(Spoiler alert: Please do not read on if you haven’t watched Monday night’s finale of “The Bachelor”)
“The Bachelor” contestant Becca Kufrin doesn’t think Arie Luyendyk Jr. is “a monster” despite Monday’s gut-wrenching finale, but wishes he would’ve handled the breakup differently.
“He’s a good person, I don’t think he’s a monster and purposely did this to hurt me and make me feel this way. But it’s just the result of his actions,” Kufrin told People. “At the end of the day, I don’t think he thought through everything of how ending things with Lauren would be, how being engaged to me would be and what breaking up with me and going back to her would be.
“I don’t think he thought it through, but I don’t think he did it maliciously to break my heart,” she added.
Bachelor Nation saw one of the most dramatic finales in the ABC dating show’s history on Monday, when Luyendyk proposed to Kufrin in Peru after sending Lauren B., his other final contestant, home. However, Arie soon realized he had made a mistake and couldn’t get over his other woman, and had ABC film a dramatic breakup that the network claims was completely unedited.
Arie later told his fiancee, “I go to bed and I think about Lauren, and I get up and I think about Lauren.” Ouch. And so he switched girls.
“Are you f—ing kidding me?” Becca said when he delivered the bad news, with cameras rolling.
“It was embarrassing the way he broke up with me with the full cameras and crew around,” Kufrin told People. “There was a better and more tactful way to do it. A breakup is hard enough, and to have it all filmed and have to re-watch it and know that people all across the country are watching you get your heart broken, it is embarrassing. It’s not fun. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It was like a slap in the face.”
This isn’t the first time a Bachelor has changed his mind after the fact.
In 2009, single dad Jason Mesnick picked Melissa Rycroft over Molly Malaney after a very tearful breakup with Molly (his “balcony cry” has gone down in the show’s history as a moment to judge all other cries against). But during the “After the Final Rose” episode, he admitted to host Chris Harrison that he just couldn’t stop thinking about Molly.
Molly then came out from backstage, and told him she’d take him back. The two got married about a year later — filmed on ABC — and recently celebrated eight years together. They have two kids.
Tune in Tuesday night for a sure-to-be dramatic and tearful “After the Final Rose” on ABC at 8 p.m., during which the next Bachelorette will also be revealed.