Former Bachelor contestant Becca Kufrin rejoins the Bachelor Nation Monday night as season 14’s bachelorette. After that breakup scene with Arie Luyendyk on season 22 of The Bachelor, Kufrin knew that if she were to come back to the franchise, it had to be on her terms.
The Minnesota-based publicist first applied for the show on a whim in 2016, and the show did not do right by her if we’re being honest. Luyendyk totally blindsided her and the show’s coverage of it was unflinchingly awkward. It was a car crash we couldn’t look away from, and the cameras couldn’t either. She doesn’t blame the show according to what she told Vanderpump Rules star Stassi Schroeder, who is staunchly anti-Arie, on her podcast Straight Up with Stassi, though we wouldn’t blame her if she did even just a little bit. She was most blindsided by Luyendyk. Kufrin seems to have taken it all in stride, but if you’re talking about your breakup for thousands of people, you probably wouldn’t want to get into the nitty gritty anyway.
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Kufrin has her second go around all planned out. “This time around I want it to not only be on my terms, but I want to show that people can bounce back from heartbreak and from being blindsided, girls can support each other, and you can make friends while still going through this crazy journey trying to find love. That was really important to me,” Kufrin said on Stassi’s podcast. Immediately jumping in with her support as any good friend would, Schroeder complimented Kufrin on the “independent woman theme” of her season teaser trailer where she is shown breaking a heart with Luyendyk’s face on it as the words “independent woman” are literally sung in the background.
Kufrin admitted that after Luyendyk called off their engagement to be with season runner-up Lauren Burnham, it took her a couple of months of doing her own thing before she felt ready to jump back into dating. “I was always with my friends and family because I wanted to feel like me again.” she continued. “I didn’t want to take away my sense of identity.” Instead, when she felt ready to go back to the popular reality series, she chose to focus on the things that were really important to her. “I didn’t want anyone to stop me from still living my life, being me, and finding what I wanted the first time around,” she shared on the podcast.
This season has not yet aired, but it sounds like she had some promising prospects because it has already been confirmed that Kufrin is engaged to a still unnamed contestant from this season of The Bachelorette, so it sounds like things, regardless of how complicated they may have seemed in the moment, have worked out for the best.
The Bachelorette premieres Monday, May 28 at 8 p.m. on ABC.