Bachelor's Jason Mesnick Surprised by Backlash

Bachelor's Jason Mesnick doesn't get why people are so outraged that he dumped winner (and fiancee) Melissa Rycroft for runner-up Molly Malaney.

"I don't know if the public expected me to just pretend like I'm in a good happy relationship," he tells the Los Angeles Times. "I mean, is that what people really wanted to see? Because that was the other option, but never a real option for me."

"It sucks that everyone thinks I'm dragging Melissa over the coals right in front of everybody because it's not true," he went on. "What's funny is that everybody loves the fact that I break up with somebody every week in the regular part of the show ... and now I'm being judged."

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Mesnick says he ended his relationship with Rycroft on the phone a week before the taping.

He changed his mind about wanting to be with her "right after the holidays. She didnt do anything wrong, but we had this great communication style where we could talk about anything while we were on the show, and then all of a sudden were together for longer periods of time afterwards and we just couldnt talk about stuff."

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He says there was no discussion between the two of them about how this might play out on TV.

"Her response had been, 'How do you want me to react to that?'" he says. "I wasn't going to coach her. I just told her that we were going to talk about things again [on the show] and however she felt is how she was going to react. I'm never going to tell anyone what to say."

He says he ultimately didn't ask Molly to marry him the first time because he was scared.

"We had this young, fun, friendship relationship with a lot of passion," he says. "People who have been together for a long time all say, 'The passion is the first thing to go.' In my regular everyday life I wouldn't have stopped dating any one of [the final three]. I would have gone and tried to experience more with each of them."

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How is he explaining this all to his 4-year-old son, Ty?

"I don't know," he says. "I think that I want him to look at me and just say, 'My daddy had this crazy experience and it's OK to do some things differently from other people. It's OK that relationships don't work because thats part of real life.' I want him to see how real it was and how hard it was for me and that how much all that pain was worth it in the end."

Asked if he would ever advise Ty to find love on TV, Mesnick says, "I hope Ty would be the type of person to think about doing something different, absolutely. I wouldn't say necessarily a TV show."



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