For the most recent season of The Bachelorette, we yet again got a familiar face. Jen Schefft had managed to have one of the longer-lasting post-Bachelor relationships with Andrew Firestone in season 3, but the third time for The Bachelor wasn't the charm for the two of them, and their relationship ended. Would her appearance on The Bachelorette bring her some of that third-time good luck in love?

Jen sure hoped so, saying, “This show found Trista the man of her dreams, and now it's my hope to find the one man with whom I can spend the rest of my life.”

And she didn't want to leave too much to chance, so she participated in the casting process for the 25 suitors, sometimes providing questions for the producers to ask the men during the interview process.

She also had the help of a couple of friends who posed as servers during the initial cocktail party, and gave her the skinny on what the men were like when she wasn't around, and they actually were in charge of giving out the first rose of the show.

Jen, though, was back in the driver's seat for the rest of the show. After working her way through a few guys who seemed more like fans than possible mates, she wound up selecting younger Oklahoman John Paul Merritt and art gallery director Jerry Ferris from Los Angeles as the final two. Jen was torn between John Paul's steadiness and the attraction she felt for Jerry.

After some inconclusive home visits, and more input from her friends, it was time for Jen to make a decision. Although John Paul proposed to her – in fact unwittingly using the ring she had picked out for herself – she said she just had a gut feeling that he isn't The One.

Her feelings for Jerry were stronger, but she wasn't ready to accept his proposal either. She gave back the ring, and asked him to ask her again later if they both still felt the same after time passed.

There were already media rumblings that they didn't in the interim between the ceremony and the live reunion. Rumors swirled that Jen was dating her boss. She denied this, but it was true that the two had decided that they were “better as friends.”

John Paul had let loose with some bitterness when he was rejected, and said, “Jen's going to wake up, she's going to be 32 and [still] looking for a husband... looking for someone she knew was there and passed up, and it will be too late at that point.”

While she is still not married, in the past year she released a book about dating and relationships highlighting that this is not necessarily the tragedy it could be spun to be. The book's title is Better Single Than Sorry and it's meant to show that being alone is better than settling.

“Settling, she says, “means being in a relationship that's anything less than you deserve…It's being in a relationship that's not exactly right…for the sake of being in a relationship.”

Were there deeper motivations at play for Jen in writing this book than mere inspiration or the desire to cash in on her primetime exposure? One can't help but wonder if this isn't a personal defense in book-length form in an attempt to redeem her public image.

There is a certain kind of acceptance, even romance for the idea of the perennial Bachelor with a fear of commitment. He is, after all the thinking seems to go, just fulfilling a biological imperative by seeking multiple mates.  Whereas there seem to be a double standard for women, a negative perception of being picky or difficult if she's unwilling to settle in order to settle down. The whole premise of The Bachelor series, after all, is that the ultimate prize for a woman is a marriage proposal. For Jen to have turned down not one but two kind of flies in the face of the whole value system the show is built on, and she certainly received a lot of negative comments after she made her decision.

With the overall poor track record that The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have in establishing long-term relationships, maybe Jen shouldn't be criticized as being picky, but rather admired for being brave enough to make the call on national television rather than waiting until after After the Final Rose.

And with that, we have rewound through all of the seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Will Brad Womack have better luck than the men and women who have tried before? Tune in Monday to find out!

'The Bachelorette' Rewind, Season 1
'The Bachelor' Rewind, Season 1


- Leslie Seaton, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: ABC, MSNBC, TV.com, RealityTVWorld.com
(Image courtesy of ABC)