Melissa Rycroft's former love triangle with Jason Mesnick and his now-wife Molly Malaney is making headlines again because Mesnick claims in his new book he dumped her before revealing his feelings for Malaney on After the Final Rose.
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Rycroft -- who was engaged to the Season 13 The Bachelor star when he famously dumped her for the runner-up, Malaney, live on After the Final Rose -- decided to open up old wounds during an appearance on the Reality Life With Kate Casey podcast.
Rycroft revealed that despite feeling tension between herself and Mesnick prior to the 2009 TV special, she was still very much in a relationship and engaged in her mind.
"To say that we went into that After the Final Rose in an absolutely perfect place is a lie," Rycroft said. "[But] had we completely severed ties and broken up? No!"
Mesnick, now married seven years to Malaney with a daughter nearly four-years-old, claimed the total opposite.
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In an excerpt from Mesnick's upcoming book obtained by the Huffington Post, the former Bachelor wrote, "[Melissa and I] had broken up before all that [on After the Final Rose], but the only thing [producers] had asked me not to do was not to mention anything about Molly. And so I... never told Melissa about my feelings about Molly... I went against ever moral, every bone, everything in my body."
Prior to their split on national television, Rycroft had no idea Malaney was the reason Mesnick, 40, had been distancing himself and acting cold.
Rycroft recalled a time when she had sent Mesnick's son from a previous relationship, Ty, some Hanukkah presents after their The Bachelor season wrapped.
"He never called to say thank you, he never said he got them, he never said he appreciated them," Rycroft, 33, revealed. "And I remember going, 'Why am I trying?' I feel like he gave up, and now, looking back, he had given up. He had moved on, but I didn't know that."
Rycroft said on the podcast she assumed time on After the Final Rose would be used for working things out with Mesnick and getting back on the same page, but boy she was wrong.
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"I wasn't expecting him to be like, 'Oh, yeah, peace out. I have feelings for Molly, I've been talking to her and I've been seeing her,'" Rycroft disclosed.
"That was when I was humiliated. You could have at least warned a chick before he walked out here. We talked minutes before I went out on that stage, and he never said anything."
Similar to Mesnick, Rycroft -- who won Season 15 of Dancing with the Stars -- is also happily married now. She and her husband Tye Strickland have three kids together.
"[Jason and I] have both moved on, and there is no other place in my life that I would rather be other than where I am," she noted.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski