Paradise lost. Bachelor in Paradise‘s Marcus Grodd opens up exclusively with Us Weekly about his painful split from Lacy Faddoul, including why he feels “played” by her and his surprising response to whether he would appear on another season of the ABC dating show.
Bachelorette season 10 alum Grodd, 28, and Bachelor season 18 castoff Faddoul, 28, appeared to be the perfect match during their time together on 2014’s Bachelor in Paradise season 1, when they were mostly inseparable. He proposed during the season finale, and the pair tied the knot in Mexico on the season 2 premiere that aired in August 2015.
But Grodd tells Us that their bond was not meant to be. He says that Faddoul kept resisting his requests to make their union legal in the U.S., which he thought was “unusual.” But he was OK with waiting because he “wanted to give her what she wanted.”
He says she had grown particularly distant by early 2016, when the pair would go as long as a week or two without seeing each other. (He lives in Dallas, while she resides in Southern California.) They had “extremely minimal contact” after Valentine’s Day until the last time they spoke, which was in March. Last month, he told Life & Style that Faddoul seemed like a “runaway bride,” which she referenced earlier this month by posting an Instagram video of herself in her wedding dress, along with the caption, “When the talk is so much bigger than the walk. #bachelorinparadise #runawaybride.”
“I don’t feel angry by any means — I just feel disappointed in how she’s moving on and making it more as a joke than anything,” Grodd tells Us. “It was more disappointment of seeing what she’s done and been posting, rather than being angry about it.”
“I definitely feel played,” he continues. “I don’t know if that’s accurate … but the emotions that I’m feeling are yeah, I feel played, especially how she’s acting now to everything. But that’s me thinking as being hurt from her, [and] seeing what she’s posted and said in the past to me.”
He says that the relationship was “very natural and easy” when it began, but that things “progressively changed on her side,” although she never made it clear with him that she wanted the relationship to end.
“I don’t think everything in the end was real between us, and she just stuck on for [some reason],” he says. “That’s the only thing I would look back on or take back, is [I would ask] her just to end it whenever she felt like she wanted to and not progress with it, instead of me trying and being foolish and fooled by her.”
Grodd says he doesn’t know if Faddoul is currently seeing someone else, although he points out that she “became more closed off, and it was a lot harder to read her in the end.”
“I know she’s been going out a lot more with people, friends,” he says. “She went to one of my buddies’ restaurants [in Newport Beach, California], and he texted me, ‘I think she’s on a [brunch] date, actually.'”
That said, the former soccer player doesn’t blame the show for his turbulent year, and he actually thinks it could be “interesting to go back” on Bachelor in Paradise to find love. However, at the moment, he is still getting over the “embarrassment” of the split, and his sense that he was “kind of fooled and silly for continuing” the relationship.
“I could see myself doing another [dating] show, but I would be more wary of who I’m going out with and dating,” he says. “I would have more of a guard for sure. … I would [make sure to be] more knowledgeable about the person than anything.”
Faddoul did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
The Bachelorette airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET. Bachelor in Paradise season 3 starts on ABC Tuesday, August 2.
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