The general contractor kissed another woman when he was engaged to the pilot.
Tino Franco is discussing his dramatic breakup with Rachel Recchia. One month after the season finale of The Bachelorette aired -- when fans found out that the general contractor and the pilot split after he cheated on her -- Tino sat down for a wide-ranging interview on Nick Viall's Viall Files podcast and reflected on the "traumatic experience" of the show, his mistake, and how he's feeling today. ET has reached out to ABC for comment.
Leading up to the engagement on the show, Tino said he had "no doubt" that he wanted to pop the question to Rachel. Those good feelings continued as the pair began their post-show romance.
"It was amazing. Rachel really, really knows how to have a partner and make them feel really special and valued," Tino said. "... She really made me feel so secure in our relationship and was just everything I could've asked for and more. Of course, the distance was challenging, but we found plenty of time to text and talk on the phone. The meet-ups were always very passionate and we got to learn so much more about each other."
While the series provided Tino with a therapist during the show, he admitted that he wishes he had taken "therapy way more seriously" before issues started to arise with Rachel, noting, "I know for a fact that would've helped me find...a less toxic outlet for when times got hard."
Those hard times began when promos for the season started to air and, for the first time, Tino watched his fiancée's PDA with other men.
"That took way bigger of a toll on me than I thought it would. You couple that with it feeling a little distant. I think we both had a lot of pressure on ourselves," he said. "... Me and her are very passionate people. We would have talks that would get elevated, but that doesn't give you any excuse to act out... I have a tendency that when something happens or is said, I think catastrophically... I was feeling really insecure."
Amid those insecurities, some conversations about whether or not Rachel would wear her engagement ring to "After the Final Rose" took place, which made things even harder for Tino.
"Any conversation around that really, really cut me deep," he said. "... Even if something was said about the ring, I should've taken a step back... That was the first part of where I think I let her down, just letting my insecurities run off-leash when we were having conversations about that."
It was during one of those hard times that Tino went out with friends one night.
"I just went out with friends. I was feeling a little in the dumps. It was another one of those 'we were giving each other space' things, so we hadn't talked in a couple of days," he said. "I was getting attention... It's so shameful and I'm not proud of it, but I just kind of gave in. I just leaned in and we kissed. That wasn't fair to that girl either."
"I did it and I realized really quick, I don't know what the future holds, but this is not who I am and this is not what I should be doing," Tino added. "It was pretty haunting."
Though he spoke to Rachel the next day he didn't tell her about the kiss during that conversation.
"That's, I think, as big of a mistake as what I actually did... I should've told her the day after. Hands down. Rachel deserves all that time back and I can't give it to her," he said. "... At the time, it just really felt like the relationship was kind of checked out of. I didn't want to handle it publicly and all that. I just felt like, if we were checking out and I knew it was a one-time thing."
While he didn't tell Rachel about his mistake right away, Tino did make some changes.
"The following weeks I took therapy way more seriously," he said. "... I avoided situations that could've put me in the same shoes... I did all the steps I should've been doing before my mistake... Time just kept going along and me and Rachel would talk every day."
Things did improve for the couple, but it was at that point that "the guilt really started to take over" for Tino.
"She was being so amazing, the best partner I could ever describe," he recalled. "... We had an in-person meetup and it went better than I could've ever described. It was just so fun and we were back and we were rock solid. I was like, 'I'm going to be with her forever.' That's where it really started to dawn on me. The voices in your head are like, 'You guys can make it through this. You can tell her the truth. You owe her the truth.'"
It was after Rachel randomly sent Tino a sweet text that he finally decided to tell her the truth.
"The phone call that night was, like, three hours. At the tail end of that it started to come up because other contestants were having issues with ex-girlfriends and stuff," he recalled. "... I didn't tell her the entirety of it right away, which, in hindsight, I absolutely should've... At first, I said, 'I kind of led this girl on the other night.' It was so weak. That was so lame... I was being a chicken."
"As the conversation progressed, she was listening really well. At a certain point I was like, 'If I tell her now there's a chance of this working out, but you need to tell her now,'" Tino continued. "... I told her, 'I just f**ked up. I went and I kissed this other girl. We were in a bad spot and I don't want to condone what I did. I messed up, but I love you so much. I want us to get past this.'"
