Jenn Tran thought she had found her happily ever after, but she was left in tears following a broken engagement. Fans have been weighing in on the shocking end to her love story, expressing that she picked the wrong guy.
“The Bachelorette” star Jenn Tran, 26, was left heartbroken after the man she thought would be the love of her life let her down. The physician assistant student shocked many when she decided to propose to Devin Strader in Hawaii during the show’s finale because they think she is better suited for another man she didn’t pick.
The scene was set; Tran looked stunning in a beautiful white lace dress as she proposed to Strader, whom she had a ring for, intending to “choose herself in this journey.” However, things started to go awry for the former couple after the final rose ceremony when they left Hawaii.
“It’s been a really hard couple of months. We had left Hawaii engaged, it was the happiest day of my life. I thought I had found who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with,” disclosed the 26-year-old to a media outlet.
According to Tran, Strader began pulling away from the relationship. She divulged how all the wonderful promises of forging a new life together in a shared space that Strader committed to were made in vain.
Instead of striving to make their relationship work, Strader’s efforts were inconsistent, and Tran said he wasn’t calling her as much.
Adding further insult to injury is the fact that, initially, the ex-couple had a planned counseling appointment in August. However, the evening before, Strader broke off their engagement during a 15-minute phone call with Tran.
Speaking on the matter, she divulged, “He had basically said that he didn’t love me anymore and didn’t feel the same way and he felt like things were off the second he proposed.” Strader had gone from making bold and proud declarations of devotion to falling out of love like it was nothing.
After he ended their relationship, Tran saw her ex in person during the “After the Final Rose” episode where things got confrontational.
In addition to letting Strader know how heartbroken he had left her, Tran asked him why he called off their engagement the way he did via the phone call.
The bold beauty also confronted Strader about why he followed a previous “The Bachelor” contestant, Maria Georgas, on Instagram after their broken engagement. “It completely invalidated our entire relationship, everything we felt for each other,” said Tran to Strader.
Reports state that Strader didn’t have any response other than to express how “regretfully late” he was in letting Tran know how he actually felt the whole time. Concerning the answer he gave for why he started following Georgas, Strader said he had no excuse for doing so.
Not backing down, Tran made it clear that she felt as though Strader never fully committed to their engagement. She told him how ready she had been to spend the rest of her life with him and the plans she had for the two of them to start a family, but added how he never wanted that with her.
“So don’t sit here and try to tell me how I feel. Because you don’t. You had one foot out the door the entire time,” she asserted. Fans of the show who witnessed the proposal, how Tran got her heart broken, and had a face-to-face conversation with Strader, are up in arms on social media.
A poignant reaction comes from a viewer on X who posted a picture of Tran crying next to Strader as the two watched the episode back. “Sorry but the producers making Jenn watch her proposal sitting next to Devin in front of everyone is cruel. #TheBachelorette,” penned the X user.
Others believe that Tran should have never picked Strader in the first place, expressing how she would have been better off choosing another contestant whom she ended things with, Jonathon Johnson.
“You know who wouldn’t have [broken] off an engagement and claim he never loved you?” wrote someone on X with a picture of Johnson attached to their tweet.
Echoing the sentiment, another person also posed a rhetorical question which read, “[You] know who wouldn’t be hurting [Jenn] right now?” This person did so with the accompaniment of a photo of Will Smith gesturing to something on his left, which, in this case, was a picture of Johnson.
“He was the Right choice.. No doubt,” added another netizen. “Undisputed choice. Undoubtedly,” reiterated an observer. Agreeing with all the aforementioned comments, someone else noted, “[Exactly]. He was my choice for Jenn.”
Looking back on his experience on “The Bachelorette” and his journey with Tran, Johnson divulged how he has no ill will and recalled his time on the show with fondness during the “Men Tell All” episode after he was eliminated.
Speaking to Deadline, who asked whether he got the closure he needed after having a final conversation with Tran, Johnson shared, “I think watching the episode back gave me all the closure I needed.”
He went on to compare the relationship he shared with Tran to the other two she shared with fellow final contestants Marcus Shoberg and Strader. Johnson said that while it felt like he and Tran were stuck in limbo with their love for one another, her other two relationships were solid.
“Maybe we’re just really good friends. We’re also attracted to each other, but we weren’t in love with each other, and seeing the relationship she had with those other two was the closure I needed to be like, it just wasn’t as strong for the two of us, and that’s okay,” reflected Johnson.