My Reality

by Melissa Rycroft

  “Where are you?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Why are you ignoring me?”

  “Why are you not picking up?”

  In my head, I would respond, Because I don’t want to talk to you right now.

  Heck, he knew what it meant when someone ignored someone else. He invented that game! Had he forgotten that he was the one who taught me how to play?

  In real life, though, I didn’t respond at all.

  But I couldn’t just ignore him forever. This was Tye, after all. Given how crazy he used to make me, it’s hard to believe that I was as strong as I was for so long. I think my disinterest in talking to him shows just how deeply he hurt me. And I also think it’s a testament to how serious I was about my commitment to Jason and how determined I was to make our relationship work, if there was any hope for us at all.

  I didn’t tell anyone—including Tye, of course—that I had won The Bachelor or that I was engaged to Jason. By not responding to Tye, I was trying to let him know that I had another priority in my life now, and that he couldn’t keep coming at me like he was. I didn’t know what to do. The last thing I wanted, after taking such a great step forward, was to make a huge mistake, take ten steps back, and end up right where I had been eight months before. And so, I literally spent several weeks analyzing everything that was happening in my life and what I should do about it.

  After two or three weeks of Tye texting and calling me nonstop, I finally picked up his call one night. I don’t know what was different for me at that particular moment, but I think it had finally sunk in that he wasn’t giving up, and that maybe his persistence had earned him a chance to talk to me. I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom reading up on all the magazines that I’d missed while I was gone. I answered the phone confidently, but I was unsure about how the conversation would go.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Hello?” I said.

  There was a slight pause from the other end of the phone. Maybe he was shocked that I actually picked up.

  “Hey,” he said awkwardly.

  I flipped the page of my magazine.

  “Hey.”

  We went through a bunch of small talk, and the inevitable “How are you?” and “What have you been up to?”

  When I asked Tye how he’d been, he let it all out.

  “Well, I’ve missed you,” he said. “I thought about you a lot, and thought about our relationship a lot.”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” I muttered.

  I was still flipping through my magazine as he continued.

  “I, um, I’m sorry for how we left things,” he said. “I had a lot of time to think about things, and I owe you an apology.”

  Well, yes you do! Sheesh.

  I sighed and studied a picture in the magazine.

  “Oh really? Why?” I asked.

  I wanted to hear him say it. I needed to hear him say it.

  “I just . . . I don’t think I gave us a fair shot,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

  I felt the urge to say everything to him that I’d been hiding for the past year and a half. I had gone from being sad over Tye to being mad at Tye. I no longer feared telling him what I was really thinking, because I wasn’t scared of losing him anymore. Heck, he wasn’t mine. I had moved on. I was happy. So what did I have to lose, right?

  “You’re right. You didn’t give us a fair shot,” I said. “But if we were meant to be together, we would be together. It was just too hard of a relationship. It shouldn’t be that hard. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Wow. That actually felt really good to say.

  I had no idea I had become this confident. But I finally had the guts to say everything I had been afraid to say for so long, and I intended to be honest and tell him exactly where I was at in my life.

  “You’re right,” he said. “If we were meant to be, we’d be together.”

  Ouch.

  Even though I had said the words first, I didn’t expect him to agree with me. Part of me wanted him to keep fighting for me. But a larger part of me was relieved that this cycle finally looked like it was over. We had both agreed that a relationship between us would never work. So I continued on with my final conclusion of that relationship.

  “For the past year and a half, you took me for granted,” I said. “You didn’t appreciate me. You have no idea the things I did for you. My life revolved around you, and I got nothing back. You made it too hard for me.”

  “You’re right,” he said quietly.

  I didn’t know how to react to that.

  Wait a minute, that’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re the bad guy. Be the bad guy!

  After a short pause, he continued.

  “I really missed you while you were gone,” he said. “I really care about you, and I want you to be happy.”

  I heard the words, but I felt nothing. Even though it was exactly what I had longed to hear him say for so many months, it was too late now. I didn’t want to listen. So I tuned him out. The little bit that did get through to me just made me mad. At one point, he told me how hard the past couple of months had been for him, and it made me want to laugh and say, “What about how hard the past year has been for me?”

  Not only was I angry enough to feel like it was well within my rights to be a borderline brat, but I had moved on. Of course, contractually, I wasn’t allowed to tell Tye that. Heck, I didn’t even want to tell him that. It was none of his business that I had moved on after we’d broken up. Isn’t that just to be expected?

  We talked for a little longer. I continued to tell him everything that had bothered me both during and after our relationship. And he continued to listen and agree with me. It felt so good to be this confident with him and to speak so honestly. At the end of the conversation, I just sighed. This was it.

  “Okay, well, I wish you well,” I said.

  Maybe that’s not the nicest thing to say to someone you were so in love with, but how else do you really end an awkward conversation after that love has been stamped out?

  “Let’s try and stay in touch, and I hope we can be friends some day,” I said. “Right now, I just don’t see that in our future, though.”

