Lauren Burnham says watching her The Bachelor season back with Arie Luyendyk Jr. "stung" because she believes the couple was portrayed very differently on the show from how they are in real life.
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"It kind of stung a little bit watching it back," Lauren, 29, told Us Weekly in a video interview, "so it is nice for people to see that's not really who we are [on social media and my YouTube channel]."
On Arie's The Bachelor season, his connection with Lauren didn't appear to be an emotional or particularly deep one.
Many fans also harshly criticized Lauren as being a little dull and shallow, and people noticed Arie always acted anxious and uncomfortable around the bachelorette.
"A lot of people have commented that on our YouTube videos -- and sometimes even in my DMs on Instagram -- they're like, 'Oh, I actually thought you were this way and now I'm seeing your personality so much more. And I realize you're not like that all, so I'm so sorry for ever judging you before,'" Lauren explained.
"And I think Arie gets that even more than I do because he was clearly like, you know, the star of the show and you saw a lot more of him."
She clarified, "But he's just not the guy that he was really portrayed as on the show all the time."
In a February 2018 interview with Glamour, Arie revealed of his time with Lauren on the show, "I think on the dates you're not seeing a lot of our personality, so it's hard because you're not seeing our entire relationship."
He confessed at the time, however, Lauren is "hard to read" and she "had trouble opening up in front of the camera and being herself."
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Arie acknowledged his nerves also probably "got the best" of him with Lauren because their complicated dynamic challenged him to chase her.
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"I was always a little bit more shy or nervous around her just because I felt my feelings were further along than hers, which is an awkward position to be in as the Bachelor," Arie told the magazine.
"You have all these relationships where people are so ready to fall, and then you have some people who you're trying to read and see where they're at. For me, it was a little anxiety and also questioning what I could and couldn't say in that moment."
Arie confirmed he and Lauren are actually "very alike" in their "perception on things, mannerisms" and more.
For Lauren, she told Us that The Bachelor is definitely in her rearview mirror now and she and Arie have moved on from all that drama, including the ending of his season when Arie actually proposed marriage to Becca Kufrin and then dumped her for Lauren a couple of months after the show filmed.
"It honestly feels like it was in a different lifetime for me," said Lauren, who accepted Arie's marriage proposal on The Bachelor: After the Final Rose in March 2018.
"It's so far in the past and not integrated with my normal life now that it just doesn't even feel real to me anymore."
Lauren said she and Arie were able to make things work after the show because they just focused on themselves and their future together.
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Arie and Lauren tied the knot at Haiku Mill in Maui, Hawaii in January 2019 and then welcomed their baby girl Alessi on May 29, 2019.
"For anyone who kind of followed along with us, you'll realize we started our lives outside of the show pretty quickly," Lauren shared.
"We started planning our wedding right after we got engaged on the show and then we got pregnant with Alessi right away. So yeah, I mean, we began our lives post-show very quickly."
Lauren said the key to a successful relationship is taking "care of yourself and your relationship and your own mental health."
And she continued, "For me, I love doing things with Arie. Like, we love to do activities outside and we love to travel when we're not in a pandemic. I think all of those things really helped us -- and to just focus on that and not think about what was going on all around us."
Arie and Lauren announced Lauren is pregnant with twins in December 2020, not long after Lauren suffered a miscarriage in May of last year.
The couple announced in January 2021 they will be welcoming another daughter as well as a son this June, and in the meantime, the pair is preparing to move into a house they've purchased and are remodeling in Hawaii.
"We are so busy," Lauren noted, adding that she and Arie haven't really been keeping up with The Bachelor franchise over the last few seasons.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
