The Bachelor alum Lauren Bushnell feels she was duped by Ben Higgins and The Bachelor producers on Season 20 of the show, which aired in early 2016.

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Lauren, who accepted a marriage proposal from Ben on The Bachelor before they split and called off their engagement over a year later in May 2017, can apparently relate to what Gabby Windey, Rachel Recchia and Susie Evans went through on Clayton Echard's season.

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Clayton fell in love with three women on The Bachelor's 26th edition, which just wrapped on ABC last week, and Lauren knows how that feels considering Ben had expressed his love to both his runner-up JoJo Fletcher and herself when Season 20 filmed.

However, Clayton actually warned Rachel and Gabby after Fantasy Suites that he had professed his love to three women whereas Lauren went into the Final Rose Ceremony blind and felt "tricked."

"I know specifically on my season, I was not given that same information before making a really big decision," Lauren, 32, told Us Weekly in a recent interview.

"And that was the problem that I had, very much so, coming off the show. I just felt, like, I just made a huge decision without information that I feel like I deserved to know."

The social-media influencer and fashion designer confessed, "I almost felt a little bit tricked, in a way, or everyone who had an opportunity to tell me, whether it was producers or the lead of the show, no one told me. So I felt pretty bummed out."

Lauren previously said how she felt a lot of stress after The Bachelor ended in 2016.

Not only did she choose to move away from her family in Los Angeles, CA, to join Ben in Denver, CO, but she was also dealing with headlines about Ben's love for JoJo and the pair quickly jumped into filming a The Bachelor spinoff, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, which aired on ABC's Freeform sister network.

Lauren acknowledged to Us that being engaged when her fiance had just been in love with another woman was "a really hard place" to start off a relationship in the real world.

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"[It's hard] to build a relationship on [that], when you've never really had a firm foundation to begin with," Lauren noted.

Lauren, however, didn't want to dive in too deep when talking about the ending of Clayton's journey to find love. (After Clayton dumped Gabby and Rachel, he fought to win Susie back. Susie dumped him at the Final Rose Ceremony but the couple began dating post-show and are still together now).

"I was feeling really upset with Clayton that he did that [to Susie]... I just felt so bad. [And after his Fantasy Suites] I was like, 'What are you doing?' Some things you need to just keep to yourself even though you feel like you're feeling them," Lauren explained of Clayton's multiple love declarations.

Lauren said "words have meaning" but Clayton ultimately "did the right thing in communicating" how he was in love with three women and had been intimate with both Gabby and Rachel.

"At least he was honest with people... although, he didn't do it very well because he kind of left out a big detail, that he loved someone 'the most,' and he probably should have included that aspect of it," Lauren explained.

After Clayton introduced Gabby and Rachel to his family, he told his loved ones -- but not his Final 2 women -- that he was "the most in love" with Susie. Clayton had also told Susie that he was the most in love with her before she left the show.

"But I felt like it was really respectful of him to tell the women, you know, the situation that he was in and the things that he had said and the things that he had done before they made a decision to continue on," Lauren said.

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Lauren, however, told the magazine that she "honestly" does not agree with Clayton's notion that real-world rules do not apply to The Bachelor world when a lead is looking for love amongst 30 women.

"I kind of disagree. Obviously it's a different setting in that you're dating everyone and they all know each other and they all know that you're dating them," Lauren began.

Lauren compared the situation to when she began dating her now-husband, country singer Chris Lane, 37.

"When Chris and I first started hanging out, we weren't exclusive right off the bat. We were just dating and having fun and I was talking to other people, and there was knowledge of that, but I still feel like I had a certain level of respect for Chris and I still feel like even though I would go on other dates with people, in the back of my mind, I was always thinking about Chris," Lauren shared.

"I couldn't say anything... [or] do anything that would disrespect Chris. Even though he would have never known, it was in my heart."

"He almost had my heart even though he didn't know it yet, so I still think that even though you're in that situation, I would assume you should still maintain a level of respect for the people you are dating and in a relationship with."

Lauren also noted how it takes "common sense" to know it would be very difficult to start a real relationship after such a messy journey on the show.

"It's probably going to be a really hard place to start [a relationship] out on Day 1, when you've told other people that you loved them or had been intimate... I feel like most real-life dating rules should still apply," Lauren said.

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Lauren married Chris in October 2019, and the pair now have a nine-month-old son Dutton together.

Now that Lauren is happy and settled down, she said she has "no regrets" when looking back at her time on The Bachelor -- "not at all," in fact.

"I feel like I want to give 25-year-old me a big hug, because I feel like, for never having been in that situation -- even though I made mistakes along the way and was in some really dark times and said and did things I wish I wouldn't have -- overall, I... actually handled that really well for [my] age and not knowing what [I] was getting into," Lauren said.

Lauren also conceded how the show has "opened a lot of doors" for herself, including how the former flight attendant from Oregon can now work from home and spend quality time with her son.

"All of these experiences, even my experience on The Bachelor, totally prepared me and led me to where I [am, and to become] the person that I was when I met my now husband," Lauren noted.

"So hopefully [Clayton] keeps that in mind and knows that all of the struggles and hard times and lowest of lows will only make you stronger."

Ben, who also appeared on The Bachelor Winter Games, is now married to Jessica Clarke, a woman he met outside of Bachelor Nation. They recently got a dog together and have discussed starting a family in the near future.

Ben recently said on his Bachelor Nation podcast that it's hard for Jessica to see the old footage of his season and he hopes producers aren't going to air something that could possibly "ruin" his marriage or damage their relationship.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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