  There was a long pause before he answered.

  “Okay, take care,” he said. “And I really do hope you’re happy.”

  “Good-bye, Tye.”

  I hung up the phone and closed my magazine.

  Did that really just happen? Did we just have the “good-bye” conversation?

  “Good-bye, Tye” had been a phrase I had feared for so long. But it had flowed right out of me. I honestly thought that was the final contact between Tye and I. It was a strange feeling. You never forget someone you used to love so much. But sometimes, you have to accept you were not meant to be. And that’s exactly what we had just done.

  eight

  •

  FIGHTING FOR LOVE

  Even if it was clear that things weren’t going that well with Jason as soon as I left the Bachelor Bubble, it was hard for me to let go of how good he had made me feel while I was in the world of the show with him. There had been a time when I had made Jason laugh, and he had thought I was beautiful. He had given me all of those little smiles, and winks, and kisses. He had chosen me out of twenty-five beautiful, accomplished women and put a ring on my finger, signaling his intention to spend the rest of his life with me. All of that attention had built up my confidence to where I could see myself as an intelligent, attractive, self-sufficient woman.

  I finally believed that I deserved to have somebody treat me well rather than being with someone who I had to force to like me. I always felt like I had to constantly remind Tye that I was worth loving. Jason didn’t need reminding; he had made me feel like he cared about me all on his own. I realized that I didn’t need much out of a relationship; I just wanted someone to step up and love me like I deserved to be loved. I had that now. (Err . . . so I thought. . .).

  Just because Tye had missed
me when I went away did not make up for the year when he had acted like I wasn’t good enough for him. Then there were all of the things I had done to win Tye’s heart: all of the meals, coffees, laundry, and more. I hadn’t had to do any of that for Jason, and he had still picked me to be his wife. Of course, I hadn’t yet had the chance to even begin to have a normal relationship with Jason, so it was clearly crazy for me to try to compare the two.

  Aren’t love goggles great?

  But there was one definite connection between the two men: The fact that Jason had built up my confidence was making it easier for me to say no to Tye. I was determined to try to hold on to my relationship with Jason instead.

  The problem was that things continued to get more awkward between Jason and me, no matter how much I put into our relationship. I knew I had felt that I was in love with him, and I knew that we were supposed to be engaged, but it sure didn’t feel like it anymore. I found myself trying to remember the way I had felt in New Zealand the day he proposed. Our connection didn’t feel as real as it had there. One main reason for this was that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I had to come home, resume my normal life, and pretend that this journey had never happened—and that took a lot of the emotion out of the whole thing. It was a struggle to keep this wonderful secret to myself. Who doesn’t want to tell the world they’re in love? Even more, when they’re engaged? I sure did. But instead I was sneaking outside to talk to Jason on the phone while I was at work, for fear that someone would catch on to who was on the other end of the line. It was hard.

  Now, keep in mind, this is all my side of the story, and it’s how I felt things happened. I had noticed that Jason seemed to be the first one to pull back from the relationship. I didn’t feel like he was as excited to talk to me on the phone as he had been. He didn’t respond to as many of my text messages or emails as he once had. He just didn’t seem to be as interested in me as he had been only a few weeks before.

  So, still trying to keep the relationship alive, I sent Hanukkah presents to Jason’s son, hoping that the gesture would make us feel like a family. Even though we were two thousand miles apart, I wanted to show that I was thinking about him and his family. The strange thing was, I didn’t even get a verbal thank you or just a quick mention that he had received them, let alone any indication that his son had liked them. This really upset me because I had put a lot of thought into trying to figure out what he would really like. It reminded me of a relationship pattern I was used to: Put effort in. Get nothing back.

  Unfortunately, we were not strong enough as a couple for me to talk to Jason about what I was feeling. And so, again, I didn’t say anything.

  Hello, old cycle.

  Even though my feelings were hurt, I wasn’t giving up. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why Jason and I weren’t working. Maybe it was the age difference, or maybe it was just that we were at different places in our lives. He’d been married. He’d been divorced. He’s got a kid. He lives in Seattle. We don’t get to see each other. We still haven’t gotten to be a real couple yet. We went from an on-camera relationship to living in different states.

  I tried to evaluate all the possible explanations for what was wrong, and, ultimately, I think we just didn’t mesh. Our personalities and interests were completely different. I’m not sure we were looking for the same things in our lives.

  The problem was that we hadn’t known how different we were before we got engaged. And I was still very serious about trying to make our engagement work. I even sat down and made a list, more than once, that read, “What do I love about him?”

  The only thing I could think to write down was that he was a good dad. And he was a good dad, but that wasn’t enough reason to be in love with somebody. I truly believe that when there’s no connection, it can’t be forced. But, even though all signs were pointing toward disaster, I was still holding on to Jason.

  I had tried to return to some kind of a normal routine in Dallas. But it was difficult, because my mind was so consumed. I moved into a new apartment with another one of my girlfriends. I returned to my cube at the liquor distribution company. I definitely wasn’t a much better employee than I had been when my heart was broken over Tye.

