The Golden Bachelor runner-up Leslie Fhima has revealed what she wishes she had said to Gerry Turner on After the Final Rose.
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Months after their emotional breakup in Leslie's hotel room in Costa Rica, Leslie and Gerry reunited for the first time on The Golden Bachelor: After the Final Rose, which aired live Thursday, November 30 on ABC.
Leslie certainly confronted Gerry and put him in his place on After the Final Rose about feeling betrayed and misled, but there was apparently a moment when she misspoke.
"I feel like, Gerry, he switched. The only thing I would've like to... or I should have said is, 'I THOUGHT you were a man of integrity,' instead of, 'You are a man of integrity,'" Leslie said during Part 1 of her "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast interview that was released on December 4.
"Because at the end of the day, he didn't really have the integrity that I thought he had."
Leslie, a fan and viewer of The Bachelor franchise since conception, acknowledged, "I know what I signed up for and I know that someone has to go. I just didn't expect it to be so hard."
When asked if she respects Gerry now that their relationship is over and done with, Leslie replied, "I mean, Gerry did what he did, it's his journey. Do I respect him? I just wish he would've done it different."
Leslie admitted of their brutal breakup, "I don't respect what he did. It started with [Faith Martin] and [got worse] a little more for me because I went to Costa Rica and did all that. So I feel like he just used, 'I love you,' too much."
Leslie told the podcast's co-hosts, Bachelor in Paradise couple Serena Pitt and Joe Amabile, that their question about respecting Gerry was such a hard one to answer.
"Because I want to say I do [respect him], but it's hard. Yeah, he hurt me," Leslie said.
Leslie, however, felt like she had left it all on the table during her breakup with Gerry in Costa Rica.
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"I think I said what I needed to say to him [at that point]," Leslie shared during Part 2 of her interview, which was released on December 5.
"I wasn't going to grovel. Obviously I was just blindsided. I said what I wanted to say; I just really wanted to get out of there at that point and be done. Looking back, I don't have any regrets on how that went."
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Leslie joked about how she "ugly cried," but she reasoned, "But when you're crying and your heart is breaking, you don't care what you look like."
When Gerry dumped Leslie in Costa Rica before the Final Rose Ceremony, Gerry told her, "It's been very difficult and I've made a decision about how I want to go about this, and I have fallen in love with Theresa, and that's the direction I'm going to take."
In the heat of the moment, Leslie told Gerry in reply, "So everything you told me the other night was a lie!"
"No, it wasn't a lie," The Golden Bachelor star insisted.
"Yeah it was," Leslie clapped back. "Everything you told me the other night was a lie. Everything you told me the other night was a complete and utter lie!"
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Leslie asked Gerry where she or they had gone wrong, and The Golden Bachelor star assured her that nothing was wrong.
"You're both wonderful, but only one of you is right," Gerry explained. "Leslie, I'm so sorry. Had I known this was the pain I would cause someone, I would've never taken the first step of this journey."
Leslie cried about how she was totally heartbroken and was going to be embarrassed in front of the world.
"You didn't choose me... The other night, you made it sound like you chose me!" Leslie lamented to Gerry, adding, "You said things to me that made me think this was going to be it. You led me down a path and then you took a turn and you left me there!"
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' COUPLES NOW: WHO DID 'THE BACHELOR' STARS AND THEIR BACHELORETTE PICKS ACTUALLY END UP MARRYING? (PHOTOS)
Leslie said it was actually "mind boggling" how Gerry could tell her that he loved her and then completely change his mind about 12 hours later.
Leslie explained to The Golden Bachelor host Jesse Palmer on After the Final Rose how she had envisioned a life with Gerry after the show in which they'd walk his dog together and go out to restaurants, both in Indianapolis and Minneapolis.
Leslie also told Gerry on the November 30 broadcast, "Only you and I know what was said on the overnight. I'd never share that with anyone; it was our private time. But those words gave me 100 percent certainty that I was your girl and we were going to get engaged."
Gerry explained to Leslie, "You were the person I believed was my person until I suddenly knew you weren't."
Gerry continued live onstage, "It didn't really go wrong, Leslie, it was just better with someone else. It was the right person in another direction, and I'm so terribly sorry. I'll never forgive myself for the pain I've caused along the way."
(Leslie said on "Bachelor Happy Hour" that she thought Gerry's delivery was very "harsh.")
Gerry reminded Leslie that he's only human and wished he had handled things in a better way.
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Gerry, meanwhile, is still happily engaged to Theresa, and the couple has plans to move to South Carolina together.
Gerry, however, has been facing backlash and scrutiny for allegedly lying about having a three-year, live-in girlfriend shortly after his wife, Toni, passed away in 2017.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
