Let’s just say we are still seething from the season 22 Bachelor finale where Arie Luyendyk Jr. proposed to Becca Kufrin, then dumped her on-camera for runner-up Lauren Burnham. Yes, that happened, and, yes, Bachelor nation and the rest of America is p-i-s-s-e-d.
But Becca has had some time to heal from the truly shocking life moment. In a statement to People magazine on Tuesday, March 6, the season 22 contestant breaks her silence.
“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,” the 27-year-old told the magazine. “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.”
Becca added that the morning of the finale, she knew that she’d be getting engaged.
“That morning, I woke up and I was very oddly calm. I just felt it in my heart. I just knew it was me — that him and I were going to be together,” she continued. “There were still nerves, but I never was too anxious or worked up about it because I just felt it was right with us.”
Warning, though, because her quotes below about getting engaged and then dumped on TV below might make you cry all over again 😭.
“I felt like my heart was going to burst because it was just so filled with love to be with him and share that news with our friends and family,” she added. “There was so much excitement and joy. It was an overabundance.”
Becca admitted to People that she was (as America witnessed) blindsided by Arie when he decided to call things off on camera.
“I never thought for a million years that once the going started to get tough that he would throw in the towel and jump ship and say, ‘Oh sorry, I changed my mind.’ I didn’t think we were at that point whatsoever,” she told the magazine. “It was embarrassing the way he broke up with me with the full cameras and crew around. There was a better and more tactful way to do it,” she continued of getting dumped on national television. “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.”
Becca also told People that she knew something was up with Arie when she found out that he had “liked” some of Lauren Burnham’s Instagram photos after their engagement.
“At that point, I knew that he had liked some of her Instagram photos so we had a conversation about it. And that was the first time that he really threw it out that he should have a conversation with her and just apologize for how things had ended with her, that he had felt guilty,” Becca recalled. “He had told me, ‘I still have feelings for her, I’m trying to work through them.’ He said it was hard for him to always talk about it in interviews with the press, to relive that relationship. He said he couldn’t close that chapter until everything was said and done and the finale aired. That whole time we were just looking at the end goal of this week to finally be done with that and move on and be together and work through it as a team.”
At the end of the day, Becca wishes he hadn’t proposed.
“I wish he hadn’t proposed. At that point I loved him and I wanted to be with him. Even if on that last day, he said, ‘I’m still uncertain, this is a big move, I don’t want to get down on one knee unless I’m 1000 percent sure, but I still want to be with you,’ I would have been fine with that,” she concluded. “I would have been like, ‘I love you, I still want to be with you.’ I even asked him a couple times if he felt like he was certain like that was the right move at that point and every time he said, ‘I’m happy with the decision and I feel confident in us.’ From what he was telling me and from even that grand gesture, I thought nobody would do that unless they did feel 100 percent confident.”