Sydney Stempfley noticed similarities between her breakup with Luyendyk and his unedited one with Becca Kufrin.
Sydney Stempfley made one heck of a prediction.
Arie Luyendyk Jr.'s ex-girlfriend made headlines after their breakup was revealed after he was announced as the Bachelor in September. In an interview with ET at the time, Stempfley described being "blindsided" by their breakup, just weeks earlier.
All seemed to be going well. She said they had met each other's families, celebrated their one-year anniversary with a romantic dinner, and then one day, a few weeks later, he cut things off, without so much as shedding a single tear. "The show would be perfect for @ariejr up until it comes to choosing just one ?," Stempfley tweeted on Sept. 3, months before her prediction came true.
"It’s [all] pretty laughable," she told ET in a new interview on Tuesday, as fans started to draw parallels between Luyendyk's breakup with her and how he handled ending his engagement with Becca Kufrin. "I feel bad for him because I don’t think it played out in the way he was hoping or had seen for himself. I feel bad for Becca. I’ve been there, and it’s not easy."
"[A relationship with Arie] is one-sided. Fun, but one-sided. If you’re willing to give more than what you receive, it’ll work out," she continued. "Things aren’t reciprocated -- emotions, love."
Luyendyk's unedited breakup with Kufrin was definitely hard for fans to watch. The 27-year-old publicist seemed to be on cloud nine when she was filmed arriving for their "happy couple weekend," only to have Luyendyk explain that he was leaving her to pursue a romance with his runner-up, Lauren Burnham.
"I can certainly relate to the breakup with Becca. [Hers and mine] were both out of nowhere. I think his problem is that he’s really bad at expressing his feelings," Stempfley said. "He doesn’t want to hurt the person he cares about, so he puts it off, procrastinates, and does it when he feels as if the time his right. … Typically in a breakup, you do get some sort of lead into it, an indication."
In fact, it "doesn't surprise" Stempfley that Becca didn’t seem to know his true feelings for Lauren. "There was a much better way he could’ve handled it. I don’t think he should’ve agreed to [filming it]," she said.
Stempfley also said that Luyendyk can't handle the "challenge" of a strong woman and was drawn to Burnham because of the "chase." "I don't think she knows what she's getting herself into," she expressed adding that despite Ludyendyk and Burnham's engagement on Tuesday's After the Final Rose, she'd be "surprised if it lasted longer than a year."
Stempfley considers Luyendyk a nice guy, but she relates to contestant Bekah Martinez calling him "manipulative" on ATFR. "I think that he is so charming. Like, he turns on that charm so much that you believe him, and in a way, it's manipulative. I always thought he was a genuine person, up until, really, the breakup, and I just started adding things up in my head... I would blame myself for certain things, but it would really not be my fault at all."
"Every once in a while, I would write some notes on how I was feeling, like a diary. And I was looking back to when I was in the relationship with him, and I'd written a note about how selfish he was," she continued. "He wasn't talking to me when I needed answers. I wasn't getting those, and he refused to talk to me, but then I'd see him in person, and he'd act like nothing happened. He doesn't like confrontation, that's for sure."
Stempfley is now predicting that things might change in Luyendyk's relationship with Burnham when they finally move in together in Arizona. "I'm just curious how it ends up playing out when she moves to Scottsdale," she said. "Do I think it's going to work out in the long run? If he hasn't learned his lesson, and if he goes back to his old ways, then I don't think it will work out."
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