The Real Reason Blake Reached Out To Clare After Her Bachelorette Exit

It's hard not to feel bad for Blake Moynes. The Bachelorette contestant established himself as a favorite early on when it was revealed that he slid into Clare Crawley's DMs before filming started not to get a leg up on the competition but to make sure she was doing okay.

Clare was touched by Blake breaking the rules to reach out to her, but it wasn't enough to win her heart as she fell hard for Dale Moss and got engaged before filming even wrapped. Clare's exit left Blake heartbroken, especially because he didn't know how Clare's relationship with Dale had developed. "I was shocked," he told Us Weekly. "You saw me, I was distraught. I was literally, like, 'What is going on?' I couldn't believe it because of the timeframe. Nothing made sense to me. Now it does. But at the time... I was distraught. I started stress balding in the shower because I didn't know that was going on."

After Clare and Dale's love story aired on TV, though, Blake realized that what the couple has is the real deal. "They look like they're absolutely crushing it," he said. "So, you know, if I'm basing it just off of that, then I think they're going to make it. They connected hard. You saw on the show, too. I didn't know that [at the time] and it all makes sense now."

Blake said he's rooting for Clare and Dale, and that he contacted her to wrap up loose ends. "I just reached out and said to her, 'Listen, you know, I know that through that episode, it looked like I was so against you guys, but at that time I had no idea that you guys hit it off the way you did,'" he said. "And now I'm watching it back and, like, I look like an idiot because I just thought there was no way and, you know, they're making it very clear that there is a way and I'm so happy for them because it looks like they're really taking off."

Blake may have gotten closure with Clare, but he's still working to get over her replacement on The Bachelorette, Tayshia Adams. Blake told Us Weekly in another interview that he feels his lingering feelings for Clare made it take longer for him to connect with Tayshia.

"If it was Tayshia from the beginning, I think my story would have been a little bit different," he said after being eliminated by Tayshia. "It was tough because I felt, like, even emotionally, I could feel it, like, she could see something there. And it was so frustrating to get in the limo and be like, 'There's something here but you're just not letting it happen.' And that was the most unfortunate."