Gerry Turner Revealed How He “Failed” On The Golden Bachelor

Inaugural Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner was “pleasantly surprised” by how his season ended, but he still has at least one major regret about his journey. Though it remains to be seen if Gerry will propose to Leslie Fhima, Theresa Nist, or neither of them, he’s already told both women (plus third place finisher Faith Martin) he loves them.

“I’ve always tried to commit to myself to only try and say ‘I love you’ to one person for the rest of my life. I only wanted to be intimate with one person for the rest of my life. I failed at that,” Gerry told Variety in an interview conducted before his season aired but not published until Nov. 16 to prevent spoilers. He indicated that the confusing difference between falling in love with a person versus loving a moment played a role.

“I so regretted it, because I felt like I wasn’t true to myself at that moment,” he said. “This is what I expected of myself and I failed. When you say that to someone, it can become very destructive.”

Fantasy Suite Faux Pas

Adding that he felt “awful” afterward, Gerry referenced the Fantasy Suites episode, which aired on Nov. 16. “That’s the situation when you saw me walk out of the room because they kept asking about it,” the 72-year-old grandfather elaborated. “That’s still the moment that I most regret.”

While previewing his overnight dates with Leslie and Theresa in Costa Rica in an earlier interview on the Tamron Hall show, Gerry admitted he’s still “not sure” of the difference between falling in love and being in love.

“I will say this: Those three women, I was in love with or I love them, however you want to say it,” he added on the daytime talk show’s Nov. 7 episode. “They were unique, genuine women. And by the end of my journey, I realized, of course, that only one of them was the woman I can’t live without.”

Heartbreak Before Happiness

The Fantasy Suites were pivotal to providing the clarity he needed. “The watershed moments happened twice, one for each Fantasy Suite,” Gerry told The Hollywood Reporter. “And up until that point, if I had not remained open-minded, I might have made a mistake. Who knows how it would have ended.”

In a promo for the “emotional” Golden Bachelor finale, which airs on Nov. 30, Gerry revealed that he was ready “to propose to the woman that I love” and start “a whole new life” together. However, the prospect of sending either Leslie or Theresa home seemed to make him regret signing up for the show altogether.

“The only time I’ve ever felt worse in my whole life was when my wife passed away, and this is a [bleep] close second,” he says in ABC’s sneak peek. “Had I known this would be how much pain I would cause someone, I would have never taken the first step in this journey.”