Originally appeared on E! Online
This breakup news is getting thornier.
This year’s “Bachelorette” finale truly did live up to the promise of being the “most dramatic season yet” when it was revealed leading lady Jenn Tran and her chosen man Devin Strader had broken up two months after leaving Hawaii engaged. (Per Tran, Strader called things off on a 15-minute phone call.)
During the emotional live finale, the two exes clashed over how they believe it all went down.
“I watched this beautiful girl grow and flourish into this amazing woman on her own,” Strader explained. “It took none of us on the show to make you that person. It was amazing to watch you flourish into who you were.”
But after heading back into the real world, without cameras, he added, “I found myself falling short of those expectations in the real world. I found myself not being able to live up to the things that you need and you deserve. I watched myself contribute to your regression and that hurt me. You don’t deserve to compromise your standards to be happy.”
And in trying to explain how exactly the pair’s relationship felt “different” after leaving the show, he added to Tran, “When we left the show, I had a lot of doubts and regretfully and sadly I suppressed those feelings, and I did come clean to you about that.”
But Tran had a quick fiery response to the claim of honesty.
“You hid all of this from me,” the 26-year-old shot back. “For two months, I was pouring everything into you while you hid all of these feelings of doubt and made me feel even more in love with you and try to fight for a relationship that was out the door half the time.”
To which Strader conceded, “I was regretfully late on letting you know.”
Tran also called out some of her ex’s actions immediately following their breakup — including his decision to follow Maria Georgas on Instagram, the woman who originally turned down the opportunity to be the “Bachelorette” before it was offered to Tran.
As Tran explained, “Ending the engagement on a phone call, and the next day, I wake up to you following girls on Instagram — not just any girl, but Maria. Not only is that so disrespectful to everything that we had shared together, I just don’t understand it.”
And Strader admitted she was right. “I can’t excuse the Instagram follow,” Strader told Tran during the live finale. “I know how much that hurt you. I’m not here to tell you you can’t feel the way you feel. Obviously, I failed you. There’s nothing I can say other than that. Everything I felt for you was real.”
Jenn Tran is moving on. Just hours after her dramatic season of “The Bachelorette” came to a close, Tran spoke with Access Hollywood about her decision to join “Dancing with the Stars” this season, sharing, “Minutes after cursing off this man (Devin Strader) and then I was in my dressing room and suddenly presented with this opportunity … So, it was honestly a beautiful turn of events and exactly what I needed to distract myself.” Jenn also explained why she wanted to watch back her proposal with her ex-fiancé during the dramatic finale of the hit ABC show. “DWTS” premieres Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+.
However, on Tran’s accusation that he went clubbing in New York City with one of Tran’s former suitors, Jeremy Simon, just hours after their breakup, he wasn’t ready to apologize, responding, “Am I not allowed to live a life?”
But after much back and forth, at the end of the day, Tran wanted her former fiancé to understand the importance of a commitment.
“I hope that you learn that the weight of your words matter, and that if you’re going to promise something, you should be able to fulfill those promises,” she told Strader. “I just I simply couldn’t have done what you have done in that position. And when I love something, I nurture it and I value it, and I don’t throw it away the next day.”
And referencing the proposal — in which Tran chose to get down on one knee to ask Strader to marry her — she added, “The woman that stood there was ready to fight for love, was ready to give everything into a person, was ready to start a family, was ready to loved and understood what it meant to fully love somebody, to go through the hard times, to go through the happy times, to go through every single obstacle in life with somebody unwaveringly no matter what.”