‘The Bachelorette’: Greg Grippo Admits He ‘Projected a Lot of My Insecurities and My Anger’ on Katie Thurston
Greg Grippo was a clear front-runner on Katie Thurston’s season of The Bachelorette until hometowns, where he decided to eliminate himself from the running. But not before they had a headline-making emotional argument. After the episode aired, Thurston took to her Instagram and posted a series of slides discussing the term “gaslighting.”
During the finale, Grippo said he didn’t have any regrets. But in a recent interview with former bachelor Nick Viall on his podcast, The Viall Files, the former contestant says, looking back, he realizes he came off “like an a – -.”
Katie Thurston confronts Greg Grippo on ‘The Bachelorette’ finale
After Grippo left, Thruston reacher her “lowest point” in her season crying on the bathroom floor with co-host Kaitlyn Bristowe.
“I feel blindsided right now,” she said. “Today, I’m heartbroken and defeated. It’s just this unnatural feeling of, like, trying to fall in love, but also dealing with the biggest heartbreak of your life. It just feels like it’s all for nothing.”
Thurston hadn’t spoken to Grippo since he’d left the show. When they saw each other at the finale, things quickly became heated. Thurston told the former contestant that she feels he never loved her.
“You’re saying that I’m not validating you enough but it’s like, you got a first impression rose, you got a first one-on-one, a second one-on-one, every single group date,” she told Grippo on stage. “And in the moment, I’m not realizing this. But I’m watching it back, I am giving you validation every single week. And for that Hometown to go as perfectly as it did until the very end, and for you to do a 180, I feel like you were looking for the perfect opportunity to escape because you were never ready for an engagement.”
Greg admits he ‘came off angry like a child’ in his fight with Katie
During “After the Final Rose,” Grippo didn’t exactly apologize to Thurston. And he never explicitly said he was in the wrong. But in a recent interview with Viall, he said, looking back, he thinks he should have behaved differently.
“You know, the first time I watched it… I wasn’t looking at it through Katie’s lens… Watching it for the second time with all of the viewers, yeah, I came off like an a – -,” he said. “I came off like a petulant child at times. I regret it because she didn’t deserve that. I definitely projected a lot of my insecurities and my anger on her. At the end of the day, it wasn’t fair to her.”
Grippo went on to say he “hate[s] watching [the episode] back.”
“That hometown [date] made me really upset,” he said. “Truthfully, I was so eager to try to get on the same page as her, but it didn’t come off that way. I came off angry, like a child. It was very immature for me… we can’t normalize that behavior. I was pretty ashamed of it all.”
Greg says his relationship with Katie ‘wasn’t the healthiest’
Grippo and Thurston bonded early over the death of their fathers. Grippo told Thurston it’d previously been hard for him to open up to a partner about heavy topics. He also told her she made him happy for the first time in a long time. Now that Grippo has had some space from his time on the show, he realizes how unhealthy his relationship with Thurston was. He knows now he needs to work on himself first.
“Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest relationship in the world because I was depending on her for happiness and that wasn’t fair to her,” he said. “I want to be in a position where I’m completely happy with myself before I get into another relationship.”
