The Bachelorette winner Blake Moynes believes Katie Thurston "emotionally cheated" on him given she went public with her John Hersey relationship so soon after her engagement to Blake ended.
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"I don't think there was any physical cheating there, but there's clearly emotional [cheating] for it to transition as quickly as it did [from friendship to romance]," Blake explained during a Wednesday appearance on "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation," a podcast hosted by The Bachelorette alums Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo.
Katie and Blake got engaged in April -- although their engagement on The Bachelorette's seventeenth season didn't air on ABC until August -- and announced their breakup in late October.
Katie then went public with her new romance on Tuesday, November 23 by posting footage of John on her Instagram Story set to Taylor Swift's "Begin Again," a song about falling in love all over again.
The John dedication served as the conclusion of Katie's "12 Days of Messy" challenge in which she had been tasked with matching every song on Taylor's re-released "Red" album to one of her Season 17 bachelors.
Blake called Katie's romance "a bomb drop" on him, especially since it appears Katie began dating John at least two weeks ago.
"Starting 12 days ago, I'm sure she probably knew who 'Day 12' was going to be and why. So when I think about our breakup happening roughly a month ago... I think, 'Okay, well, I know they spent a lot of time together and stuff, but... I never had an inkling," Blake said.
"I'm just a very secure guy, a very confident guy, and I gave my trust out 100 percent, especially to the person I should be trusting the most."
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Blake told Mike and Bryan that he feels "stupid and foolish for allowing it to happen."
"And I don't know if it was partially me too. Like, was she in some sense emotionally cheating to some degree because I wasn't able to provide something with words of affirmation?" Blake questioned.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOWThe wildlife manager from Canada acknowledged how he struggles to verbalize his feelings sometimes.
"So I just have so many things when trying to figure out why it went wrong," Blake admitted, "and why [Katie and John] transitioned so quickly into a new relationship. What was I in all of this?"
Blake now wonders where he fit in when looking back on all the Greg Grippo and Michael Allio "chaos."
"What was I in the middle? With John happening so quickly, I'm just, like, [confused]," Blake confessed.
"I try to stand by having no regrets, but it's instances like this when you really start to fight yourself with having no regrets with things, just the way things played out."
Blake repeated how he never saw this new romance coming and it took "a lot of away" from what he thought his relationship with Katie had been about, "which really sucks."
Blake conducted this podcast interview only hours after learning about Katie and John's Instagram-official relationship, and so he admitted he's still processing everything and trying to make sense of it all.
"From my understanding, [Katie and John] were kind of a joke in the beginning because everyone thought that he had ended up with her [on The Bachelorette] and that was the rumor, and so I know they had some type of conversation or friendship through that alone," Blake recalled.
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Katie also moved to San Diego in August, and so Blake added, "I think being in San Diego, they met through some friends and Bachelor Nation stuff."
"I trusted everything she said... I don't think anything was happening during the time that we were engaged. I really don't," Blake said.
"Clearly he had been into her or was pursuing it or something or wanted something to be hanging out with her all the time. I mean, I was with them! I was on the same plane as them!"
Blake said he wasn't phased by Katie and John hanging out in San Diego because he had put his full trust into Katie and the idea "there was nothing more than literally just a friendship."
"I think it just was but it allowed them to form something at least emotionally where they could see something with each other that made it so easy for them to transition when [my engagement ended]," Blake reasoned.
Blake said although his breakup with Katie was "mutual," her feelings for John may have helped her engagement to "abruptly end the way it did and as easy as it did."
"Even though it was mutual, was he always in her back pocket?" Blake wondered. "I don't know."
Blake therefore suggested John may have been Katie's "Plan B" based on the timeline.
"She must have at least had some emotional connection, right?!" Blake asked Bryan and Mike. "It happened too quickly! How? Two weeks after?! There had to have been something there."
Blake said John must have been providing Katie with something he wasn't giving her but he is now "done with the messiness."
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' COUPLES NOW: WHO DID 'THE BACHELOR' STARS AND THEIR BACHELORETTE PICKS ACTUALLY END UP MARRYING? (PHOTOS)
Speculation Katie and John are dating have swirled for quite some time now, even though Katie had been engaged to Blake -- whom she dated for about six months -- prior to the big announcement of their split late last month.
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However, The Bachelorette viewers saw Katie eliminate John during Week 2 of the process and eventually accept a marriage proposal from Blake on the Season 17 finale.
Katie proceeded to move to San Diego and continue hanging out with John while Blake traveled to Africa to pursue his wildlife conservation efforts.
Katie and Blake attempted to make a long-distance relationship work as people simultaneously questioned if sparks were flying between Katie and John.
"Internet rumors lead me to this guy becoming a dear dear friend," Katie reportedly wrote on Instagram in September after enjoying a day out with John in California.
While Katie was trying to mend her broken heart in late October, she uploaded a photo of John's dog to her Instagram Story and wrote, "Dexter forcing me out of the house this morning."
Katie had addressed the John dating rumors in early November but danced around an official confirmation or denial.
At the time, Katie shared a throwback video of "the first time I saw John since filming" on her Instagram Story that showed Polaroid photos of the supposed close pals playing cards together, Us Weekly reported.
"Y'all getting wild in my DMs," Katie wrote along with a laughing emoticon on November 7.
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A source told Us earlier this month that Katie has found "clarity" and now "knows what she wants in a husband" after her failed engagement to Blake.
But when Katie accepted Blake's marriage proposal on The Bachelorette, she seemed totally convinced that he was The One for her.
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"That he was confident enough to hold both of us [until] the end. I'm just so lucky. I love him so much."
Blake recently admitted his breakup with Katie "hasn't been easy."
Katie previously hinted on social media that she and Blake were fighting too much during their six-month relationship and broke up due to their different communication styles.
She suggested that Blake was unable to make her happy and vice versa, and Blake shared on "Talking It Out" how he and the former bank marketing manager from Washington have different love languages.
An insider told The Sun, however, that Katie's "outbursts eventually became too much" for Blake "to handle."
On November 1, Blake shared on Instagram how he had been relying on family, friends and his dogs to get him through his breakup with Katie.
"When times are really tough and things just aren't going the way you had hoped... it's always the same 'gang' that gets ya back on your feet," Blake wrote at the time.
Blake said it felt good to "start getting back into the swing of things."
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
