Bachelor Nation
12 Worst Bachelor Nation Breakups, Ranked: The Franchise’s Messiest Splits
It’s not always “happily ever after” in Bachelor Nation! In fact, there have been significantly more splits than success stories in the franchise, and sometimes the breakups have been pretty messy.
Sometimes, the gut-wrenching breakups have been part of the shows that the relationships started on, while other times, they happened after the season aired. In some cases, it wasn’t until months later that things got really volatile between the exes.
Between The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, The Golden Bachelor, and Bachelor in Paradise, we’ve seen some brutal Bachelor Nation breakups. Scroll down to see the worst of them all!
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12. Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist
As the first-ever Golden Bachelor couple, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist gave seniors hope when their love story aired on ABC. Turner proposed to Nist in a finale episode that aired in November 2023, and they wasted no time walking down the aisle, tying the knot in a televised wedding just weeks later in January 2024.
However, before the two even settled upon a place to live, they ended their marriage. In April 2024, Turner and Nist announced that they were divorcing. At the time, they cited not agreeing on where to move as the reason for the split.
But as the months went on, Nist continued throwing subtle shade at her ex on social media and eventually admitted that relocation differences weren’t the only issue they faced. “You really can’t know someone in four weeks,” Nist said on the Almost Famous podcast in November 2024. “I’ll just say that. That’s all I can say. I don’t want to say any more than that.”
The following month, Turner revealed that he had been diagnosed with cancer shortly after he married Nist. He said he believed this was part of the reason why the marriage didn’t work, but his ex-wife publicly declared that wasn’t the case. Still, she would not specify what happened, leading fans to speculate that there’s a lot more to the story.
11. Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo
For a long time, Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo were one of the most beloved Bachelor Nation success stories. They met on The Bachelorette in 2017 and got engaged, then tied the knot two years later.
So fans were shocked when Abasolo filed for divorce in December 2023. The divorce turned into quite a messy legal battle because the exes did not sign a prenup (which Lindsay admitted to regretting).
Court documents revealed that Lindsay and Abasolo continued living together for months after the divorce filing, which he described as “strained and awkward.” It’s always messy when money gets involved, which is exactly what happened when Abasolo requested spousal support, citing the fact that he had to quit his chiropractor job to move to Los Angeles for Rachel, who was able to continue working as a television personality.
In July 2024, Lindsay was ordered to pay her estranged husband over $13,000 a month in spousal support payments. That payment was dropped when the pair finally finalized their split in January 2025, although the former attorney did have to give her ex a lump sum of $500,000 (the support payments that she had already made were deducted from this total.)
10. Clare Crawley and Dale Moss
Clare Crawley and Dale Moss’ relationship got off to an unprecedented start on Season 16 of The Bachelorette in 2020. Less than two weeks into filming, Crawley knew she wanted to be with Moss, and they got engaged in the middle of the season.
However, in January 2021, Moss announced that he and Crawley had split, which she said she was “crushed” by. “I was made aware of a ‘mutual’ statement at the same time you all were, so I’ve needed some time to really digest this,” Crawley claimed.
Weeks later, the two were spotted in Florida, which eventually led to a reconciliation by spring. It only lasted until September 2021, though. Crawley slammed her ex in an Instagram post, writing, “I’m choosing not to speak right now on the details of my relationship, because at the end of the day anyone can put on an ACT or throw words together to form any narrative they want.”
Meanwhile, rumors circulated that Moss cheated on Crawley, which he denied. In a statement via his rep, he claimed he was blocked and ghosted by his ex-fiancée.
9. Jake Pavelka and Vienna Girardi
Although Vienna Girardi was labeled the “villain” on Season 14 of The Bachelor, which aired in 2010, she still got Jake Pavelka’s final rose and a proposal from the lead. However, they split by June of that year and subsequently appeared in a televised interview about the breakup with then-host Chris Harrison.
