Before going on The Bachelor, Jake Pavelka tried everything to find a mate.
"I've tried Match.com," he tells UsMagazine.com. "It is really hard to meet people, and the reason it's hard to meet people is timing. You don't know where people are! Did they just come out of a relationship, are they completely closed off emotionally, or have they had a whole line of really bad breakups?"
The best part about finding love on a reality show is the "little adventure," says Pavelka, 32. "The one thing the producers ensure is that everybody is in a good place personally, unless they're in a current relationship — and that has happened. That isn't supposed to happen, and it's those people who are there strictly for selfish reasons — career ambitions. To be on The Bachelor just to be famous, well, that's not the way you want to do it. I've watched three seasons now and America gets wrapped around the axle when you go on there to just be on TV. America wants to see the romance and in the end they expect that commitment to come true."
Even though things didn't work out so well with Vienna Girardi (who, incidentally, has a new man), Pavelka tells Us he still believes he'll find The One.
"It's not a good thing or a bad thing," he says of his single status. "Each relationship you go through, you learn a lot about yourself. So after the whole Bachelor thing, I had to work through everything I learned about myself."
He tells Us he's "still looking for someone to be romantic, passionate and protective with, someone who is kind and I can trust. The hard part for me is dating women who have a pre-conceived notion of who I am. I'm not 'Jake The Bachelor.' I'm just Jake. I'm just a guy who was on a television show."
