Shame and Regret
Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay is still haunted by what happened before she said yes to fiancé Bryan Abasolo.
As Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay goes public with fiancé Bryan Abasolo, she’s stung by an insult
Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo were supposed to be celebrating their engagement, but something seemed off. Asked what it was like shooting The Bachelorette, the winning man confessed, “It’s definitely not easy when your future fiancée is dating 30 other guys.” When the host at the Mohegan Sun Reality Check event in Connecticut on Aug. 9 asked them to kiss, they awkwardly declined. “We did a lot of that during the show,” Rachel said, and Bryan echoed, “Yeah, we did enough of that.” Asked where they’re going to live in the future, they said they were still deciding among Miami, Dallas and LA. “We don’t know yet,” said Rachel.
Their future may be unclear because the Bachelorette star is still hung up on the past. Three months after the proposal was filmed, Rachel, 32, hasn’t gotten over her split with runnerup Peter Kraus, 31. On the show, he told her he wanted to date her but wasn’t ready to propose. That led her to send him home and choose Bryan, 37, but an insider believes Peter had been her first choice, and Rachel just wasn’t ready to end the show without a ring. “Rachel was shocked to hear he wasn’t ready to propose,” the insider says. “She was in love with him.” Viewers and critics noticed. “Make no mistake,” wrote The New York Times, “The Bachelorette got dumped.” Even now, Rachel feels humiliated, and she’s lashing out. “She was really hurt by the way things ended with Peter, and her feelings have turned into hatred,” says the insider. “She’s still hurt.”
SHADE AND ANGER
She’s made that clear. After Peter left the show, he reached out to Rachel, the insider exclusively tells Life & Style. “Peter sent her a direct message on Instagram,” the insider says. “He basically thanked her for the experience and let her know that he did care about her. He said something like, ‘I never meant to upset you or hurt you.’ He didn’t get a response back. He didn’t message her again, didn’t beg for her back. He wanted to wait to see her in person.”
When he finally did, on the After the Final Rose special, she seemed furious, telling him he shouldn’t have done the show to begin with. In interviews
since, she’s slammed Peter’s ability to make a commitment, calling him “manipulative.” In a tweet to Million Dollar Matchmaker star Patti Stanger, who outed herself as Team Bryan, Rachel wrote, “I’ve been trying to tell them! I didn’t come to play games.” And when a reporter at a BARK Target launch on Aug. 10 mentioned the Times story, which suggested she settled for Bryan because Peter rejected her, she insisted, despite all evidence, that “Peter said
that he would have proposed to me,” adding, “this isn’t settling.”
But her bitterness could cause problems with the relationship she’s supposed to be focusing on. “It’s hard to tell if Bryan and Rachel are genuinely in love,” says the insider, “but she wants to be someone’s wife, so she’s hoping they make it to the altar.” As for Peter, “he’s done reaching out to her, after the way she’s acted toward him,” the insider says. “He just hopes she’s really happy with Bryan.”