Blake Horstmann is in great spirits following his split from the Bachelorette Becca Kufrin — but it took some time.
“Right now, I’m in a good place, I am. I’m in a really good place. The healing process was long … I’m not going to act, like, overnight, I felt better all of a sudden. But I had some good support around me. I feel a lot better,” Horstmann, 29, revealed on a recent episode of Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti’s Almost Famous podcast. “I had been healing, but it wasn’t until After the Final Rose where I had felt, like, the door was closed. It really wasn’t. And it wasn’t even when I saw her. It was when I saw [her and winner Garrett Yrigoyen] together … on the couch when I thought, ‘They’re happy.’ … I’m ready to move on.”
Kufrin, 28, broke Horstmann’s heart when she accepted a proposal from Yrigoyen, 29, instead in the Maldives. “I was really in love,” the runner-up admitted. “It was a weird, instant connection we had. But yeah, it was tough. Those last few weeks were obviously very hard on me.”
The Colorado native faced another letdown earlier this month after losing The Bachelor gig to Colton Underwood, who placed fourth on Kufrin’s season before appearing on Bachelor in Paradise season 5.
“That was the hardest part, was not knowing [if I was the Bachelor],” Horstmann explained. “That was the worst part. I wasn’t really worried if I was or wasn’t, I just wanted to know if I was or wasn’t. And so when I got that call that I wasn’t going to be the Bachelor, it was a lot of weight off my shoulders. I didn’t realize how much it was weighing on me until I got that call where it was, like, ‘We’re going with Colton.’”
The sales representative admitted he was surprised that ABC didn’t choose him or Jason Tartick, who Kufrin sent packing before his fantasy suite date. “I thought for sure it’d be me or Jason, to be honest. I really did,” he said. “It was surprising. It was something that we definitely bonded over.”
Even so, Horstmann noted that he, Tartick and Underwood “are very good friends” and they were “very transparent” with each other throughout the casting process. “We didn’t want anybody to be left in limbo, so we let each other know exactly what we knew, when we knew it,” Horstmann dished, adding that the three even informed each other about phone calls they received from the network. “[The producers] couldn’t really try and be sneaky with us, really.”
The Bachelor season 23 will premiere on ABC in January 2019.