  Only this time, I had two people to think about at work. I was back to thinking about Tye again, just because of his constant attempts to get in touch with me. And now I was thinking about Jason, too. My office phone would ring, and it would be Jason; we often had our daily phone calls while I was at work. A song would come on the radio, and it would remind me of Tye because it was one we had listened to together.

  Boy, this back-to-reality thing was harder than I thought.

  After Jason and I had been home for a few weeks, and around the time that our communication was really starting to fall off, The Bachelor press tour started. This meant that Jason was doing the talk-show circuit to promote the first episode, which was scheduled to air on January 5, 2009. Suddenly he had something to talk about, and that’s all he would talk to me about. It was slightly irritating, considering that we’d had nothing to talk about before the press tour. Now I just oohed and aahed over the people he was going to meet and the things he was going to do. I wasn’t impressed by things like that, and I didn’t think he was either, from what he’d told me. But it seemed like he was.

  I didn’t want to hear about how he had been on Ellen. And how he was going to do Jimmy Kimmel next, and go out on the town with a bunch of producers afterward. I wanted something deeper than that in terms of the communication I was having with my future husband. I suddenly felt (and no disrespect to Jason here, but it’s how I felt at the time) that the press and celebrity were more important to him than I was.

  I got it. In that moment, he was a big deal. He had a good three weeks of promotion, during which the whole world seemed to be all about him. He was everywhere. He was on magazine covers. He was on talk shows. He was all over the Internet.

  All of this might have been fine, or at least easier for me to handle, if he had mixed in any questions about what was going on with me. Or how I was dealing with all of the press. Of course, our engagement was still a secret. And so, in all of these interviews that he was giving, he was talking about how great the other girls were, and how difficult it had been to decide at the end. I knew that, contractually, he was not allowed to say anything other than that. And that he was probably just trying to get people excited for the show. But he had no empathy for what it was like for me to have to hear all of that come out of his mouth. Especially when he talked, during interviews, about that final day, and how the decision was just absolutely grueling for him to make.

  Awesome. Just what I want to hear from my fiancé. He was torn over the decision between marrying me or someone else five minutes before he put a ring on my finger.

  The fact that I had no one (no friends, and no Jason) to talk to about all of my emotions during this time made me feel completely overwhelmed. How was I supposed to deal with all of that by myself? Not to mention what was in the background, but still very much present, during all of this: Tye.

  Jason’s interests had definitely turned from the two of us, and our relationship, to himself and his fame. At least, that’s how I felt. I found myself wondering, Is he the person who I want to be with?

  As much as I had fallen in love with him and felt committed to making it work because I had accepted his proposal, I knew that I didn’t want to be with someone who was consumed by the entertainment world. Maybe that was just his way of taking the focus away from our cracked relationship—if he consumed himself with his new world, he wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that things between us were anything but perfect—but it still hurt me a great deal to watch him do it.

  Because I was trying to be supportive and save our relationship, I felt like I had to act super-interested in all of the talk-show and magazine stuff that he was telling me about. Meanwhile, the rest of our conversations had ground to a halt. I still didn’t really even know wh
at he did for a living. Insurance, something—I think?

  I had no idea about even the basics of his real day-to-day life beyond The Bachelor. We had never talked about our relationship and what was going to happen now that the show was over. We never talked about when we were getting married, and if I was moving to Seattle. It got to the point where, if I saw he was calling, I didn’t necessarily want to pick up my phone. (That’s a terrible way to feel toward your supposed fiancé, don’t you think?!)

  My day was over earlier than his because of the time difference between Dallas and Seattle, and so I’d sit there with my phone in my hand, take a deep breath, and basically force myself to call him. When I did, I was back to planning out things to say to him again, just so we’d have something to talk about, while I kept my fingers crossed that his voicemail would pick up. I almost felt like I had to talk to him on the phone because, heck, I was engaged to him. But more and more it felt like I was forcing myself to have a relationship with a stranger. Obviously, those were all huge red flags that something was seriously wrong, and I had no idea what to do about it. But I really thought that once the show was done airing, and we could really be together, that we’d be all right again.

  The week before Christmas, after I’d been home from the show for about three weeks, my friend Jen and I went to see the Dallas Mavericks basketball team play a home game. It was a Wednesday night, so there weren’t that many people out. And we shouldn’t really have gone out afterward, since we had work the next day, but we didn’t feel like going straight home. We chose this little dive bar near the American Airlines Center to grab a late-night bite. When we walked in, there were maybe ten people in the room, and one of them happened to be Tye, who was out with his friends. This was the first time I had seen him since our “final conversation.”

  Not that long before this moment, my heart would have leapt into my throat if I saw him. I would have analyzed his every word and look for any sign of interest or affection. But I was a new woman now. I was engaged, and even though Jason and I hadn’t seen each other since the show ended, and were talking less and less, I was still committed to making our relationship work. I had really moved on.