Spoilers for The Bachelorette Season 20 will follow. Charity Lawson’s season of The Bachelorette has drawn controversy since the very beginning, with some pieces of criticism far more warranted than others. But for most viewers, the finale delivered.
Sure, there were those upset that Charity didn’t choose Joey Graziadei, but he’ll have plenty more time to shine soon as the next Bachelor. Yes, Charity ended up engaged to Dotun Olubeko. But not before Aaron Bryant came back to rock the boat.
Aaron was eliminated during hometowns, but he clearly couldn’t take that lying down. The man flew out to Fiji to ask Charity for another shot. And for a moment, it seemed like Charity was willing to give it to him. But she recently spoke with PEOPLE to detail her thought process as it went down.
Charity felt bad for Aaron’s “very sad departure”
She told the news outlet, “Aaron coming back was obviously something that caught me by surprise. I was not expecting that, but if we look at the hometown ceremony, it was a very sad departure. I had a great hometown with Aaron. We’re not taking that away.”
She continued, “I simply needed more time to just see, can this connection get to where it needs to be? Or is this just going to be this?” She further explained, “He flew across the world to come back, so I was like, let’s just have a conversation. Let’s see if this time is going to help any. That’s what helped me make [the] initial decision to accept Aaron back.”
However, she knew even as she spoke with Aaron that the connection wasn’t on the same level as with the remaining contestants. “At that point, I had already had two overnights with Dotun and Joey, so our connections at that point extremely surpassed the point of where I needed to feel extremely comfortable of, ‘Yeah, this is going to be my forever person.’ It just wasn’t that.”
TELL US – WHAT DID YOU THINK OF AARON’S GRAND GESTURE? WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE FINALE? DID CHARITY MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION?
