'Temptation Island 2' couple that survived
AGC Queen
Zap2it.com, TV News
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - If viewers were rooting for one couple from
"Temptation Island 2"to stay together, it had to be Shannon Rutledge and John
Dolan, who never really seemed to get into the spirit of things and whose
seperation wore especially on Rutledge who slept with Dolan's picture, and
courted being disciplined by trying to communicate with Dolan through secret
notes and forbidden conversation.
Their reunion on the reality show's "climatic" season finale showed that the
two were obviously in love, making one question why they ever went on the show
to begin with.
"I went basically to see if he would cheat on me -- that's probably my biggest
reason," Rutledge tells Zap2it.com "I had a really rocky past."
"It was a new relationship and we were either going to move to that next level
or we were probably going to break up. My thought process was: If he cheats on
me, I'll be stronger for it and we'll split up; and if he doesn't great, our
relationship will be stronger for it."
Dolan says he played along, but he had no intention of enjoying forbidden
fruit.
"I knew going on that I wasn't going to do anything that could be called
cheating," he says. "I went on it because I was bartending and I thought maybe
it would give me a break and because I wanted to prove to Shannon that not
every guy would cheat."
Plus, he says, there wouldn't be any advantages to cheating on national
television.
"I thought, if I meet a few girls that I like and decided to cheat with them,
what's the positives of that? The positives would be, yeah I got laid. Big
deal. That's it. The negatives would be my family would see that, I would be
portrayed [as a cheater] in society, I would break the heart of an amazing girl
and I would have all the other girls in the world hate me for cheating on my
girlfriend," he laughs.
Instead he says he stayed true to his nature and didn't led the show's 16
alluring single females tempt him to do anything worse than hugging another
woman during the 30 days he was separated from his girlfriend.
Dolan says he and Nyla (the single he spent the lion's share of his time with)
really didn't have this "huge bond as a couple." "You get to the point where
you're so lonely that you want to feel a body and she would be next to me.
Yeah, we hugged and then I would go to my room and, yeah, I'd think about both
of them but my thoughts were with Shannon in the long run," he says.
While the two generally agree the show's portrayal of them on-screen, both
agree that a lot of the cast members' personality was left on the cutting room
floor.
"I think some moments were exaggerated and I felt that they elaborated on an
emotion, but all-in-all I felt it was pretty realistic. I felt it was pretty
realistic for all of us," Rutledge says." They can't show anything I didn't do
and I didn't cry a lot, but I cried those few times that they liked to show a
lot," she laughs.
"The only thing I am upset about is the way they portrayed Shannon," Dolan
says. "They didn't show how big her heart is. They didn't show how
compassionate she was to the other girls when she saw all that stuff -- and
even though I didn't see it, I know she was. She goes downtown in Phoenix and
feeds the homeless. How could they show her being negative when that's not
her?"
Rutledge admits that she did fight the show a little bit, but it made the
experience more rewarding for her at the end.
"I kind of fought it at first, but honestly what I took out of the process was
better than anything that anyone else took out of the process," she says. "Even
though it might have been a harder journey for me because I had some control
issues, the end result was so strong for me."
"If we didn't go on the show, I might not feel the way I do about John right
now," she says. "Absence, in our case, really did make the heart fonder."
While there's no engagement as of yet, the two have only spent two says apart
since returning from the island. Even then, they were constantly on the phone
with each other.
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Alexandra
finale. I could tell this couple was different. It's amazing how you can
really read what's going on with these people in their choice of words and
subtle looks. I'm glad they made it. They seem like a very nice couple.
--
Alexandra
Keeper of Jeremy Piven and John Corbett
Worry is like interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.
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