‘The Bachelorette’ Alum Dean Unglert Slams Bachelor Nation Relationships As Not ‘Real’

Dean Unglert may have had his share of Bachelor Nation romances, but The Bachelorette alum is done with the franchise relationships he’s slamming as fake.

In an interview with Access Wednesday, Unglert opened up about the relationships he’s formed with The Bachelor alums, including his short-lived Bachelor Winter Games romance with Lesley Murphy.

“None of these Bachelor relationships are real, not a single one of them. … Maybe you’ve got some marriages and some kids and those ones are real, but every one of them’s fake and contrived and I’m not into that,” he told the outlet Wednesday. “Granted, there are some that are real, like those ones I guess, but boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, every single one of them is fake.”

Murphy and Unglert first met and connected on Winter Games, but broke up just four months later after he claims they developed “a lot of issues” with their relationship.

“I have trust issues when it comes to a lot of things and I always felt like there was a switch that would get turned on, especially to kind of peddle it out to the masses, it never really felt super, super genuine,” he explained. “Just recently I was talking to a friend who was at Winter Games and they were saying how, when the cameras were on, you know, I’m not gonna badmouth Lesley, because she is a great person, but there was a noticeable difference between how someone was acting between when the cameras were on and when the cameras were off and, again, I’m not gonna say anything negative, but I don’t really like that stuff.”

Of Murphy’s new relationship with drone operator Alex Kav, the Bachelor in Paradise alum said, “Good for her. The universe works in weird ways, I guess. I’m happy for her. Hopefully her and her boyfriend are super happy.”

As for Unglert, he plans on never dating within his own franchise again.

“I think contestants on The Bachelor will prioritize a relationship over the person, right? So they’re like, ‘I love being in a relationship more than I love you as a person’ and that stuff, it sucks. That’s just not how it should be. You should love a person and then want to be in a relationship with them, not love the idea of a relationship and then you find someone to be in that with you, because it makes sense,” he confessed.

“From a marketing side of things, if you’re in a relationship, you get more good notoriety, whatever it is and it’s just like, who cares? I’m not gonna be in a relationship for the sake of, like, image or selling more things on Instagram, you know? So if you wouldn’t be in a relationship if all of that weren’t there, you shouldn’t be in a relationship to begin with.”

He added: “That’s kind of the approach I take and that’s kind of why I never want to get in a Bachelor relationship again because, whether or not, there is an inkling or whisper of a possibility that the other person might be in it because they see the value in it monetarily or whatever, social status wise.”

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo credit: Instagram/Dean Unglert