My Reality

by Melissa Rycroft

  “Well, I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think you want me because you can’t have me right now. And that’s not fair. You took me for granted. Do you know how much I did for you? And how much of my time I spent making you crap and buying you dinner? And you didn’t even seem to notice it until I was gone.”

  It was like the night we broke up, and once I got started, I couldn’t stop. “You probably noticed I was gone only because you didn’t have Starbucks in the morning,” I said. “Or you had to go a football season without having cookies there to eat. I mean, that’s the only way you knew I was around, isn’t it?”

  Tye didn’t even try to defend himself. He was a mess. He just looked miserable.

  “I am making myself sick thinking about you,” he said. “I have never felt this way about anyone before. I love you so much. I’ve never said that to any girl, other than my sister and my mom.”

  He was crying so hard, he was literally going through tissues by the second.

  “I can’t go out anymore,” he said. “At night, my friends go out, and I literally sit at home by myself. I can’t do anything. I can’t function. I’m miserable.”

  I did start to feel bad then. I knew that feeling Tye was describing, and I wouldn’t have wished it upon my worst enemy. It was heartbreaking. But, I’ll be honest, there was also a part of me that was glad that he was finally feeling an ounce of what I had felt for a year and a half.

  Good, I’m glad you feel like that because you take that times a million, times six months, and that’s exactly what I felt like.

  But I didn’t want him to hurt. I don’t think any of us ever wants anybody we love to hurt. He had never felt like that before. He had never had something that he wanted be unreachable. He had never had a girl tell him no. And I was glad that he finally knew what heartbreak felt like. Maybe this would make him more sympathetic and not just take the next girl who came along for granted.

  “I love you,” he said. “I know I took you for granted. And it kills me to see how much I’ve hurt you. And I can’t live without you.”

  I sat in his passenger seat, trying to absorb everything that he was saying to me. As much as I loved hearing what he said, I couldn’t do anything about it now. I was in another place and couldn’t disrespect my new relationship by responding to him.

  “Tye, my loyalty’s not with you anymore,” I said. “You’re not my priority anymore.”

  He looked like I had just punched him in the face, and it broke a piece of my heart. As much, and as badly, as he had hurt me, I hated hurting him. I heard once that true love is when just the thought of hurting the person you love hurts you more. Three years later, I can now see why it bothered me so much to watch him hurt over me, but at the time, I was too confused to understand everything I was feeling.

  Here I was, turning down the love of my life while defending a guy who I wasn’t even technically really involved with anymore. But I had put so much into trying to make it work with Jason that I couldn’t just give up like that. And I couldn’t just trust Tye, either. Not after everything he had done—and failed to do.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing come out of Tye’s mouth, but I couldn’t take it, either. We left things unfinished that night. There was no closure to the conversation. But I knew I needed to get out. Ironically, I just needed to talk to Jason about what was happening. So I called him on my way home—and he never answered. The one person’s voice that I needed to hear right then, and he didn’t pick up.

  The next day while I was at work, Tye sent me a huge email. I almost couldn’t deal with it on top of everything else. I had one relationship completely crumbling from beneath me. I felt like I had no control over it, and I was starting to wonder if I wanted control over it, or even any part of it. And then, I had this guy—the guy—coming back, making more of an effort in five days than I had ever seen him make in the years that I had known him.

  In his email, Tye described how he had reevaluated his life and recommitted himself to his faith in order to start living a better life and be a better man. He took responsibility for all of the ways he had hurt and disappointed me in the past. He reiterated how much he loved me and wanted to be with me. And he resolved to win me over in the future.

  “I am honoring your request for time to think about and deal with things. I will be waiting for you. I want you. I need you. And I love you. Also, I am copying my family on this email. I want them to know how I feel as well. I hope this is okay, but for the first time in a long time, I am actually proud of a decision that I am making.”

  I looked at the cc: line to see that his whole family actually was copied on the email. Wow. He was serious.

  Though the words and the sentiment were beautiful, given everything I was going through, it just felt like more pressure. So I wrote back and basically said, “You have to respect the situation that I’m in. I know we’re not talking about it, and I know we’re not able to be open about it, but you have to respect that I’m in another relationship. And I’m really trying to make it work. It may not work, and I don’t think it’s going to work. But you have to at least give me that chance to sort these feelings out on my own. I don’t want you to sway me. I don’t want you sitting in front of me telling me something that’s going to make me think differently about the situation. If you cannot be my friend, if you cannot talk to me like a friend, you cannot talk to me right now. From here on out, until I tell you otherwise, our relationship is strictly platonic. I just need some time. You need to respect my time right now.”

  I did need time. I was in a hot mess of an emotional state. I really was. I was trying to figure out this crazy point in my life, but all I had were questions without answers: Why was I put in this situation? How did it get this far with Jason? I kept going over and over it in my mind, and I didn’t have any idea how to make sense of it all. It was like I was at war with myself. I kept battling myself over what I knew rather than what I felt. I wanted to do what was right. But I didn’t know how, or even what that was.

