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There’s this running joke in the Snarkwife/UberHusband household…that Capt. UberHusband runs for the hills (or rather, the airport) every time the season finale of The Bachelor is upon us. Seriously. The guy is never here for the finales. I remember sitting in our bedroom (in our old bed, watching our old TV) back in the Aaron Buerge days when I squealed and was all excited he had chosen Helene.

Last night, no different…although to CU’s credit, he did talk to me during the last episode, but even I couldn’t handle it after Matt called Shayne “Monkey” for the eighty bajillionth time. Ick.

Now, I get the concept of cute couples and pet names (mine includes the word “bear”), but when the bearer of said pet name wraps her legs and body around her beloved every ten minutes like a four-year old in need of a nap…I get a serious case of the Icks.

Not meaning to go all Grumpy Old Married Woman on ya’ll, but I was in love when I was 22. In fact, I had been dating the guy for three years…so I think I probably had a better gauge on the long-term viability of the relationship than Shayne does. We had even done all those non-Bachelor activities the producers try to avoid during filming…like grocery shopping, laundry, and unwrapping your legs from around each other.

Seriously, he was it for me. He was cute, funny, smart, and everything I thought I wanted in a husband. He also had a domineering mother who gave me a pair of socks from Mervyn’s one year for Christmas. When I graduated from college, we got an apartment together in Santa Barbara and I started planning for our future when he graduated the next year. We’d move to the Bay Area, get a cute apartment and get married and have babies.

Yep, you read that right. Did I mention not only did I love him, but he loved me? But, as tends to happen in relationships when you’re young…what seemed perfect and certain one day wasn’t so perfect and certain the next. We broke up. I was devastated…as you’d expect. But now, I thank my lucky stars he dumped me in our apartment that November day in 1993. Had he not, I never would have had the chance to turn into the woman I was meant to be.

And, I never would have met Capt. UberHusband who, by the by…has the least domineering mother I’ve ever met.

Now, before all the young brides out there jump on here and tell me that they got married when they were young and have been married, 5, 10, 15, 20 years…whatever…good for you. Kudos to you for having a successful relationship. My mom married young, and was divorced 25 years later. The people she and my dad were at 20 and 21 were not the same people they were at 45. There’s a lot of growing you do during your 20s and if you’re very, very fortunate and the planets are aligned, you come out of it fairly unscathed at the end.

When I was engaged, I was on a message board at iVillage for women getting married in 2001. One of the board leaders was this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 20 year-old, who thought she was mature and grown up and ready to get married. And even if she wasn’t, getting married would make her mature and grown up. I, the crusty old hag of 28, had the gall to ask her to ask herself some hard questions…about who she was, what she wanted…was the guy she was marrying up to the emotional challenge of navigating their 20s and the rest of their lives together?

I remember that relationship. She’d tell me I was mean…and trying to ruin her special day. I found that hilarious. Right. I’m trying to ruin your wedding day by talking about your future marriage. They did get married…and then two years later on The First Years of Marriage board, she announced they were divorcing.

But I digress…sort of. When I watched Shayne last night practically peeing herself with excitement, I remembered that I would have reacted the same way had Tom proposed to me overlooking the ocean in Barbados 15 years ago. Looking back, I am so unbelievably glad he didn’t.

Plus, I believe ABC only gets one marriage in its Bachelor lifetime…and Trista and Ryan already took that slot.