The Bachelor

The Bachelor franchise is regularly mocked for its low romance success rate and for pretty good reason: After 10 years of ABC matchmaking, 16 completed seasons of The Bachelor and seven seasons of The Bachelorette, a full four out of 23 “official” couples are still together.

That lucky 17 percent includes Jason and Molly Mesnick , even though Jason had originally chosen (and proposed to) Melissa Rycroft over Molly on The Bachelor 13 finale. We’re also adding Ashley Hebert and JP Rosenbaum of The Bachelorette Season 7 since they are currently engaged and expected to get hitched in the next year. However, we always expected a wedding from ex-Season 6 couple Ali Fedotowsky and Roberto Martinez (sniff!), so we can only hope Team Cupcake actually makes it as far as real vows, ala the Mesnicks and Trista and Ryan Sutter.

You could argue that The Bachelorette Season 1’s Trista and Ryan are still the only true, unqualified success of the show — and since they got together so early in the franchise, they set a very optimistic bar. The franchise has had two or three so-close-to-making-it couples and those guys are the ones that most closely match real world relationships. As much as Rosemaster Chris Harrison and company like to say The Bachelor breakups match real-life dating statistics, most of us don’t end our engagements after just a couple of months. That’s not normal.

Season 16 Bachelor Ben Flajnik can only hope that his engagement to Courtney Robertson will end up going the way of the Sutters but… well… the numbers suggest a more pessimistic expectation. Like, an official breakup announcement via People Magazine some time this summer (though we hope that’s not the case!).

Here’s the rundown of which couples are still together and which are dunzo (head here for details on each couple):

Season 1: Alex Michel and Amanda Marsh — BROKE UP after almost a year of dating after the show.

Season 2: Aaron Buerge and Helene Eksterowicz — BROKE UP five weeks after the finale aired.

Season 3: Andrew Firestone and Jen Scheff — BROKE UP seven months after finale aired.

Season 4: Bob Guiney and Estella Gardinier — BROKE UP one month after the finale aired, right after they attended Trista and Ryan Sutter's December 2003 wedding.

Season 5: Jesse Palmer and Jessica Bowlin — BROKE UP one month after the finale aired.

Season 6: Byron Velvick and Mary Delgado — BROKE UP, but after several years together. They got engaged in November 2004 and had some domestic issues but didn't officially end their union until December 2009.

Season 7: Charlie O'Connell and Sarah Brice — BROKE UP, but after a great run. They "took a chance" on a relationship in May 2005 and broke up in September 2007. By November 2008 they were back together, but split up again in April 2010. So close!

Season 8: Travis Stork and Sarah Stone — BROKE UP sometime after the show finished taping, since a week after the finale aired, Travis and Sarah told reporters on a conference call that they had already split.

Season 9: Lorenzo Borghese and Jennifer Wilson — BROKE UP two months after the finale aired.

Season 10: Andy Baldwin and Tessa Horst — BROKE UP, first ending their engagement three months after the finale aired, but adding that they were still dating. However, one month after that announcement they officially broke up.

Season 11: Brad Womack and ... Himself! — EPIC FAIL, since he didn't even pick between DeAnna and Jenni Croft, his two finalists. He could've at least pretended to pick one, like Jen Schefft. (Kidding!)

Season 12: Matt Grant and Shayne Lamas — BROKE UP two months after the finale aired.

Season 13: Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft... er Molly Malaney — STILL TOGETHER, at least, Jason and Molly are. Jason infamously ended his engagement with Melissa on the After the Final Rose special, asking Molly out for coffee just a few minutes later. Awkward! But the Mesnicks got married in February 2010 and they are still going strong two years later.

Season 14: Jake Pavelka and Vienna Girardi — Broke up three months after the finale aired. Aired dirty laundry in ugly televised breakup shortly after that.

Season 15: Brad Womack and Emily Maynard — BROKE UP at least once while the show was still airing but kept trying to make it work until making an official breakup statement three months after the finale aired.

Season 16: Ben Flajnik and Courtney Robertson — STILL TOGETHER... although it's only been a few months. We try to see it as a positive thing that they've already been through the worst of it, media scrutiny-wise, while the show was airing so... smooth sailing from here?

Season 1: Trista Rehn and Ryan Sutter — STILL TOGETHER, after the finale aired in February 2003 they got married in an ABC special broadcast on December 6, 2003. They now have two children together.

Season 2: Meredith Phillips and Ian McKee — BROKE UP one year after the finale aired.

Season 3: Jen Schefft and Jerry Ferris — BROKE UP technically on the After the Final Rose special when Jen realized she wasn't feeling it.

Season 4: DeAnna Pappas and Jesse Csincsak — BROKE UP four months after the finale aired.

Season 5: Jillian Harris and Ed Swiderski — BROKE UP one year after the finale aired.

Season 6: Ali Fedotowsky and Roberto Martinez — BROKE UP just before Thanksgiving 2011, one year and three months after the finale aired.

Season 7: Ashley Hebert and JP Rosenbaum — STILL TOGETHER after getting engaged on the finale, which aired August 1, 2011.

Of course, The Bachelor franchise has also spawned many non-”official” couples between show alums, including Bachelorette 4’s Jesse Csincsak and Bachelor 13’s Ann Lueders Csincsak, Bachelor Pad 1 cuties Tenley Molzahn and Kiptyn Locke and the upcoming nuptials of Bachelor 10’s Peyton Wright & Bachelorette 6’s Chris Lambton and BP2’s Holly Durst & Michael Stagliano
Blake Julian... So maybe the “success” rate of The Bachelor franchise has less to do with on-air engagements than on-air introductions to people who later connect in the real-world over a shared experience with the weirdness of reality TV.

We’ll raise a glass to that.

Need your daily dose of The Bachelor? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. After all, you’d get our final rose.