The Bachelor: Aaron and Helene Tell All - Why I Hate Aaron

It was just a few months ago that we saw Aaron propose marriage to Helene and profess that she was the one woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Then the reports came out. Aaron and Helene's relationship was on the rocks. Aaron and Helene had split. Aaron and Helene were not getting married after all. Rumors placed their relationship ending in December 2002, then late January 2003, with final reports saying it may have ended even before the show had finished airing.

Smitty introduces us to this special episode and fills us in on the fact that Aaron and Helene were originally to be interviewed together on the program. However, Helene said that her participation was wholly contingent on the fact that they be interviewed separately as she did not want to be in the same room with the man she had once intended to marry.

Can you just tell that this did not end well or what?

It's the clip montage with roses, hugs, kisses, and laughter. Remember when she tried on the pants she didn't like but ultimately wore them anyway because Aaron said she looked great in them? Then there are their hot tub moments, her hopes for a rose, talks of having children together, their potential future as a couple, Helene meeting his family.

Then there is the moment. Aaron says that he has fallen in love with her and he gets down on one knee and produces the ring that is purportedly worth over thirty thousand dollars (that's some ring!). She accepts and they're supposed to go off into the sunset together right? Happy as can be, right?

Wrong. Big time wrong.

Helene's interview is shown first. She says that her experience on the show was interesting and she went on their for the experience. She was skeptical the entire time but she had opened up by the end of the program to accept what was going on and admit that she did have feelings for him. She felt more intense feelings than she expected and wondered how it would turn out for her.

In that final moment, she says she didn't know if she was going to receive the proposal. It was a whirlwind but it was a total relief as she finally got to learn how he felt about her. She does believe that in that one moment the two of them were in love with each other.

And then there are the tears. And let me tell you, I could make some really snarky comment right here about her crying and getting overly emotional about the entire situation, but I am not. There's just something in Helene's eyes that is missing from her previous appearances on the show. Her vitality is gone and has been replaced but this hurt and anger as to what has happened.

What was really painful was that long pause as she stopped to get a glass of water and was overcome with emotion remember how she felt in that moment and how it ultimately turned out.

It makes me hate Aaron for allowing this to happen to her. F***ing bastard.

Helene apologizes for breaking down, but Chris assures her it is okay. Ultimately, Helene says that Aaron enjoyed being in the spotlight more than she did. They had to schedule time around his personal appearances that he had already scheduled. More emphasis was being placed, she believes, on keeping him in the public eye than on focusing on their relationship.

This brings back memories of Alex and Amanda from the first season finally saying that they were making one last public appearance, and that was it. They needed the time away from the cameras, the reporters, and everything so they could see if there truly was something to build upon. Being in the public eye didn't allow that to happen. Granted, being out of the public eye didn't allow that to happen either since they have since separated as we previously reported.

The first sign for Helene happened in a bar in Toronto shortly after he proposed and prior to the show's conclusion. According to Helene, only two weeks had passed since his proposal in front of the cameras. In this bar, Helene was ordering drinks for the two of them and had forgotten what to order from him. When she turned around, she caught him openly ogling a woman in the bar and had trouble getting his attention. As she said, and I agree, Aaron should have been checking Helene out and not this woman.

At this point, Helene gave the ring back to Aaron and told him that he needed to really think about what he had done in proposing to her and whether or not this was something that he really wanted to do. As she said in the teaser, the show was over and he was no longer dating 24 other women. He pledged his love for her and, frankly, she wasn't seeing it from him. If he really wanted to marry her, he would propose again, but she wanted him to fully think it over.

The next day they made up and she took it as just a bump in the road of their relationship. However, she made sure that he kept the ring until he was sure that he wanted to propose and fully commit to their relationship. This event was followed up by a visit to his lake house in Oklahoma, where he brought the ring with him but left it on the night stand in the bedroom. She ultimately took the ring back.

Helene says she doesn't have all the answers and that is what makes it hard. She has no idea what it was that finally pushed it over the edge. The door was left open for him to come clean if he had any regrets or feelings about what had happened. The phone calls began to taper off. The excitement between the two of them wasn't there anymore. Being with her seemed more like a chore than something he wanted to do. For her friends and family, this was a bit shocking and unexpected, considering what had happened between them already.

What really pisses me off at Aaron right now is that he broke up with her around the Christmas holiday. He came up to spend time with her and she says that they had a great time together and all of the vestiges of the past seemed to be erased. Then an hour before he was to leave, he dropped the bombshell that he had lost feelings for her. He gave no reason to her satisfaction as to what had happened. According to some reports, this happened in, of all places, a Starbucks.

Right now, Helene says they are broken up. Aaron wasn't intent on working on their relationship and he said he wanted to cut his losses. Even worse, Helene says that Aaron was professing his love for her on a daily basis up until the day that he dropped the news that he wasn't in love with her anymore. On her birthday, she finally said that she wanted him to come clean about his feelings. At this point Aaron said that he saw no future between the two of them. It was his way of saying that it was totally over.

As for the ring, it's currently sitting in a safe deposit box. Helene still has the ring and even offered to return it. However, Aaron said it was his "unconditional gift" to her and she is deciding what she wants to do with it.

As for her current feelings for Aaron, she says she can't turn off her feelings for him like a light switch and is trying to this day to understand how he could do so.

I want Aaron's head on a stick like they did in Lord of the Flies. I want to tie Aaron down to a chair and slowly pull out every single strand of hair from his head one at a time until his head is red, swollen, even bloody. I want to force him to watch episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman until he can recite them from memory and even act them out in costume.

I want the man to hurt. And hard.

Stupid f***ing bastard. You should be castrated with an Epilady!

Let's just put it this way, going into Aaron's interview my hackles are already up. If this was a theatre, the people behind me wouldn't be able to see over or past my hackles.

And I'm finally going to admit something else while I'm already admitting that I'm prejudiced against this man. I've never liked him. He's been thinking with the wrong head, if you get my drift.

So back to the first night we go and Aaron says that he was impressed with Helene from the very first night. She had a lot going for her and he was very impressed. Her playing hard to get throughout the entire show was something he enjoyed. That final day he says he had no cold feet and he was looking forward to it. He knew that she was going to accept. Their love, he says, was very real and very true.

Oh yeah. Were you looking forward to breaking her heart as well? Were you looking forward to the pain and hurt you were going to cause her? You have a lot of explaining to do, Mr. Man, and I had better be able to buy your reasons for it otherwise I will hunt you down and beat you to within a nanometer of your life. And if you don't know what a nanometer is, it's one-billionth of a meter. If a centimeter is 1/100th of a meter, just think of how small a nanometer is - and you will realize how close to death this man would be right now.

Why don't you just go walk around your apartment topless drinking coffee?

Now we're talking about the separation and how hard it was to be apart from each other, and they get to the conversation of Toronto. Throughout their entire time there, Aaron says that at that point he could actually see this working out and a future for the two of them.

Okay let me interject here. If you had questions of whether or not the relationship was going to work then you shouldn't have proposed.

I'm right. You're wrong. Case closed. Go to hell.

Back to Toronto now. According to Aaron, at this bar he noticed a couple making out and pointed it out to Helene. This, for some reason, set her off. He surmises that Helene thought he was checking out the female portion of that couple and if I had to place a bet, I would bet she was right.

Helene took the ring off and the two of them walked back to the hotel. They talked throughout the night about what was going on and that Helene brought up a few things that surprised him. I would like to know what she brought up but for some reason Smitty didn't think that we would want to know that. But I want to know that so tell me, dammit! Tell me!

Now we fast forward to the lake house in Oklahoma and he wonders where their relationship stood at that point. He says he subtly put the ring on the nightstand and let that convey the message. Well, Aaron says that Helene bluntly asked if she was to wear the ring and he thinks that she thought she should be asked once again. And I agree with her. She should have been asked again. If you're serious about marrying her you would have proposed again. Oh, but he didn't want to put her on the spot. At least that's what he says.

Well that's all good and well, you stupid moron, but what did you think leaving the ring out in the open was doing? Did you think about that? Can you even think? Do you even have a brain?

Aaron says that Helene was ultimately pushing him away because he was feeling that she was being confrontational because she said that he no longer told her that he loved her. Aaron says that he was more concerned with the fact that she never seemed to believe him when he did say it, so why should he even bother any more.

I am so not buying his story. In fact, according to my sources, the women of The Bachelor 2 are not happy with Aaron - especially with some of the answers he gave during the special ABC Family editions. According to my sources, they feel that Aaron did some very selective revisionist history to make himself come out better to Helene. Whether or not this is true, I dunno. But that's what my sources (my very accurate sources) have been saying for quite some time.

At the finale airing, it was as if everything was the same. However, on their last night together, Aaron said that Helene pulled him aside and confessed her fears that she couldn't trust him and that she really didn't know whether or not he was being sincere. At this point, he says it was the beginning of the end for the two of them as he was totally miserable.

Right now, Aaron says that he was starting to "check out" of the relationship at that point because he had no idea of how to make it right between the two of them. He was finally noticing that they have different views on everything and were arguing more than he realized. The final straw came in New Jersey when he finally told her that he felt that she was pushing him away (something she never said, mind you) and that he jumped into it with all of his heart while she was skeptical and then after the show she was ready to jump into it but he was more skeptical.

Smitty pushes Aaron to admit the status of his relationship. Aaron pauses and says that the relationship is beyond repair and that they were too young to feel as miserable as they did.

