Bachelor’s Melissa: Jason and Molly Betrayed Me
On Thursday’s Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Bachelor’s Melissa Rycroft speaks out for the first time about being dumped by Jason Mesnick on national television and how hurt she was when she found out he was dating runner-up Molly Malaney.
Rycroft says “it was pretty immediate” after the finale that Mesnick realized he didn’t want to be with her.
“Once we got back, we both kind of sat in the real world, and we were talking about how [our relationship] was different,” she says. “He kind of gave up, and I couldn’t understand why at the time. Now I do – because I think there was someone else involved.”"And that is where my feelings of betrayal came in,” she goes on. “I knew on the night After the Final Rose [aired], I wasn’t getting dumped. We had already ended the relationship and that was mutual.”
“I repeatedly asked him, ‘Is Molly involved in anything?’ And when they moved up the taping of After the Final Rose, I was going, ‘Why did we move the taping up? What’s going on?’”
“I asked Jason, ‘Am I going to be blind-sided by anything? Is there anything you want to tell me?’ And he said, ‘No, gosh no.’ And the second I went out on that stage, he goes, ‘P.S. it is Molly.’ And I went, ‘Bastard!’”
Even though Mesnick initially denied he was dating Malaney, Rycroft says she had a feeling.”Being a girl, you get that feeling,” she says. “Anybody that’s been cheated on, you know. And being a woman, I got that feeling, because he just backed away from me, and I knew he had contacted her.”
“There had been at least one contact that I knew about, where he was ‘checking on her,’ and so it was just in the back of my mind. I would just casually ask, ‘Are you talking to her? Have you talked to her? Tell me, just be honest.’”"He kept saying no,” Rycroft adds.
Rycroft says she and Mesnick exchanged e-mails “right after we filmed After the Final Rose.”"I instigated it … and wish I hadn’t,” she says. “I felt like I needed to apologize for getting that angry with him, but at the same time, I said, ‘I hope you know why I got that mad.’ We weren’t talking at that point, so it was my way off saying, ‘This is my closure … Don’t reply back.’”
Asked if she could ever be friends with Mesnick or Malaney, Rycroft says, “No.”
“Jason and Molly don’t quite have the characteristics of [people] I would want to be friends with,” she says. “On a level, they both did betray me. I understand it was a break-up, and I’m not mad about that. We all get broken up with, but to be lied to….”Rycroft says she is moving on and is even dating a new guy named Ty (though she declined to reveal any more details).
“Because of the privacy and everything going on, we haven’t really been able to explore a new relationship, but now that everything is over, I’m so excited,” she says. “I’ve known him for two years and kind of done the dating on-and-off. He has been my biggest rock and supporter throughout this whole process. He’s become my best friend.”
