Leslie Fhima has revealed if she has any regrets from her time on The Golden Bachelor and from her heated After the Final Rose exchange with Gerry Turner.
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Leslie had fallen madly in love with Gerry only to be brutally rebuffed in the final days of filming the show, but according to the mother and grandmother, she wouldn't change anything about her experience.
"I don't really regret anything because I'm so glad I did it," Leslie said during a recent episode of the "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast, which is co-hosted by Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt.
"I made lifelong friends with the girls, so I don't regret a single minute of it. If I would've done anything different, I don't [think I would have], because I was me. And doing something different wouldn't have been me."
The 64-year-old fitness instructor from Minneapolis, MN, elaborated, "So I don't [have regrets]."
During her initial breakup with Gerry in her hotel room in Costa Rica, Leslie also said she left it all on the table and had nothing else to add.
Leslie, for example, accused Gerry of lying to her in the Fantasy Suite because he had told her that he loved her and allegedly convinced her that she was The One for him and they were going to be together.
Leslie left Fantasy Suites feeling "100 percent certain" that she was going to be Gerry's winner, and her confidence made Gerry's brutal pre-Rose Ceremony dumping even more painful.
Leslie was not only devastated about Gerry not choosing her, but she was also embarrassed to have their breakup air on television for the whole world to see. She let Gerry know that he had crushed her spirit and broken her heart.
"I think I said what I needed to say to him [at that point]," Leslie shared.
"I wasn't going to grovel. Obviously I was just blindsided. I said what I wanted to say; I just really wanted to get out of there at that point and be done. Looking back, I don't have any regrets on how that went."
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While Leslie claimed she has no regrets, she did admit to Joe and Serena that she misspoke when expressing her feelings to Gerry on After the Final Rose.
"I feel like, Gerry, he switched. The only thing I would've like to... or I should have said is, 'I THOUGHT you were a man of integrity,' instead of, 'You are a man of integrity,'" Leslie said on "Bachelor Happy Hour."
She continued, "Because at the end of the day, he didn't really have the integrity that I thought he had."
Leslie, a huge fan and viewer of The Bachelor franchise since conception, acknowledged, "I know what I signed up for and I know that someone has to go. I just didn't expect it to be so hard."
When asked if she respects Gerry now that their relationship is over and done with, Leslie replied, "I mean, Gerry did what he did, it's his journey. Do I respect him? I just wish he would've done it different."
Leslie admitted of their brutal breakup, "I don't respect what he did."
Leslie said she "started" losing respect for Gerry due to the way he hurt his third-place finisher Faith Martin and then it got "a little more" worse for herself considering everything she had to go through in Costa Rica.
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Leslie told Serena and Joe that their question about respecting Gerry was such a hard one to answer.
"Because I want to say I do [respect him], but it's hard. Yeah, he hurt me," Leslie said.
Gerry definitely hurt Leslie, but she sought comfort in her supportive family and now seems ready to move on with her life and look for Mr. Right.
Gerry and Theresa, meanwhile, are still happily engaged, and they're planning a January 4, 2024 televised wedding on ABC. They also intend to move to South Carolina together in the near future.
But Gerry has come under fire for allegedly having -- and not being honest on the show or in the press about -- a live-in girlfriend of nearly three years prior to applying for The Golden Bachelor.
Having had a three-year, live-in ex-girlfriend would contradict Gerry's heart-wrenching The Golden Bachelor storyline about being a grieving widower who had little dating experience prior to the show because he was married for 43 years to Toni, who died from a bacterial infection in July 2017.
Gerry has since addressed the allegations against him, and Theresa also broke her silence on the unflattering report about Gerry's alleged secret past.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
