Arie Luyendyk Jr - Lauren Burnham - Bachelor 22 - Discussion #4

Joy15 wrote:Sorry if this was posted. FWIW



LOL at mass wedding

Imp wrote:snipped
https://www.gq.com/story/the-bachelor-arie-luyendyk-jr-profile

But he was haunted by the thought that he'd let his soulmate slip away. On New Years' Eve, he DMed Lauren on Instagram—production wouldn't give him her phone number—and asked if they could talk. He called her the next day. "As soon as I heard her voice," he tells me, "I knew that I had to end things with Becca."

Here, according to Arie, is how the breakup with Becca actually went down:

After talking to Lauren on New Years Day, he went to the Bachelor producers with his dilemma. That's when they pitched bringing in cameras to capture the breakup. If they filmed it, they told him, they could share that story with America, make sure that Bachelor Nation fully understood that he was being respectful and just following his heart. "'Then we can show you going back to Lauren, and people are going to rally behind you because you took this big risk and you did it for love,'" according to his telling. "'At the end of the day, people will just want to see you happy.'" In his head, it really was the only plausible option.
You've got to understand, he tells me, these people were my friends. He'd just spent months with the crew. He trusted them. But now? He feels "100 percent" betrayed.

Take the breakup with Becca, billed by the show as "the first completely unedited scene in reality television history." In the excruciating 40 minutes that aired, Becca repeatedly asks Arie to leave the house where—before he dumped her—they were supposed to be having a romantic getaway. Painfully, he sticks around, even knocking on the bathroom door as she cries to ask if she's okay. "OF COURSE SHE'S NOT OKAY!" I yelled at my TV when I watched the scene unfold. "YOU JUST BROKE OFF YOUR ENGAGEMENT!!!"

"It was completely edited," Arie says. "I was told to stay on that couch. I tried to leave, and then production was like, 'You need to go back inside. She's finally calming down. I feel like you owe it to her to have this conversation.' So then I went back in the house."

Really? You tried to leave and they wouldn't let you?

"Yeah. I left, came back. I stepped away from the couch, I went back to the couch." But they kept talking him into staying. "They cut out, obviously, production talking to me from 10 feet away," he says, and calling it unedited "was super unfair to me." (A spokesman for Warner Bros., which handles production for The Bachelor, declined to comment.)

Aria wrote:It always blows my mind how trusting and naive these people are, despite already having been screwed over by the producers. For example, they filmed his intro package and told him he'd be Bachelor...then gave it to Chris. I'm positive they told him that Emily would be picking him. It's so hard to feel sorry for these people when they refuse to use a single brain cell. IMO.

Aria wrote:I don't know, guys, I'm going soft....but I actually thought the article made it seem like they make a good match? Like they're both awkward AF (I'm cringing that they thought a random person was Ty Dolla $ign) they find the same stupid things funny, and they both seem to simultaneously crave attention while also being overwhelmed by it. And she clearly wants a life of leisure/laziness, spending most days doing barre classes and getting her nails done, and she seems to need someone to protect her and take the lead, which he is more than happy to do (it seems like he's literally picking out the wedding dress for her). I mean, as long as she doesn't expect anything crazy like "monogamy", I think this two crazy kids might actually make it! IMO.