‘The Golden Bachelor’ couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist are divorcing. After the final rose is when reality sets in, experts say.

Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist will not be spending their golden years together — but that’s what you often get with reality TV romance.

On Friday, The Golden Bachelor stars — the 70-somethings who were married in a splashy TV wedding just three months ago — announced they’re divorcing during a Good Morning America sit-down. Shortly after, Turner filed legal papers to make it official, citing an “irretrievable breakdown” of their marriage.

"Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we've looked closely at our situation, our living situation, so forth and — and we've kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it's probably time for us to dissolve our marriage," Turner said on GMA.

While most Bachelor couples don’t stay together after the final rose, there was a glimmer of hope for the seasoned pair on the franchise offshoot. They were sold as older, wiser and more committed than their younger counterparts. However, experts remind Yahoo Entertainment that they still got together in an “artificial context” and no matter how the spin-off was branded, it remains a “game show” — one that never relied on couples staying together for its success.

‘It's very easy to fall in love with the hypothetical’

While Turner and Nist may have approached the relationship with more maturity than their younger TV counterparts, they still “came together in an artificial context,” relationship expert Heather Dugan tells Yahoo Entertainment. “It's very easy to fall in love with the hypothetical. If your need, desire, loneliness or, in this case, the pressure and competition of a reality TV phenomenon are especially great, it's easy to toss your own hopes and dreams onto the other person and they look perfect for you.”

Once the cameras stopped rolling, reality became clear to the pair. Their maturity likely factored into them quickly cutting their losses.

“It ultimately comes down to falling in love with someone you can work with,” the Date Like a Grownup and The Friendship Upgrade author says. “I think as older adults in their 70s — probably with rearview mirror view — they’re aware of what that really looks like. Some of their priorities … turned out to be nonnegotiable things.”

But did Turner and Nist call it quits too soon, having never even moved in together after getting married? She stayed in New Jersey while he remained in Indiana. On GMA, Nist said they looked at house after house in South Carolina, which was to be their compromise, "but we never got to the point where we made that decision."

“Ideally, you go through at least one cycle of seasons [together],” Dugan says. “You see how one another manages day-to-day decisions, ongoing pressures and crises. Having a burst water pipe or airport layover is not a bad thing. I doubt that they experienced that together before they made their commitment.”

Interestingly, their age may have actually worked against them.

“Rigidity can be a big issue for older, mature people,” Dugan says. “Just learning how open you are to the compromises that have to happen, that's a big deal. If one of you is always bending, or if neither of you can, it's going to be hard to get into a comfortable zone where you can simply enjoy life together. Everybody's had these decades to form and find their own best ways of doing things.”

As for what it says about viewers who are invested in the lives of two strangers, “We all want to root for love,” says Dugan. “I hope that people don't look at this [divorce] as an indicator of your chance for love in life if you're over 50.” While it didn’t work out — this time, ABC is banking on The Golden Bachelorette next — “If somebody watches and it gives them hope … that's a good thing,” especially amid the loneliness epidemic.

‘This is the way these things so often end up’

The truth is, Bachelor couples rarely work out.

“A lot of the pleasure of watching The Bachelor is pure cynicism,” Syracuse University’s Robert Thompson, a TV and pop culture expert, tells Yahoo. “That’s the fun of it.”

However, “The Golden Bachelor was going to be different” with contestants who “have been around the block in relationships, have matured and aren't quite as shallow,” he continues. “We were gonna go back to how we felt when The Bachelor first started in 2002, where people were seriously looking for love. Now, especially with the urgency of this divorce, the extra branding of something different about The Golden Bachelor demonstrates that we’ve been there, done that. This is the way these things so often end up.”

Despite the spin-off being touted as something different, by the end it was clear that it was “pretty much the same old thing — just the participants were older,” Thompson says.

So may this serve as a reminder that The Bachelor and its counterparts are entertainment. Viewers shouldn’t expect more — and many don’t.

“The whole nature of it is not terribly amenable to long-lasting relationships,” says Thompson. “The process is more like a game show than it is actually watching the birth of a lifelong relationship. You don't really care if they stay together. It's just who manages to win the game, get the final rose. Once that's happened, that's kind of closure to it. The excitement is watching it get to that point. If we hear a year later — in this case, three months later — they're no longer together, that's become kind of par for the course. … I don't think the couple staying together has been an important part of that franchise.”

In light of Turner and Nist’s split, Thompson doesn’t expect ABC to suddenly call off a second season of The Golden Bachelor. After all, we’re talking about the show yet again and wouldn’t be if the couple had stayed together. Plus, this is all lucrative for ABC. Not only did the network air the show, which drew good ratings, and then the live TV wedding — but it also booked the couple to Good Morning America for their big breakup interview once things blew up and then aired more of the sit-down on Friday’s Nightline.

“It's interesting how ABC manages to squeeze every drop out of these things,” Thompson says.