The Bachelor runner-up Raven Gates is opening up to the media about what really went on behind closed doors in the Fantasy Suite.
She also reveals what she wishes leading man Nick Viall had done differently during The Bachelor finale, in which Raven got dumped.
Raven says that despite finishing second to Vanessa Grimaldi, she has no regrets about going on the show, or sharing personal secrets.
Chiefly, Gates’ now-famous revelation that she’s never had an orgasm (Raven’s ex-boyfriend claims he gave her many orgasms, FWIW).
Viall didn’t have much to say when the Arkansan told him this, but they did go to the Fantasy Suite, and she looked happy afterward, so …
Did she or didn’t she?!
“I definitely knew I was going to tell him. I’m an open book,” Raven said of her decision to tell Nick – and a national television audience.
“I think honesty is the best policy … especially when it’s something I’m nervous about and if this is someone I was spending my life with.”
“We had to have those conversations, whether it’s embarrassing or if it’s uncomfortable,” she adds. “I wasn’t nervous about telling him.”
“I pretty much had my mind made up that I was going to. I was nervous about the night in general and just the seriousness of it.”
“But I was not nervous telling him that. Just that day was nerve-wracking … it was so close to the end and it was a big night if that makes sense.”
It does. Again, though … did she or didn’t she?!
“Well, the thing about the show is they really capture those exciting moments and they make everything pretty true to what is happening.”
“So I think I don’t really have to say too much.”
“I think the show pretty much captured it.”
One thing she wishes the show didn’t have to capture was Nick cutting her loose after she poured her heart out to him on the finale.
“I want you to know that I’m ready … I couldn’t be more sure, and I love you,” Raven told him, only to be sent packing seconds later.
Why let her say all that if he’d already made up his mind?
Asked about that post-finale, Gates said, “That was a question that was in the back of my mind that I didn’t get to ask him yesterday.”
“But I did wonder why he didn’t give me [that] courtesy.”
“But I also understand that he knows me well enough that he knows I love to say what I’m feeling, and I love to leave it all out on the table.”
“So I really think he was just giving me that opportunity.”
“I did have that question for him, so I am curious about it, but I felt like I already knew the answer,” Gates said on a conference call.
“[Nick Viall] was going to say that he wanted me to leave it all out on the table because that’s ultimately what I would have wanted.”
For his part, Viall revealed that he regrets doing that.
“I felt immense guilt … and I felt immense sadness … for putting Raven through that, and for that I’ll always be terribly sorry,” he said.
“There’s no great way of doing it.”
In any event, Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi are engaged, while Raven seemed happier on ABC’s After the Final Rose than they were.
As for what’s next for her, we are thrilled that Gates will be headed to Bachelor in Paradise … hopefully with the rest of these characters:
