'The Bachelor' bachelorette Clare Crawley: Quitting and leaving Juan Pablo Galavis definitely crossed my mind

The Bachelor bachelorette Clare Crawley, a 32-year-old hairstylist from Sacramento, CA, is still in the running for Juan Pablo Galavis' heart. 
 
Clare has been stealing Juan Pablo away for some alone time on group dates, rubbing the other girls the wrong way. However, Juan Pablo seems equally as interested in Clare, showering her in attention. After a steamy session in the pool of Juan Pablo's Vietnam suite, Clare asked the Bachelor to take a late-night swim with her in the ocean and he enthusiastically agreed.


But after he had some time to think, Juan Pablo regretted his actions and told Clare what they had done was wrong -- leading viewers and the media to speculate they had sex in the ocean. Clare was very hurt and taken aback by Juan Pablo's change of heart, and their conversation has yet to be finished as the pack is heading off to New Zealand. 

During a Thursday conference call with reporters, Clare talked to Reality TV World about her The Bachelor experience thus far. Click here to read what she had to say. Below is another portion of her interview. Click here for more. 

The promos and stuff made it look like you were going to be sent home after the ocean incident with Juan Pablo. Were you feeling that might happen? Was that part of the reason you cried?

Clare Crawley: I felt like if he wanted to send me home, whether or not I had a rose in my hand from the group date or not, he could've done so. 


And I allowed him that opportunity to say, "Hey, if this is something that bothers you that much or if this is that big of an issue to you, totally send me home. If it doesn't work for you or if you are so offended by what happened, please, like, I'm an adult.  I'm a grown woman.  It's okay.  It's not going to hurt me." 

"It's just saying that's not what works for you and that's not something that works for me.  Because, again, I would do the same thing with somebody that I'm falling in love with.  It's follow your heart.  It's feeling passionate.  It's allowing yourself to open up to living in the moment and I don't regret that.  And if that's why you want to send me home, send me home.  It's okay." 

But, like I said, you can see in the next episode, I just wanted clarity on that.  And he was at any time allowed to send me home.

I don't know if you've read some of the blogs but actually Juan Pablo has taken a lot of heat for what happened on last week's episode and people have said everything from, "He's a bad guy," to "He's anti-feminist."  So did the whole situation change your perspective of who he is as a person and is there anything you want to say about Juan Pablo?

Clare Crawley: I don't think I can speak really for how he explained things.  I'm not one that's personally into all the blogs and Twitter and all that.  I try but I'm -- it's just not my thing.  I'm usually the one that's not on my phone, not on my computer.  I'm out doing things and so I don't pay too much attention to it, but at the same time, I don't put too much weight on it.


He's, I think, more into it than I am.  And so, I think putting yourself out there on that level and letting people in more and more and more to that, you're going to have to expect a backlash to whatever you say.  You can put anything out there.  If you put a simple picture out there, a simple quote out there, it can be interpreted any way. 

And so, the more you do that, the more I think people are going to have opportunity to jump on things.  And he's allowed to feel how he feels and if he wants to put it all out there continually on the Twitter or the Internet, he's allowed to.  He just needs to know that it comes with the territory, having all that backlash.

Obviously in the process of The Bachelor, it ends up being a mutual decision.  He's choosing what woman is right for him, but the girl also has to decide if he's right for her.  So did this situation sort of give you pause about him at all or change the way you looked at him?

Clare Crawley: In Vietnam, it definitely caught me off-guard, and I think it definitely set me back and took me back into my mind and took me out of my heart.  And what happened in the ocean and that whole day on the Vietnam date, I was living in my heart and my heart's feelings. 

And it sent me back to that little hamster wheel that goes on in your brain.  Like, "Should I do this?  Shouldn't I do this?"  It makes you question things more and it was something that I didn't want to do.  I didn't want to have to question everything.


And so, going into the show, I felt like, "I'm going to put it all out there.  I'm going to be 100 percent me.  If he likes it, awesome.  If he doesn't, that's okay."  And at the end of the day, I knew everything was going to work out how it was supposed to.  And I just think that it definitely put me back in my mind -- my brain, not in my heart.  So that, I didn't like.  Because, like I said, I was going whole-heartedly into this.

After Juan Pablo basically kind of shamed you, did you feel like you wanted to go home on your own and just leave at that point?  Did you consider quitting?

Clare Crawley: It definitely crossed my mind.  What had crossed my mind -- after everything happened at the Rose Ceremony and after we had even gone back to the hotel -- I was thinking, "I want somebody in my life that is positive in my life and somebody that makes my life better."  Because I've already had -- I have a great life and love is what I came into this show looking for.

And so, part of that is loving you for your imperfections, loving you for your little mistakes and loving you for your good and bad.  So it definitely made me want to run.  It made me want to leave because I felt, like, "God, you're supposed to lift somebody up and encourage somebody and be supportive."  And so it made me question, "Is that what I want?"

So then what made you want to stay and continue competing for Juan Pablo's heart?


Clare Crawley: What made me want to stay was that real relationships go through ups and downs.  I think the key to them is talking things out and working through problems.  And life isn't always wonderful. 

And so, you want to be able to be with somebody that you can work things out with and, at the end of the day, you can fight it out and then embrace each other and hold each other and get through it together --  and that shows strength in somebody I think.  I didn't want to give up on him because I wouldn't want somebody to give up on me that easily.

Chris Harrison had mentioned in his blog that he had suggested to Juan Pablo to maybe wait a few days before speaking to you about the ocean incident.  And Juan Pablo actually mentioned in his own blog the same thing.  Do you think you would have felt better about the situation had Juan Pablo waited a bit longer before talking to you about it?

Clare Crawley: I don't know if waiting is the answer that would've made me feel better about it.  I think his manner on how he spoke to me and what he said to me and the words that he used to me -- say it at any point. 

Say it as soon as you feel it or wait a couple days, that wasn't the issue for me.  It was how he approached it and the words he used and how he made me feel when he used those words.  And that's what I had more of the problem with.


Do you still keep in touch with any of the women from the show?  Do you consider any of them your friends?

Clare Crawley: Absolutely.  I didn't go into this expecting to make strong friendships, but I'm definitely -- I talk to a lot of the women on a daily basis.  And like I said earlier, I think it's unfortunate that some women choose to take a different path and find humor in disrespecting other women. 

But that's their prerogative and I just choose to try and stay positive about it.  And I think talking negatively about somebody and saying hurtful things about somebody only makes that person look bad.  So it's unfortunate.

What was the most frustrating, or maybe hurtful, part of the conversation that you and Juan Pablo had prior to the Rose Ceremony, and how did you get yourself to bounce back after such a dramatic event and move on?

Clare Crawley: The hardest thing about that was the confusion.  Because, like I said before -- and like everybody saw -- he was more than willing to go swimming in the ocean.  He was more than willing to participate in it.  He was more than willing to enjoy it.

And I know there's no microphones on in the ocean and stuff like that, but he was having a blast just like I was having a blast.  We were living in the moment, swimming in the ocean.  And so, in my eyes, it just really was strange to me that he had such a dramatic opposite reaction to it.  That threw me off.


And what he was blaming it on was -- one of the reasons was -- he has a daughter and he didn't want his daughter to see something like this.  But, again, I didn't understand it because, although I don't have children, I still have integrity.  And he knew that that wasn't my intention in going in the water. 

He knew that nothing happened in the water as well as everybody that was there, you know, so it just really was strange to me and I didn't understand.  And how did I bounce back?  I think I chalked it up at the time to -- I wanted to stand up for myself because I still felt and believed, to this day, I did nothing wrong.  We did nothing wrong. 

And I needed to get answers as well as I didn't want to give up on somebody, so I wanted to get the answers and if it's what I wanted to hear, I would make the decision.  It was much his decision, me staying there, as it was my decision. 

And so, if I didn't get the answers that I wanted, I was more than willing to cut my losses and stand up for myself.  I think I just had that clear line in my head of what I want and what I don't want and what I'll stand up for and what I won't put up with.  So it made it easy for me to just move on.  Life's not always easy, so you just have to work through things.  And at that time, I wanted to be there.

You mentioned before that you thought Juan Pablo made a lot of excuses for why he regretted your late-night swim and felt guilty about it.  Do you think, in this case, he was using his daughter as an excuse?

Clare Crawley: I think an excuse -- yes, I do.  I do at that time.  And maybe at that time he didn't know exactly what he was feeling and he just felt bad about it.  But, again, we swam in his pool in his room and that, to me, was more questionable than swimming in the ocean.  And so that was my struggle.  I didn't understand that.


After the ocean incident, did you have a change of heart towards him?  Did your opinion of him change to the point it couldn't be reversed, or were you worried that might happen?

Clare Crawley: I was more so thinking that I wanted to stay feeling in my heart and I still wanted to follow my heart.  I didn't want to be back thinking in my brain.  I wanted to be back feeling my heart and I needed to do that, and I want to do that in any relationship.  I want to completely feel. 

And that's why I came on such an extreme level in putting myself out there on a show like this, [because] I was ready and willing to completely put my heart into it.  And that was more so my fear -- I didn't want to revert back to thinking in my brain and those silly relationships that you just worry about and worry about and worry about.

I didn't want that.  I can find that in Sacramento or anywhere else.  I didn't want that.  I wanted to put myself into a situation with a man who wanted the same thing as me.  And it did make me question a little bit because I thought we were on the same page.

During a Thursday conference call with reporters, Clare talked to Reality TV World about her The Bachelor experience thus far. Click here to read what she had to say. Above is another portion of her interview. Click here for more. 






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski