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Ben Flajnik Reveals He and Courtney Robertson Made Amends After ‘Bachelor’ Book Drama (Exclusive)

It’s been nearly a decade since Ben Flajnik and Courtney Robertson’s messy Bachelor breakup, which she chronicled in her 2015 memoir, but where does the season 16 duo stand today? Bachelor Nation may be surprised to learn they recently made amends.

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“I was not happy about the book. I didn’t read the book. I flipped through it,” the 38-year-old winemaker said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast while promoting his Frequent Flyers book series. “People do things for different reasons — who knows, you know, what she was going through at the time. We’ve since made amends. We’re fine. We’re cool. We didn’t speak for probably six years after that book came out and then I reached out and just kind of extended the olive branch.”

Making Amends! Ben Flajnik Reveals When He Last Spoke to Courtney Robertson
Ben Flajnik and Courtney Robertson. Dave Allocca/Starpix/Shutterstock; Rob Latour/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Flajnik and Robertson, 38, got engaged on his 2012 season of the ABC series. Nearly three years later, she released her tell-all, I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain, telling Us at the time that the “only backlash I got was from Ben himself.” More recently, the Arizona resident married Humberto Preciado, with whom she shares son Joaquin, 13 months. Robertson announced last month that she is pregnant with a baby girl.

“She talks to my sister a lot still,” Flajnik told Us of his ex. “They’re still very quite friendly. I think she is happy living in Scottsdale, at least it looks that way. And, you know, Courtney was always a really nice person, deep down. She got a pretty raw deal with the edit.”

Related: Messiest Bachelor Nation Breakups

When asked whether he regrets giving the final rose to the “villain” of his season, he noted, “I don’t. I was, like, head over heels in love with Courtney. She was the only one.”

Flajnik, for his part, now resides in Sonoma and recently released the first volume of his children’s book series, Frequent Flyers.

“It’s about this little trio of flies that live at the airport, and they board commercial flights for international destinations [and] teach kids about acceptance of other cultures and not being afraid of airplanes and travel and they get into some shenanigans along the way,” Flajnik told Us. “I just thought it was like a pretty cute idea. And I really liked the name, so I trademarked it and my sister had a baby, Josephine, and I figured this would be, like, a nice little gift to her. So I spent the vast majority of COVID in inner circles with my close friends and their kids and pulled a lot of character traits out of my niece and some of my other friend’s kids and things like that. It was a COVID project. … It’s been fun [and a] creative outlet and project that’s been received well.”

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The former reality TV personality, who wrote the second book about the flies traveling to New York City, is also still looking for his special someone.

“I think I want kids. I’m still looking for my partner, my person,” he told Us. “I won’t really know until I get there and start with that. I watch my friends with kids and especially my sister and brother-in-law and the love and happiness it brings to them. So it would be kind of a shame to miss out on that.”

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