Charity Lawson‘s Bachelorette fantasy suites episode was two parts great, one part disappointing. The episode, which aired on Monday, August 7, on ABC, took Charity Lawson, Dotun Olubeko, Xavier Bonner, Joey Graziadei, and viewers off to Fiji following last week’s hometown dates. But what started out as a romantic vacation ended with a shocking reveal from Dotun that sent him packing in the end.
Things are going great with Dotun and Joey; Charity revealed in the episode that she’s in love with both of them, not just falling in love. Aaron Bryant, eliminated after last week’s hometowns, also made a surprise appearance. But Xavier delivered the most surprising reveals of the night when admitting that he was unfaithful for most of his previous relationship. Waiting until the end of the season to initiate that important conversation was a dealbreaker for Charity.
“That was a very, very hard conversation and an extremely harder conversation to watch back because, in that moment, I had so much going through my head,” Lawson told The Hollywood Reporter of the experience. “I personally felt blindsided to have that conversation come up at that point in the journey. We’re in Fiji, a week away from proposal, and to have a bombshell like that disclosed to me and trying to navigate and see how this is even possible to bounce back from, that was very hard.”
ABC/Craig Sjodin
It wasn’t what he revealed that made Charity send Xavier home, but rather when he decided to reveal it. The act of withholding that information is what broke Charity’s trust in him, as there were plenty of times earlier in the season in which this conversation would have been appropriate to initiate. That, and his disappointing answers to her followup questions, is what landed Xavier a one-way ticket home.
“I thought it was very selfish that he waited up until that point to have that very heavy conversation,” she said. “It wasn’t necessarily him disclosing a thing, but it was the questions that followed up. And for me, I’m a person that when you drop a bombshell like that, I’m gonna try to the best of my ability to get to the root of it and make sense of it for my life. And so the follow-up questions did not help him in any sense because he kept digging himself a deeper hole.”
“I knew, in that moment, this is absolutely not something that I need in my life, and this is not what I came in here looking for — qualities of a man that’s gonna be my future husband,” she added.
Charity is happy to have shedded that relationship ahead of the finale, saying she has no regrets about her decision. “I was shown everything that I needed to see, and I’m grateful that I was shown it in that moment — because God forbid it happened afterwards,” she shared, adding, “I don’t think that would have been a very healthy or successful relationship.”
Next week, the men reunite for the annual reunion special. Charity’s fairy tale adventure will come to an end the following week.
The Bachelorette, Season 20 Finale, Monday, August 14, 8/7c, ABC
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