Tino said that Rachel reacted "very maturely" to his reveal and asked for time to process the situation. Eventually, a house meet-up, which viewers saw play out on The Bachelorette finale, was scheduled and Tino was told that cameras would be there to catch the conversation.
"Eventually, it was let's try to work this out in person... The general consensus of when we were going into that house meetup was we're not giving up on this, we're going to work on it," he said. "I really hoped and thought... we were going to get a point, 'You f'd up but you're going to make it up to me... but we're going to make it through this.'"
It did not get to that point, though, and instead, the pair called it quits. When they reunited for the "After the Final Rose" special, Tino said the experience "wasn't very nice." That was perhaps especially true when Aven, one of Rachel's exes, came out on stage at the tail end of Tino's conversation with the pilot.
"I think I was just kind of like, 'Why I am still out here?'" Tino said. "At that point, we'd been broken up for a month. I was at war with myself about even going to 'AFR'... There was no way 'AFR' was going to be a nice look for me. I landed at, 'OK, you have to go. Just get up there and say you're sorry.'"
The situation, Tino said, left him more frustrated with the show than with Rachel or Aven.
"If Rachel wanted Aven to come out in front of me, I couldn't really say much. I was the one who cheated," he said. "She has every right to be hurt. I'd be hurt... The show, I would've thought with them knowing how much I'd been struggling [they] wouldn't go there."
As for Aven, Tino said that he's "a great dude."
"Aven's super nice and always straightforward and super accountable... I don't think he knew I was going to be out there when he came out," he said. "He reached out the night of 'AFR,' where I think my phone was off... He texted me that night and said, 'Hey, I'm really sorry. That was tough.' And then we talked on the phone the next day too."
"He's a class act dude," Tino added. "... I think he just went there with the intention of cheering up Rachel. Seeing an ex after four weeks when it was pretty crushing would be hard on anybody."
Amid the ups and downs of everything, Tino left the show-provided therapist for a psychologist that had been recommended to him in order to process the "traumatic experience" of being on the series.
"She was phenomenal, she was a great listener, but... I'm always going to associate her with the kind of traumatic experience," Tino said of choosing to leave the first therapist's care. Currently, he's seeing a psychologist twice a week as he comes to terms with what he did and who he wants to be in the future.
"I do not stand by what I did at all. It's not cool. It wasn't fair to Rachel. It's something I'm ashamed of," he said. "... It was the lowest thing I could of done in relationship terms to Rachel. It wasn't fair to her at all... It's the biggest mistake of my life."
He also shot down the theory that he and Rachel, like Friends' famed Ross and Rachel, were "on a break" during the kiss.
"We weren't on a break," he said. "I don't know where that came from. We were not separated or anything like that. When I acted out, I felt like we were starting to check out. We were just in a really dark place."
Rachel previously said as much in an interview with ET.
"I would have to know if we were on a break... I would be aware," she said. "I can see it maybe because there is such a he-said, she-said [thing, and] so much of this did happen off camera. That's just the reality of it, that we never will know the full story. I won't even know the full story. It's, at this point, just over and I think we all just have to kind of accept the facts that we have."
Tino, it seems, has accepted as much.
"I really. really loved Rachel through the whole process. I still think about her every day. It's just after everything that happened... I've just moved on," he said. "... I think there is somebody who's more compatible for her out there. That guts me even two months after the breakup."
"If she ever needed something and needed to call me I'd always answer," Tino continued. "I'll always care about her and appreciate our time together. She set the bar really high for my future fiancée. I really appreciate the hell out of her, but I think it's just time to move on."
In her past interview with ET, Rachel revealed why she doesn't regret any part of her journey.
"Every decision I made was the absolute right decision for me in the moment," she said. "Of course, looking back, there's so many things I could have changed. I was so far from being perfect, as hard as I might have tried, but I think just so many lessons that we are going to be able to use for the rest of our life... We just did the best we could and really tried to follow our hearts the entire time."
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