Whatever. I still don't like you.

So now Aaron gets to see what Helene said. I will say that Aaron is watching this rather intently and is not really reacting to any of it. I want him to do something other than sit here and look like stone. Not even when she says she got no real reason as to why he broke it off.

He says it makes him feel very small (as it should). Aaron, though, says that it is a prime example of how they don't see things eye to eye because they have different perceptions. Smitty counters with the fact that he was telling her that he loved her and everything was great until the bomb.

Aaron says that they had a lot of fun that weekend but the damage was already done and he was just going through the motions. He wasn't into the relationship at all and he needed to tell her where he was coming from.

Back to another video clip now. Again, he's sitting there like stone. Not really much reaction at all. You can tell he kinda wanted to interrupt at one point but held off. I think part of him liked hearing that she still had some feelings for him. You could see a small smirk come across his face.

The bastard.

He says that what he just saw was nothing new since he had been going through it for three months. Okay, so that explains the stone statue moments. He says it hurt the first time he heard it but as of right now there is no real solution as to how they can make things right. He says it's just frustrating to know that he can't get back with her because of things that have happened. He officially says that they are not engaged and that the two of them will not be in touch with each other going forward.

Nice to know that you've moved on and are dating a Playboy.com Cybergal while Helene is still suffering with feelings for you, you worthless piece of trash. Hey, where is Heidi from Joe Millionaire? The two of you are perfect for each other. I smell a Hall of Shame nomination coming on here. Anyone else?

So from a breakup we go over to the new couple - Ryan and Trista. There are still people in shock over this result. I'm one of them, but I'm happy with how it turned out even if I did admit to crying for Charlie. The fact I'm doing this show without champagne should say a lot as well.

We learn that the proposal was several months ago and their feelings for each other are still very strong and their love is real. They keep saying that they both are the luckiest people on the face of the planet to have found each other. The engagement is real and she is still wearing the ring. She says she's always wanted a long engagement but with the way that Ryan makes her feel compared to other men, she is somewhat flexible with the date of their wedding.

Then comes the fact that they live in different states and the fact that this didn't work for the last two couples from The Bachelor. Trista says that they are three distinct couples and therefore they have their own unique outcomes. The first time that he knew that he was in love with Trista was when they were sitting on his couch in Vail and they were kissing.

As for Trista's family, he jokingly says that he needs to have a few words with her parents. He says that Charlie is a great guy and that it is no surprise that they liked him as much as they did. He has total respect for Charlie and has nothing against him. As for asking for Trista's hand in marriage, he knew he had a 50/50 chance at it turning out positively, he felt it was the right thing to do to tell her father how he felt and what his intentions were. He says it was the right thing to do then and it's still was the right thing now.

Charlie is now brought out and he gets hugs from Trista and Ryan. It definitely appears that all is well between the three of them. Charlie says it was one of those difficult situations where he is torn and that he really did want to be with Trista. He says he wanted to be with her but only for the right reasons - if it was meant to be. Charlie says that in watching the show he can see Ryan falling in love with Trista and he has no objections to the two of them being together.

He says he was broken-hearted, not to mention being in shock and disbelief. He says he was ready to develop a relationship between the two of them because he believed that you couldn't fall in love with someone in such a short period of time. Charlie even said that in the final eight that if it wasn't him he wanted it to be Ryan.

Now this is why Charlie has slowly started to worm his way into my heart. This is the best compliment you can ever pay a guy so listen up everyone - Charlie says that he wanted Ryan to be the guy that she chose in the event that it wasn't him, because Ryan is the type of guy that he would want his sister to date. If a man trusts you enough that he would let you date his sister, that is saying a lot.

As for Ryan, he says that it's awkward seeing Charlie because he's friends not only with him but the other 23 guys. To a certain extent, he feels guilty that in the end, he won this one woman's heart over all of them. Ryan even agrees with me that the sister comment is high praise indeed.

Trista finally gets to tell Charlie the whole story behind it, since she was in his position before, but the hard part is that she doesn't get to fully explain anything and they never get to see each other again. She says that when she finally thought about what was going on, her thoughts were more consumed with Ryan than with Charlie. It was that realization that helped her to make her decision.

Charlie says that he is glad to know that it worked out as it did. In fact, he has no doubt that the two of them are going to have a long, fruitful marriage together. Trista says that Charlie is going to do well on his own.

So we have one couple and two different versions of how their relationship ended and we have one couple that seems destined to make it work despite the odds against them.

I for one am hoping that it does work out. I want a happy ending dammit.

C. Brian Devinney is a human resources consultant from New York City. When not reporting on reality TV, he can be found rooting on his beloved Yankees, writing in his online diary, Tales From the City, or designing new items for his online store BlogGear.com. He can be reached at TheRealityFactor@aol.com.

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