorian England, it was customary — and absolutely mandatory — for young couples to have a chaperone present anytime they spent time together. Chaperones planned the dates, decided how much time the couple would have together, and often planned out the lovebirds’ alone time, so that both families felt good about the exchange. After all, courting was like a job for Victorian women; they couldn’t take it lightly.

This sounds creepy and weirdly invasive, I know. But Chris Harrison has been doing this very thing for 20 seasons. He is The Bachelor’s version of the chaperone, and he takes his job very seriously, too. All the date cards come from him, he's always lurking in the shadows during the cocktail parties, and he often has to insert himself in situations to make more drama help the bachelor out.

This is not quite as harmless as some of the other rituals, but it's a real thing, apparently. In the South Asian country of Bhutan, young men are able to “claim” girlfriends in a disturbing and menacing tradition called “night hunting.” Night hunting is when a young, unmarried man sneaks into his crush’s room in the middle of the night to “visit” with her, with or without her consent. The goal is to talk the young lady into having sex, while being undetected by the girl’s father, and then leave unnoticed. However, if things go poorly and the boy is caught, he is then either obligated to marry the girl (who might be pregnant) or work off his crime on the family’s farm.

Now, I’m not suggesting any of the bachelors are sneaking into the ladies’ room to have a nonconsensual “visit” with them, but it’s pretty standard practice to have the lead sneak into the girls’ hotel room while they are sleeping. The difference is, Ben’s not forced to marry any of the girls with whom he’s visiting. Wait, yes he is.

Fathers in some cultures, including the African Zulu and the Cambodian Kreung tribes, don’t want to deal with the all traffic that dating creates, so they designate separate spaces, called love huts, for the potential couple. In fact, the Kreung tribes encourage the bride-to-be to entertain several suitors, sometimes many in one night, so she can make an informed decision about who to marry.

The Bachelor fantasy suite looks a lot like one of these love huts, in theory. Set up for the sole purpose of facilitating sexy time, the fantasy suite gives the bachelor or bachelorette time with their love interest away from prying eyes of the camera and the audience. And it's often an audition of sorts for the future spouse.

In Bali, local young men participate in the Usaba Sambah Festival to attract the attention of the unmarried women. The men engage in fights with each other using the spiky pandanus plant, supposedly to promote their masculinity and strength. The women look on from a nearby Ferris wheel as the men pummel each other into bloody lumps.

The Bachelor capitalizes on this in every season of The Bachelorette. How many times have we seen the men engage in some kind of combat sport, whether it be boxing, wrestling, bullfighting, or otherwise? In order to win a date with that season’s bachelorette, the men must also pummel each other bloody. Because romance.

The notion of “binding” two people together is a long-established ritual that spans period, region, and cultural background. It has evolved into the practice of wearing wedding rings today, but its roots are far less romantic.

Many cultures, including some African, Hindu, and Mexican, believed in literally tying the bride and groom together. In Mexican courtship history, the bride and groom are bound together at the wedding ceremony by a rope around their necks. Which, today, is a symbol of a whole other thing.

Medieval roots to the engagement ring are less symbolic of sharing love and more symbolic of women as property. As big, powerful nations got hungry for more and more land and subjects, there was a lot of raiding and conquering going on. It was pretty common for soldiers to raid a country, rob and pillage it for all its wealth, and kidnap the women to bring home as “wives.” These women returned to the soldiers' country in shackles, and some historians guess that the shackles evolved into what we know as the engagement ring. Think about that when Ben is hunting for the perfect engagement ring.

In a bizarre yet body-positve ritual from Austria, women would dance the night away with an apple slice tucked into their armpit. After the rounds and rounds of dancing were over, the women would present the apple slice to a man they were interested in and he would sniff it. But that's not all. If he was interested in the girl, he would eat the apple slice. That’s right, he would eat the sweaty, slimy apple slice that had been in her armpit all night. Now, that's some legit interest.

The Bachelor producers apparently saw the value in a good sniff, as they put this season’s Ben in a sniff test with the now eliminated but always weird Olivia. Couples of all ages were recruited to sniff their significant others in order to test their attraction. I guess the nose knows.

Norway was courting Game of Thrones style long before Game of Thrones was even a thing. Once girls reached marrying age, their fathers would present them with an empty sheath. (You know, the belt-like thing that holds a knife while you carry it? To keep it from cutting you?) The girls would wear the empty sheath on a belt around her waist during social events and mixers. If a guy was interested, he would put his knife in her sheath. (Symbols, anyone?) If she kept it and continued to wear it, they were engaged. If she returned it, she just wasn’t that into him.

Although our modern-day bachelors aren’t walking around wielding knives for the women, they are offering some kind of token. “Will you accept this rose?” is just an updated version of the presentation of the knife, although I haven’t seen many of the contestants giving their roses back, like those sassy Nordic women.

Men in the African tribe of Wodaabe participate in a week-long festival called Gerewol. During the week of festivities, the men take a lot of care and time on their grooming and hygiene. They wear intricate makeup and ornate costumes and compete for the eligible women in a dance-off called Yaake that lasts for hours in the hot sun. The women pick their love interests based almost exclusively on their fancy makeup and their rock-star moves.

This seems a lot like that agonizing limo sequence we have to suffer through at the start of every season. Whether it’s men or women, they all have to perform for their potential spouse, desperate to get their attention, kind of like Wodaabe men.