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Melissa Rycroft Opens Up About Being ‘Humiliated’ by Bachelor Jason Mesnick: He Should Have ‘Warned’ Me

Revisiting that shocking split. Melissa Rycroft opened up recently on the Reality Life With Kate Casey podcast about Jason Mesnick dumping her during his Bachelor season 13 After the Final Rose special.

Related: PHOTOS: Failed Reality TV Romances

Rycroft explained on the podcast that the pair had been having friction prior to the 2009 special, and she later realized that the tension stemmed from the fact that his feelings for runner-up Molly Malaney had been rekindled. (Mesnick and Malaney got married in February 2010, and they welcomed daughter Riley in March 2013.)

Melissa Rycroft
Melissa Rycroft Matt Petit/ABC via Getty Images

For example, Rycroft mentioned that she had sent Mesnick’s son, Ty, some Hanukkah presents after their season wrapped, but she never heard from the Bachelor star, 40, about them. “He never called to say thank you, he never said he got them, he never said he appreciated them,” the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, 33, said. “And I remember going, ‘Why am I trying?’ I feel like he gave up, and now, looking back, he had given up, he had moved on, but I didn’t know that.”

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“To say that we went into that After the Final Rose in an absolutely perfect place is a lie,” she continued. “[But] had we completely severed ties and broken up? No!”

Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft on The Bachelor
Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft on ‘The Bachelor.’ ABC/MATT KLITSCHER

Rycroft said she expected that the pair would spend the After the Final Rose finding out how to get back on the same page, and instead she was blindsided. “I wasn’t expecting him to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, peace out. I have feelings for Molly, I’ve been talking to her and I’ve been seeing her,’” she said. “That was when I was humiliated.”

“You could have at least warned a chick before he walked out here,” she continued. “We talked minutes before I went out on that stage, and he never said anything.”

However, the Dancing With the Stars season 15 champ — who married insurance agent Tye Strickland in December 2009 and has three kids with him — said she now feels at peace with what happened, not to mention that she believes viewers could empathize with what she endured. “[Jason and I] have both moved on, and there is no other place in my life that I would rather be other than where I am,” she continued.

In a recently resurfaced Huffington Post interview, Mesnick said he regretted that producers had persuaded him to not tell Rycroft before the special that he was in love with Malaney. “When I go back to it, I wish I would have stood my ground and never did anything that was against my morals or hurt anyone,” he said.

The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET. 

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