  I was in this pickle of a situation, and it just wasn’t working. But I felt like I had to make it work, even if I had lost sight of why. I had a ring. I’d made this commitment. Clearly, I had thought I was in love with Jason. Maybe I still was. And I was just going through withdrawal, and I just needed to see him again to make things right.

  Or maybe I had just made the biggest mistake of my entire life. And was about to go through the most embarrassing experience of my entire life. Everyone I knew had seen me come home so blissed out, and everybody in America was about to see me being so happy and in love on the show. But things were falling apart, and it looked like Jason and I could very well end up being a statistic.

  On the other hand, for some reason that I still couldn’t understand, I now had this other person, Tye, who was like this fly right in front of my face that just wouldn’t go away, even when I shooed it. And I was avidly trying to shoo it away.

  I had asked Tye to respect the situation I was in. And he did. He didn’t call me or text me after he got my email. Soon after that, though, I was at work one morning when the receptionist called me to her desk, giddy with excitement. When I walked up, there was a flower arrangement sitting there. I looked at the beautiful colors and drew a blank. I really didn’t have any idea who could have sent me flowers. I knew it could have been one of two people, but neither of them seemed likely. Tye had never, ever sent me flowers during the eighteen months we had dated. And Jason and I were not on very good terms at this point. I thought that, maybe, he had sent me flowers to try to make up for everything. But I kind of doubted that he would do that, and so I really had no idea.

  I opened up the card, and all it said was “Stricktly Platonic.”

  Tye’s last name is Strickland. I saw the spelling of Stricktly and figured out that they were from Tye. Very clever, Strickland.

  I couldn’t believe it. These were the very first flowers he had ever sent me. They sat in my cube for days, and all the
while, I couldn’t decide what to say to Tye about them. And so I became the kind of person I had always been mad at Tye for being when we first dated. I didn’t contact him. I didn’t thank him. That’s so not me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything because I had no idea what was happening with Jason or how I felt about it. But I kept the flowers and dried them out—and I still have them to this day.

  I wasn’t ready to let Tye back in. Meanwhile, Jason and I were barely talking anymore. We’d never had a fight or a disagreement. It had just sort of faded away. And to be honest, I was irritated that he hadn’t made more of an effort to make this relationship work. I felt like I had actually tried, and he seemed to have given up.

  On top of that, I had actually heard something disturbing about Jason from one of the girlfriends I had stayed in touch with since The Bachelor. She told me that Molly had called her and told her that she and Jason were talking.

  I called Jason immediately to see if it was true. “I have to ask you something,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “I heard from one of the other girls that you and Molly have been talking,” I said.

  “No, we haven’t,” he replied. “I called her a while ago to check on her and make sure that she was okay. But that’s it.”

  I don’t know that I entirely believed him, but maybe I was at the point where I didn’t care enough to push for the truth, even if I couldn’t admit it to myself yet. It kind of got to the point where I almost didn’t want to talk to him because I didn’t have anything to say. And I’m sure he didn’t have anything to say to me, either. Sometimes when we did talk, he would let his son, Ty, get on the phone with me. He’s such a sweet kid, and I really enjoyed that, especially since it had gotten so awkward between Jason and I. But looking back, I wish Jason hadn’t done this, because I feel like it could have only been confusing for Ty. As time went on, it was increasingly hard for me to imagine the three of us ever being the family I had once hoped we would be.

  I finally got frustrated with Jason, maybe because the more Tye persisted, the more the possibility of a relationship with my ex started to look better and better. And the differences between Jason and I were blaringly obvious at this point.

  I’m not going to get too specific on all the details of the demise of our relationship, but I do remember at one point distinctly asking if his feelings had changed. And if he was thinking about getting in touch with Molly. And he said no.

  But I didn’t really believe him. We never talked about the wedding. We never talked about anything in the future, other than me potentially moving to Seattle, and even that had been mentioned maybe only one or two times right in the beginning. We didn’t say “I love you” on the phone. We didn’t call each other “babe” or any of the sweet little terms of endearment we’d had for each other. It was literally like two friends talking on the phone. And not even good friends. But neither of us said anything about it. And neither of us asked if we should call it quits.

  We just stopped talking altogether.

  ten

  •

  AFTER THE FINAL ROSE

  In the middle of all this confusion in my personal life, the thirteenth season of The Bachelor began airing. I hadn’t been able to tell anyone about the turmoil I had been going through since I got back to Dallas. By the time the show was about to air, ABC had already announced the cast of The Bachelor Season 13. So everyone soon found out the answer to where I had been for the last several months. My name, picture, and bio were plastered all over The Bachelor website. And all around me, people wanted to know everything about what happened on the show. Nothing had aired yet, and no one had any clue what actually did happen. Slightly overwhelming. . .

  I had decided that I didn’t want to watch the show. Jason and I were still “together” (maybe not on the best of terms, but still technically together), and I didn’t want to have to see him with all of the other girls on the show. I knew I would be exposed to things I hadn’t seen while I was there: the dates he went on, the kisses he had shared with the other girls, the feelings he developed for some of the girls. And I just didn’t want to see it.

  But of course, my friends proposed that we have Bachelor-watching parties. I mean, it sounds like a great idea. I would love to watch one of my friends on TV, but this felt weird. I suddenly realized, they were all going to watch me try and date. . . and honestly, that’s a little awkward.

  “Why wouldn’t you want to watch it?” they asked. “We thought this was going to be a good thing. You seemed so happy when you came home!”

  I didn’t feel like having to explain why I was so against it, so I gave in and compromised. I decided I’d just watch the first episode. Nothing could have happened in the first episode that would upset me, right? Right.

  When my girlfriends saw me on TV, they cheered and laughed. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more pumped up about the experience. I felt so uncomfortable watching myself. I was suddenly seeing things I’d never seen before.

  Hmmm . . . I walk kinda funny. . .

  I didn’t know my voice was quite that annoying. . . .

  I cringed watching myself. And knowing what was going to happen, both on the show and in its aftermath, made watching the show even worse. Not only that, but when I saw myself on the show, it felt like I was watching some other girl who wasn’t me. I looked so young and naïve. All right folks, I get that it had happened only four months earlier . . . but I just looked like a lost little girl to me. Only a handful of people knew what I was going through right before The Bachelor started taping, and although I think I hid it from most people, looking back . . . I could see that lost girl.

  During the show’s airing was a really hard time for me. I was in this weird limbo, where Jason and I weren’t really talking anymore, and Tye and I weren’t really talking, either. And so, everything in my life felt shaky and uncertain. Especially me. Why did everything seem to be so difficult? The emotional cycle just would not end.

  I can’t even accurately describe the emotional stress that I was going through at the time the show was actually airing. Let’s recap: I had been madly in love with Tye in Dallas; gotten my heart completely shattered by Tye; then he kind of decided he wanted me back . . . but only occasionally; I went on The Bachelor journey looking for a new direction for my life; I met Jason and fell for him; I got engaged to him; Tye decided that he wanted me back, permanently, but I was finally in a place where I was angry at him and didn’t want to talk to him; my relationship with Jason was a struggle; I was in limbo with my relationship to both Tye and Jason. And oh yeah, add the fact that I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was dealing with, and that’s just about the perfect recipe for an emotional disaster.

  Little did I know, that the next event that took place in my life would be the most life-changing incident ever. We had finished filming The Bachelor for about three months, and now it was time to film the “After the Final Rose” special. I was dreading having to face that situation. A huge part of me was humiliated that I had gotten so wrapped up in the process, and another part of me was humiliated that we were going to have to admit that we were not as happy and in love as we looked when we got engaged.

  Are we supposed to talk about how great things were between us? Or are we supposed to be honest and say that things had become very awkward? Would we decide to make it work? Or would we decide to part ways?

  It’s really sad that Jason and I weren’t even really talking by this point. We had a few phone conversations about filming the “After” special, but nothing really substantial. I definitely felt uncomfortable. He and I were long past pretending that we were so in love and happy, or even still engaged. We both knew that we weren’t really together, and I didn’t expect that we were going to pretend that we were a couple for the cameras. But there had been no official end, either. Neither one of us had actually suggested that we should just cut the ties and make a public announcement, or at least start telling anybody who asked us tha
t we weren’t together anymore. So I had no idea what our actual status was.

  The night before I flew to Los Angeles to tape “After the Final Rose,” Tye invited me over for dinner. When I got to his condo, it was clear that he had planned a date-type evening for us. It was almost an exact repeat of the night we had together, right before I left for The Bachelor. Again, he had even gotten takeout from my favorite restaurant, Sushi Zushi. But he had put a lot more thought into making this night special than he had ever done before. When I saw that he had my favorite rolls, I looked at him and thought, I didn’t even know you knew what my favorite stuff was.

  We went upstairs to the roof and had a nice conversation while we ate. It wasn’t exactly romantic, which I think was better for me, given everything else I had going on at the time. Really, Tye and I were just enjoying the feeling of reconnecting as we talked. And there was a lot to catch up on. I’d missed two months of life in Dallas while I was on The Bachelor, and so we went over everything he and his buddies had been up to, and his family, and my family. In some ways, the conversation was pretty on the surface. But it was always more than that with us. And it was such a relief to talk so easily after all of the awkwardness during my phone calls with Jason. Tye and I never ran out of stuff to say. It was always one thing after another with us, with lots of laughing and jokes. I felt like I had my buddy back, but better.

  I was impressed by how much care Tye had put into the night. And I could tell that he was listening to me and taking note of things I said in a way that he never had done before. At the end of dinner, he didn’t want me to go home. Things definitely felt different than they had before. The power had shifted, and I wasn’t this scared little girl begging for his affection anymore. He wanted me there. That night, he became my confidant. Someone I could finally talk to about everything I had been going through and feeling. It sounds odd that the person I ended up confiding in was someone I had once been so in love with, but it just felt so natural and easy to talk to him. That’s when I decided to start letting him in on what was going on with The Bachelor.