The whole point — on paper at least — of going on The Bachelorette or The Bachelor is to find a husband or wife, respectively, and to live happily ever after for the rest of your days. The wedding specials and paid Instagram ads are just icing on the cake. Every so often, though, there is a Bachelor or Bachelorette contestant that is really gung ho about finding a mate, and on Rachel’s season of The Bachelorette, that person is Josiah. Josiah is obsessed with Rachel being his wife on The Bachelorette, and he needs to slow things down. He doesn’t own Rachel, despite all his "my wife" "my wife" talk.
A little bit of backstory about Josiah — when he was a child, his brother committed suicide. Josiah makes it clear that he was the one to find his brother, and that it had an irreparable effect on him. I can’t imagine what it was like to go through that. Fast forward a bit and Josiah now has his law degree and is a prosecutor like Rachel is. Josiah talks and talks about how Rachel needs to be his wife and how important family is to him, and I think a lot of that stems from losing a big part of his family at a young age. It is important to Josiah because he lost it once and doesn’t want to again.
That being said, his continuous insinuation that Rachel will be his wife is too much for a first episode of The Bachelorette. Besides taking away her own agency (she is her own person and I imagine will not settle for being just anyone’s anything), Josiah is going too hard out of the gate. He really doesn’t know anything about Rachel yet, just as she barely knows who he is. I know I can’t recognize contestants on The Bachelor/ette until about five weeks in when the herd has been culled, so I’m sure Rachel can’t tell you who she wants to marry on night one. Give Rachel some space, stop projecting on her, and maybe it will work out. Maybe you’ll end up married, maybe you won’t. But Josiah shouldn’t be pressing the issue on Rachel until he actually has a date with her.
