ABC airs the finale of The Bachelorette 2012 with Emily Maynard tonight, Sunday July 22, 2012. Click here for a full recap of the finale.

Chris says he likes her engagement ring but Emily says the ring is not important and that what matters is the man. She would be happy with a piece of tape around her finger. Somehow, I don’t buy that coming from the woman with the best wardrobe on the show to date–which cost the show over $350K!

We see a recap of Emily’s breakup with Arie and she says she’s not good with confrontation. Emily adds that a part of her heart will always be with Arie. Emily says she didn’t give Arie any closure in Curacao and wants to talk to him. Luckily for Emily, Arie is in the house and joins Em on stage.

Arie says watching the episode helped him see things for the first time and it was good for him but he still felt shocked for being dumped. Arie feels nothing but love for her and is happy to know that she is happy. Arie says the viewers mostly saw the physical side of their relationship but he and Em had great conversations and plans for the future. He admits he left Curacao not knowing why Emily dumped him.

Emily again apologizes and says it was hard for her to watch the breakup again because it put her right back in that moment. She adds that Arie is everything she looked for and she’s learned that she needs to learn to be more direct even if her words hurt in the moment. She just had more confidence in her relationship with Jef.

After he left Curacao, Arie was heartbroken and could not leave his house. He even booked a flight to go see her in her hometown of Charlotte, NC for closure and a new beginning with Em without the cameras around.  But once he got there, he changed his mind because Jef was his best friend and he did not feel that it was right to do that and put her and Ricki through that. Instead, Arie called Em on the phone and left his journal that he wrote throughout the show for her to read at her house.


OMG I feel bad for Arie now.


Arie says he was very much in love with her and that is why he wanted her to read his journal, hoping it would change things if she saw how genuine he is and how completely in love with her he was. Em says out of respect for both Arie and especially for Jef she did not read the journal because they were his memories and they were not going to change anything. 


Em says if Jef was not on the show, it would have been her and Arie now together. She thinks she and Arie would have been happy for “a lot of years” but not forever– which is why she chose Jef; she had “long-term confidence” in Jef.  Arie says he is now happy for Emily and Jef–and says he and Jef are good friends and speak on the phone. Arie said seeing how happy Jef was made Arie get over “this” and move on. “I am in a good place now.” 

Jef will take Emily to Africa on a humanitarian mission to build wells there for his company People Water. Jef also says he is moving to Charlotte to avoid Ricki being uprooted from her home. For now, he’s getting his own place. The two want to get married in Charleston. Emily says she likes a spring wedding. He doesn’t care when the wedding is as long as it’s with his “best friend”.