God Bless This Mess(52)

I got angry.

I understood that somebody who was in love with me might be uncomfortable or upset if I had been intimate with somebody else. Of course that wouldn’t be the easiest thing to hear. It’s not fun to have to worry about that when you care for somebody, and if he had addressed it in that way, it might have resulted in more compassion and connection between us. But the way he worded it, it seemed more like he was concerned about how me being intimate with any of the other guys meant I wasn’t “on the same page” as him in terms of being a Christian. Like he wanted to shame me for “slipping up.” And that was not okay with me.

We weren’t in an exclusive relationship. By definition, because I was dating multiple men at the same time on this show, we weren’t all the way there in terms of commitment to each other. Trying to control me and/or my relationships with other men at that stage was over the line.

Plus, we had already been on a lousy date that day in Santorini. He kept making comments that hurt my feelings. (Like complaining about my breath after we’d both just eaten gyros. Trust me, his breath was bad, too!) I felt like he’d ruined my chance to enjoy that beautiful island, which was a place that was on my bucket list. And I had given him so many second chances already, while trying to figure out why he was the way he was. He was so full of pride, and competitiveness, and so full of aggression toward the other guys, and I had been so patient and understanding with him.

But I swear, when he said those things, it was like I was staring Brady in the face all over again. The person that I had foolishly loved with everything in my heart since I was in high school had told me that he couldn’t see me as his wife anymore because I’d had sex with somebody else. And now Luke was sitting in front of me, essentially saying the same narrow-minded, misogynistic, one-sided BS. And the overwhelming thought that came bubbling up like hot lava was, How dare you?

So I let him have it. “You’re not my husband,” I said.

“Can I cut you off for a second?” he asked.

“No,” I said flatly. “You’re questioning me and you’re judging me when I don’t feel like you have a right to at this point.”

“Guess what?” I said to him. “Sex might be a sin out of marriage. Pride is a sin, too. And I feel like this is a pride thing for you.”

He went on trying to explain himself, admitting that he did not have a right to ask me that and trying to speak over me, and I said, “I’m a grown woman and can make my own decisions, and I’m not strapped to a man right now!”

I would’ve expected someone who wanted to be my husband to be less judgmental. But Luke just kept trying to mansplain to me what it means to be “on the same page” about our faith, before he even knew for sure if I had slept with anyone else. It was so controlling, and so wrong of him to devalue everything about me because of that one thing.

So much of my time on the show was spent trying to understand Luke, the connection we had, and why it was just so dang hard. And in that moment, I saw for sure that the two of us didn’t have a future.

So I told him: “I feel like I have finally gotten clarity on you, and I do not want you to be my husband.”

Still, he would not give up. He wouldn’t get into the car to go home. So I finally just came out and told him. “I have had sex,” I said. “And Jesus still loves me.”

Even then he refused to get into the car, so I got even more explicit: I used the F-word to describe what Peter and I had done in the windmill, and I told Luke that after everything he’d said, “probably, you want to leave.”

I had no intention of breaking my promise to Peter. I wanted to keep what we’d done a secret—but my emotions and temper got the best of me. And it was all captured on camera.

In what felt like a final moment of personal judgment, Luke then asked, “Can I pray over you?”

“No,” I said.

And that was it. He got into the car with his head down, and I tried to move on with my life. As you know if you watched the show, he wouldn’t let it go. He came back and tried to convince me to give him yet another shot. At that point, his behavior reminded me of Tucker’s. And I was over it.

That was a big moment for me. He was acting just like these other people who had hurt me in my past, but instead of putting up with it, I ended it.

Standing up for myself with Luke felt like I had finally conquered something I couldn’t always do in my past relationships. I wouldn’t let him shame me. I wouldn’t let him turn it back on me. I wouldn’t let his “I love yous” and “I’m sorrys” pull me back in. I just wouldn’t.

It didn’t matter that we had similarities. It didn’t matter that I felt a little spark for him right from the start. Luke wasn’t right for me, and this time I put me first.

*

My final Fantasy Suite date before moving into the show’s finale was with Tyler—the man I expected to send home next.

Now, when it comes to physical attraction, if there was anybody on that show who grabbed my attention, it was him. He had the sort of bad-boy good looks that scared me and intrigued me at the same time. It wasn’t love at first sight, it was more like lust at first sight. And because I’d been down that road before (with Tucker, and with Brady), I knew he had the power to hurt me.

That made me nervous.

I knew from the beginning that I needed to be careful. I mean, we had chemistry. I loved making out with him. He made me blush. I didn’t understand why he liked me, and I feared I could really like him. But while he could charm, I kept wondering, What was his angle? I let him get close, but not too close. It seemed too risky. What if I fell for him and he was just in it for fame? Would he reject me?