The Golden Bachelor’s Season 2 runner-up Cindy Cullers has fired a shot at Mel Owens by claiming that he wasn’t sold on Peg Munson until the very end.
Cindy discussed Mel’s strong feelings for her and how it was difficult to leave The Golden Bachelor before their overnight Fantasy Suite date during a recent appearance on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast.
“If he is going to require people to be in it until the end, he better keep his eye on the ball. I think he took his eye off the relationships, and I can’t really put my finger on what really happened,” Cindy told the podcast’s co-hosts Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt.
“I think it kind of got just too real for him. I felt him pulling away, and maybe it was that it was Peg all along, but I can tell you, if it was Peg, he wouldn’t have been kissing me like he did in the water!”
Cindy continued to make references about sports given Mel, a former NFL player turned attorney, had preached that it’s vital to “finish the game” no matter the circumstances.
“I just think that maybe he lost track of the ball and was looking at the timeline,” Cindy said.
“He was looking at completing all those steps, but he forgot to carry the ball with him in those steps,” she added, “and he wasn’t really progressing in a relationship with me or trying to figure out what life would look like with me.”
Cindy said she was definitely envisioning what the future could look like with Mel during her hometown date.
“Really what struck me — and I hadn’t brought this up yet — but we were in my condo during hometowns and he was shaking a Cosmo for me. I’m going to cry at this,” Cindy said, getting choked up.
Since a Cosmo is Cindy’s favorite drink, Mel apparently sent the ingredients to her condo so he could make her a special cocktail.
“The shaker was spilling everywhere and I didn’t care. I was just watching this amazing man in my place, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is what I want to be doing on Tuesday and, you know, on the every day,'” Cindy recalled.
“And I think Mel was just going through the process part of it, and maybe he took his eye off the ball and stopped thinking about what Tuesdays might be.”
When asked if any part of her wondered if Mel had already made his decision by the time of their Fantasy Suite and picked Peg, Cindy confirmed, “No.”
“No, I mean, if it was Peg all along, he wouldn’t have behaved with me the way he did, you know, twirls me on the dock,” Cindy reasoned.
“And if you know you’re going to be with someone else, you refrain from those things. I mean, you have niceties and you’re gracious, but I think a man or a woman, if you’ve already made your mind up, you behave differently.”
Cindy elaborated, “You’re not going to continue to kiss and hold and hug and have those intimate moments if you’ve already made your decision.”
Cindy was also convinced that had she gone into the Fantasy Suite with Mel, he would’ve been “honest” with her about his feelings for Peg.
“He really was very upfront with me, and I felt I could trust him, for sure,” Cindy noted.
On The Golden Bachelor’s Season 2 finale, Cindy quit during her Fantasy Suite date because Mel had talked about how he couldn’t see himself getting engaged to his winning bachelorette for two years.
Cindy, seemingly desperate for validation and vulnerability from Mel, explained how she had joined The Golden Bachelor as a leap of faith and was expecting an engagement at the Final Rose Ceremony.
“You know the saying, ‘First comes love, then comes marriage’… That’s how it works,” Mel told Cindy.
Cindy said she wanted a commitment from Mel — which she didn’t think was too much to ask for — and so it didn’t seem like he was her guy.
After Cindy left the show, Mel told the cameras that he was choosing to continue in the process with only her. Mel said he didn’t want Peg to think that she was his winner “by default.”
Mel clarified in a confessional that he “never felt this way” about a woman before and he didn’t want Peg to think he was progressing with her only because he had no other option.
Mel said he felt “lucky” to have a “special” relationship with Peg, whom he thought was an amazing woman.
Mel also told Serena and Joe on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast last month that he knew “earlier on” that Peg had the potential to be The One and he “had a crush on her” from the first time he saw her in a cocktail dress on Night 1.
“Right then, I knew,” Mel insisted.
And Peg said on the podcast that the only time she had doubts Mel was going to pick her was when he knocked on her door in Antigua following their Fantasy Suite.
“He said, ‘I need to talk to you.’ And at that moment, for a split second, I was like, ‘Uh oh, here it is,'” Peg recalled.
“Because I know him now, and he has enough respect… and enough honesty and enough integrity that he wouldn’t have put me through that Rose Ceremony — and I know that about him now — so I thought that knock on the door was him coming to tell me, ‘Hey, look, I have a better connection with this other person.'”
At the Final Rose Ceremony of Mel’s The Golden Bachelor season, Mel gave Peg a promise ring and said he wanted her in his future, but he didn’t say he was “in love” with her until they went public with their relationship on After the Final Rose.
Mel has faced criticism for being so guarded all season long and for not even telling Peg that he loved her at the end of his journey.
According to a production insider, Peg and Mel are already clashing and having problems in the real world.
