It Really Sucks When Your Boyfriend Goes On ‘The Bachelorette’

Ladies, if your boyfriend leaves you to be the next Bachelor or date The Bachelorette, then you know your relationship was doomed from the beginning. Or maybe he wanted to get famous and this was all a nefarious plan and once the whole ordeal was over, he’d come back home and propose. Before you know it, you’re a reality TV widow.

That’s what Ed Swiderski did to his ex-girlfriend after charming the pants off Jillian Harris. Justin “Rated R” Rego left a relationship behind to become a boldfaced name. And, according to In Touch, Roberto Martinez – a frontrunner for Ali Fedotowsky‘s heart on The Bachelorette – went AWOL on his girlfriend of several months once he got a slot on the ABC dramafest. His ex Gabrielle Ortiz says, “he disappeared. His cell phone was disconnected. He erased his Facebook account. I could not find him. I thought he was dead!”

While Roberto never promised Gabrielle a proposal – maybe he DOES really like Ali? – Frank Neuschaefer, as we’ve reported, leaves Ali in Tahiti to go back to his girlfriend Nicole Caruso, who he’d been dating BEFORE taping The Bachelorette in February. (In fact, Frank had been dating Nicole since around last Halloween).

What gives? Are these guys so fame-hungry they’d ditch their girlfriends and/or make false promises to be on TV? Well, yes.

But some candidates aren’t all bad. Several years ago, a Crushable pal was approached to be “the next Bachelor” by producers, who spotted him across the room at a midtown Manhattan bar. Our pal is tall, dark and handsome – in other words, Bachelor-bait – but he was already seeing someone.

“I had a girlfriend at the time, and she wasn’t happy about it,” he tells us.

Still, the couple was amused – and curious. “We both kind of flirted with the idea (of me being on the show),” he says. “We had just started dating.”

So our pal went on a conference call with show producers, who offered to fly him out to Los Angeles for the next round of casting. Then they asked for a shirtless photo.

As he recalls, producers said, “Actually, we need to see your torso. There might be a Jacuzzi scene.”

Dealbreaker. “I wanted to be famous for things other than The Bachelor.”

Say he did take his shirt off, followed producers’ orders and actually landed a “role” on the hit franchise – Would he leave his girlfriend behind? Would he give her a promise ring?

Is that even a question? !? We like our pal, we really do, but OF COURSE he’d ditch the gf. Call us cynical. Unfortunately, in the shady casting world of The Bachelor/Bachelorette, it’s the girlfriends who get the shaft.

Got any dirt on the “audition” process? Are you a Bachelor widow? Send your tips to tips AT crushable dot com. We’re all ears …