Things were extremely contentious between the exes during the sit down. Pavelka slammed Girardi as a “fame whore” and she said she was “disgusted” by him. In 2019, Girardi revealed that she hadn’t spoken to Pavelka since that conversation.
8. Peter Weber and Hannah Ann Sluss
Season 24 of The Bachelor featured Peter Weber proposing to Hannah Ann Sluss after Madison Prewett left the show because she found out the pilot had been intimate with other contestants.
The engagement didn’t last. As the season aired, Weber broke up with Sluss because he still had feelings for Prewett. The breakup was filmed. After the footage was shown on After the Final Rose in March 2020, Sluss went off on her ex during the live reunion show. She publicly called him out for trying to get “closure” with Hannah Brown – who Weber previously dated on The Bachelorette – amid the engagement.
“Looking back on it, our engagement involved three women: Me, you still being in love with Madison, and you needing closure with Hannah Brown,” Sluss said. She also told The Traitors star, “If you want to be with a woman, you need to become a real man.”
7. Rachel Recchia and Tino Franco
Rachel Recchia accepted Tino Franco’s proposal on Season 19 of The Bachelorette. However, by the time the finale aired in September 2022, the two were already broken up. Recchia found out that Franco had cheated on her after their engagement.
Like many other post-filming breakups, this one was filmed for the finale. Viewers saw the pair get into a heated debate about the status of their relationship at the time of Franco’s infidelity.
Following the breakup, Recchia did several interviews about what happened and repeatedly called out her ex for not being honest. “He ran straight to someone that he was — apparently not seeing — but seeing before the show,” she said on the Bachelor Happy Hour Men Tell All is when I found out. That long, he sat on this information, sat in front of me and told me I need to do all this work on myself for our relationship together, which I agree. … But you’re sitting on this information that you are actively seeking comfort and intimacy with another person?”
6. Colton Underwood and Cassie Randolph
Although Colton Underwood and Cassie Randolph didn’t get engaged on Season 23 of The Bachelor, they left the show as a couple and continued their relationship after the finale aired in March 2019. In May 2020, they announced that they had split.
It wasn’t until a few months later that things blew up. Randolph briefly spoke about the split in an interview on The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever! in July 2020, and Underwood called her out for not keeping things private. She then fired back by accusing him of trying to “monetize” their split himself by writing a chapter about it in his upcoming book.
In September 2020, Randolph was granted a restraining order against her ex after she accused him of harassing her via text message, planting a tracker in her car, and showing up to her home uninvited. The restraining order was dropped in November 2020 after the two settled things privately.
Underwood came out as gay in April 2021, and Randolph said she didn’t find out until she saw headlines about it, which she described as “horrible.” However, in 2022, she admitted, “I’m very happy that he is, you know, is at peace with himself and not carrying that burden anymore, of course. It was a very just overall hard time for me, so I feel like there was just one thing after another and I was just extremely overwhelmed with everything going on.”
5. Jenn Tran and Devin Strader
Jenn Tran accepted Devin Strader’s proposal on Season 21 of The Bachelorette in 2024. However, by the time their engagement aired on the show, the two had already ended their relationship.
Tran confirmed the breakup news on After the Final Rose. She said that Strader was “different” as soon as they returned home from filming and revealed that he broke up with her over the phone a few weeks before the live portion of the finale.
“I promised my life to somebody who I thought was going to put every effort into the relationship. I didn’t feel that. I felt like I was secondary to everything in his life,” she said. “He wasn’t introducing me to his family anymore. Every little thing made me feel secondary to his life and I didn’t understand why.”
When Tran confronted Strader on the reunion show, she called him out for following other women — including Bachelor Nation’s Maria Georgas — on Instagram one day after the breakup.
Things got messier when Strader posted a now-deleted video to social media where he slammed the “false narrative” and shared personal text messages between himself and Tran.
“When you get engaged to somebody, when you’re dating somebody, your first thought is never, ‘Oh my gosh, these texts might actually be blasted for the whole world to see,’” Tran responded. “That is such an invasion of privacy, so when I heard about this I had so many friends and family texting and calling me about this, I truthfully felt so betrayed, so just disrespected, and honestly just upset and disappointed.”
4. Hannah Brown and Jed Wyatt
Jed Wyatt proposed to Hannah Brown on Season 15 of The Bachelorette in 2015. However, as the show was airing, a woman named Haley Stevens came forward and claimed she was dating Wyatt right before he left to film the show. She said that he was only using the dating show as a platform for his music career and that he promised to be with her when he returned home.
Ahead of the finale airing on ABC, Brown heard the viral buzz about Stevens and broke up with Wyatt. They filmed the aftermath of their breakup for The Bachelorette. Wyatt eventually admitted that he did originally go on the show for his career, but insisted that he did actually fall for Brown and said he never cheated on either woman.
The two then had a run-in at Hannah Godwin and Dylan Barbour’s engagement party in March 2020. “We avoided each other at first, until I got up the courage to walk right up to him and say hello. I didn’t want it to be awkward,” Brown wrote in her 2021 book God Bless This Mess. “He said he was doing good, and I said, ‘Good. Good for you.’ And that was about it.”
Oh, and she also wrote in the book that Peter Weber was better in bed than her ex-fiancé.
3. Josh Murray and Andi Dorfman
Josh Murray was Andi Dorfman’s final pick on Season 10 of The Bachelorette. They got engaged during the 2014 finale but announced their breakup after just eight months in January 2015.
However, things didn’t get really messy until Dorfman released her book It’s Not Okay in May 2016. She dove deep into everything she experienced in her relationship with Murray, including allegations of emotional abuse.
She specifically referenced a recurring fight about her night in the fantasy suite with runner-up Nick Viall. “That one sexual escapade would become a power play used by my fiancé to justify his mistrust in me,” Dorfman wrote. “It would be an excuse to call me a whore. And it would eventually lead to the demise of my engagement.”
Murray appeared on Bachelor in Paradise that summer and slammed his ex’s claims as a “fictional story.”
2. Becca Kufrin and Arie Luyendyk Jr.
Arie Luyendyk Jr. proposed to Becca Kufrin on The Bachelor Season 22 finale, which they filmed in the fall of 2017. However, by the time the finale aired the following March, the two were already broken up, and Luyendyk had gotten back together with his runner-up, Lauren Burnham.
ABC aired footage of Luyendyk and Kufrin’s emotional breakup, as well as his in-person reunion with Burnham, on After the Final Rose. It was revealed that he first reached out to Burnham on New Year’s Eve, which made him realize he still had feelings for her. At the end of ATFR, Luyendyk proposed to Burnham, and Kufrin was announced as the Bachelorette.
Today, Luyendyk and Burnham are married with three kids. Kufrin got engaged to Garrett Yrigoyen on The Bachelorette, but they split two years later. She then met Thomas Jacobs on Bachelor in Paradise, after which they had a son and got married.
1. Jason Mesnick and Melissa Rycroft
Jason Mesnick shocked Bachelorviewers when he broke Melissa Rycroft’s heart on live television. The two got engaged in Season 13, but during After the Final Rose, he revealed that he was still in love with runner-up Molly Malaney. He ended his engagement to Rycroft during the live finale.
While these shock endings have become par for the course in Bachelor Nation, this was a groundbreaking finale twist at the time.
Luckily, things ended up working out for both Mesnick and Rycroft. Mesnick and Malaney are married and have a daughter together. Meanwhile, Rycroft reconnected with her ex, Tye Strickland, after The Bachelor and they tied the knot in 2009, then had three kids together. The former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader has said that she wouldn’t change a thing about her time on The Bachelorbecause it led her to where she is today.
“Jason and Molly are great people who have created a beautiful life together. And I’m right where I am supposed to be…and with who I was meant to be with,” she wrote on Instagram in 2020. “None of us are angry, none of us hold a grudge, and oddly none of us regret it, because look where it took us! We may have come out if it all a little scarred, but it made us all so much stronger!”
