Sam Guthy's Blog: The Bachelor Alum Arie Luyendyk Jr. STILL Just Can’t Figure Out Why He’s So Unpopular

There's a new, fascinating profile out in GQ of The Bachelor alum Arie Luyendyk Jr., and it's clear from reading the longform piece that the former racecar driver still can't quite figure out why people don't like him…

But he's on the right track when he points out that awful breakup from Becca Kufrin at the end of last season's final episode only to turn around and choose Lauren Burnham in her place!!!

GQ dives deep on Arie's new, private life in Scottsdale, Arizona alongside Lauren, and while the entire piece makes for a fascinating read (seriously, read it HERE), one part really stands out.

It centers on that brutal breakup scene with Becca last season, and how Arie — instead of taking blame for one of the most excruciating scenes in Bachelor history — seems more content to throw everyone else under the bus for it (below):

After talking to Lauren on New Years Day, he went to the Bachelor producers with his dilemma. That's when they pitched bringing in cameras to capture the breakup. If they filmed it, they told him, they could share that story with America, make sure that Bachelor Nation fully understood that he was being respectful and just following his heart. "'Then we can show you going back to Lauren, and people are going to rally behind you because you took this big risk and you did it for love,'" according to his telling. "'At the end of the day, people will just want to see you happy.'" In his head, it really was the only plausible option.

You've got to understand, he tells me, these people were my friends. He'd just spent months with the crew. He trusted them. But now? He feels "100 percent" betrayed.

Take the breakup with Becca, billed by the show as "the first completely unedited scene in reality television history." In the excruciating 40 minutes that aired, Becca repeatedly asks Arie to leave the house where—before he dumped her—they were supposed to be having a romantic getaway. Painfully, he sticks around, even knocking on the bathroom door as she cries to ask if she's okay. "OF COURSE SHE'S NOT OKAY!" I yelled at my TV when I watched the scene unfold. "YOU JUST BROKE OFF YOUR ENGAGEMENT!!!"

"It was completely edited," Arie says. "I was told to stay on that couch. I tried to leave, and then production was like, 'You need to go back inside. She's finally calming down. I feel like you owe it to her to have this conversation.' So then I went back in the house."

Really? You tried to leave and they wouldn't let you?

"Yeah. I left, came back. I stepped away from the couch, I went back to the couch." But they kept talking him into staying. "They cut out, obviously, production talking to me from 10 feet away," he says, and calling it unedited "was super unfair to me." (A spokesman for Warner Bros., which handles production for The Bachelor, declined to comment.)

Hmmm…

Seems like a tough sell that a guy who spends so much time on reality TV and knows *exactly* how the business goes would suddenly fall back on the old-and-used-up excuse that "oh, it was edited to portray me poorly," and "it's all the editor's fault."

Save it, pal.

Of course, when you see what Arie does at the end of the GQ interview, you'll further understand just why he's SO FUCKIN' UNPOPULAR!

Seriously, read the whole piece and find out the weird twist at the end of it HERE.

Thoughts, Perezcious readers?!

Let us know in the comments (below)…

[Image via ABC.]