Didn’t trust her gut? Maurissa Gunn is slowly starting to open up about her broken engagement to Riley Christian, revealing things were over long before Bachelor in Paradise fans found out about their breakup.
“You guys saw me on the beach all the time, like, breaking down, thinking he was not as into me as I was him,” Gunn, 25, recently said on the “Almost Famous” podcast. “I was all in, so in love from day one. And that’s kind of where it started — like that feeling that I had there in Paradise was kind of the feeling that just continued to go on.”
The Bachelor season 24 alum got engaged to Christian, 32, on the season 7 finale of BiP, which aired in October 2021.
“I get upset with myself,” Gunn continued to Ashley Iaconetti and Ben Higgins. “[I think to myself], you knew it right then and there, but you were just trying to like work through the circumstances and thinking like, ‘Oh, you’re being a little nuts, like, he’s so into you,’ especially when you see it on TV. Like he’s not into anyone else doing anything, you know? And for me, the feelings still carried over throughout our whole relationship.”
They announced their split in January via a joint statement that read: “We have decided to go our separate ways. Never did we imagine this, but we’ve come to a point where we both need to work on ourselves. We’ve appreciated everyone’s love and support so far throughout our journey and we just ask that you please respect our privacy as we navigate through this.”
Weeks later, Christian spoke out for the first time in a lengthy Instagram message.
“It takes a while for me to heal, but I thank you all for your patience. This has not at all been an easy time. This has been one of the most difficult times of my life, but as with everything I always do my best to move forward with hopeful and positive spirits,” he wrote on February 17. “But you see, I was always taught by my pops that ‘we bend but don’t break.’ But some very good people showed me otherwise.”
Gunn subsequently retweeted their costar Deandra Kanu’s tweets about Christian, including one post that read, “I’m not an inherently messy person, but when I see things in real time and then see someone skew that perception for social media it’s very scary. [It’s] not okay by any means to be the catalyst of your own demise and then go onto socials and ask for the publics sympathy. There are always two sides to a story.”
When Iaconetti brought up the “shady” social media activity, Gunn responded, “I have not been shady in any sort of way.”
The podcast host then asked about recent remarks that Christian wasn’t on the show for the right reasons.
“I didn’t say that they weren’t there for love,” she explained. “Being in the circumstances we were in, it became reality, like, coming off of the show, and sometimes who you meet on the show is not who they are after the show. … I’m not trying to shade in any way. Our whole relationship was legit, of course. I loved him from the bottom of my heart, I’m sure he loved me back. It just didn’t work out. There’s no shade.”
Scroll through for more from Gunn on their split:
