Are You My First? star Rachael Staudt has claimed Michael Fractor admitted to her right after filming that he had lied about being a virgin the whole time.
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Rachael, a 30-year-old cocktail waitress from Tampa, FL, and Michael, a 26-year-old stand-up comedian from Austin, TX, were the couple most viewers were rooting for once they decided to stay together and continue dating at the end of Are You My First?'s finale episode on Hulu.
But once filming ended, the cast had a couple of days left in Costa Rica before they were scheduled to fly home, and Rachael said she and Michael shared a hotel room for those two days.
"I definitely felt different about him than I have with anybody else," Rachael said during a recent appearance on the "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe" podcast.
(Kaitlyn also co-hosted Are You My First? alongside fellow Bachelor Nation alum Colton Underwood).
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"Day 1 [post-filming] was great, and then we were in our room," Rachael continued.
"I was on the bed, and ugh, this is weird. I just feel like I've been holding a secret in. It's so hard because you want to protect the relationship you had, but at the same time, it's like, 'Why am I protecting this person?'"
Rachael said the other girls from the show were the only people who knew her big "secret" at this point.
"But I still haven't said it [publicly]. I get really torn with what to keep secret and private, but I want to tell my truth too. So I guess I will rip the Band-Aid off," she teased.
"So we were sitting in bed and everything was fine. He went to the bathroom to shower or something, and he came back and was like, 'I have something to tell you.' My heart sank, because what else could he tell me other than the fact that he's not a virgin?" Rachael recalled.
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"And so I said, 'You're not a virgin are you?' And he said, 'No.'"
Kaitlyn sounded completely shocked and asked, "He told you?!"
"Straight up," Rachael replied. "And I instantly started crying. You replay everything in your mind, and it was just like, 'Do I know you?! Do I even know you?'"
Kaitlyn admitted her fear going into Are You My First? was the possibility some people might lie about their sexual history and ruin a good relationship or the show's credibility.
"For me, too, it's not even the fact that he's not a virgin, because I've gone my whole life thinking I won't be with a virgin. It's the fact that he lied about it to everybody!" Rachael explained.
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Kaitlyn questioned Michael's intentions for going on the show to begin with, and then Rachael muttered, "It gets worse."
According to Rachael, she asked Michael -- who had presented himself as a virgin on a different show, Twentysomethings: Austin, on Netflix in 2021 -- if producers had recruited him to be on Are You My First? and he simply didn't want to turn down a great opportunity.
"No, he applied. So he voluntarily did this," Rachael alleged. "And then I found out that he also lied on his other show... and he was not a virgin then either."
Kaitlyn asked why being a virgin was "a fun lie" for Michael, and Rachael explained how it's a comedy bit for him.
"And to me, this was my real life. These were my real feelings," Rachael complained. "I was devastated. I spent all night crying. I couldn't look at him; I didn't want to touch him."
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Kaitlyn acknowledged that she had heard a rumor online Michael wasn't a virgin, which prompted Rachael to say, "I don't think people have the confirmation [until now]."
Rachael also alleged that her first real kiss with Michael on the show was also "a bit" for him and wasn't as sincere as it looked on TV.
"I feel like [I'm] the butt of the joke. Like I feel like he was playing in our faces," Rachael lamented.
She added, "I was like, 'All my fears, you just confirmed.' I was like, 'I finally thought I had the good guy.' You really think you're giving the good guy the chance, and then this happens?!"
When asked if Michael seemed remorseful, Rachael said he apologized and felt very guilty about his lies.
According to Rachael, Michael had told her that he didn't want to drop this bombshell on her during filming because he knew she'd cry on-camera and probably feel humiliated.
"He didn't think it would come out after?" Kaitlyn asked.
"Maybe he doesn't care," Rachael replied.
"Oh! That really makes me feel icky... That is disgusting behavior. I am so mad," Kaitlyn said.
"And so I was processing that the whole night," Rachael continued, adding how she was totally devastated.
"I cried. I didn't want to sleep next to him, but I did. I trusted him more than I ever trusted any guy and I felt safe with him -- and that was a lot of work for me."
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Despite feeling crushed, Rachael said she didn't want to run from this relationship like she's done in the past and so, after a little separation from Michael in Costa Rica, she gave him a second chance.
"Those feelings don't just go away. I thought, 'Maybe he's just a 26-year-old dumb boy who didn't think this through,'" Rachael recalled.
After Michael allegedly insisted he was all in, Rachael decided not to end their romance.
"[We] talked to the therapist, and he said how sorry he was and how bad he felt the whole time and how badly he wanted to tell me -- but he just couldn't... And I was like, 'Okay, I'll try to work through this.' It was very big of me, and very stupid of me," she admitted.
Rachael told Kaitlyn it was a "stupid" decision because once they returned home to different states and began dating long distance, he allegedly put no effort into communicating or visiting each other.
Rachael said she and Michael broke up only six days after they left Costa Rica.
"I got so played -- by 'the nice guy,'" she concluded.
Kaitlyn, admittedly feeling "disappointed and upset" by these claims, vented about how the cast members' virginity was sacred to them on the show and Michael "betrayed" everybody, including the producers and the cast.
"We obviously believed in this show," Kaitlyn said.