Bachelor Pad; Holly Durst engaged to Blake Julian

Holy wow, The Bachelor world is a crazy social club to belong to. Once you’re on one of the shows you enter a new world, and even if you don’t end up with someone at the end, there are still mixers, reunions, and then the competition sister show Bachelor Pad to find someone who understands the dark and crazy things you now understand. It must be hard to go out into the real world and date someone normal after being exposed to this weird world. There are so many awkward questions to be answered, like who gives who the rose at the end of the date, and if the other person went on the date “the right reasons.” There’s also the question of whether you should date 25 people at once, or if you should be one of 25 vying for a single person’s attention. The real world doesn’t usually work that way, so it’s just easier to go back to the pool of Bachelor contestants to find a suitable partner. You’ve now been ruined for regular people.

Then, we end up with Vienna-Jake-Kasey situations, and also Holly-Michael-Blake situations. Everyone’s nauseatingly familiar with the V-J-K sitch, (Click here to find out if Vienna and Kasey are still together,) but this other triangle goes farther back. Here’s our attempt to recap how Holly, Michael, and Blake got to Bachelor Pad, and where they’re going from there.

Holly Durst was a contestant on Season 12 of The Bachelor with Matt Grant. She didn’t win, but was a fan favorite. She then was linked to Jeremy Anderson, a Bachelorette contestant from Season 4 with DeAnna Pappas (according to the winner of that season, Jesse Csincsak, who also says that before being cast on The Bachelor, Holly was linked to American Idol contestant Justin Guarini.) Holly eventually started dating Michael Stagliano, who was on Season 5 of The Bachelorette with Jillian Harris. Incidentally, his twin brother Stephen Stagliano started dating DeAnna Pappas. (Are you confused yet?)

Michael proposed to Holly in June of 2010, and they wanted to have a double wedding with DeAnna and Stephen (all four are pictured above), but Holly was having commitment issues, and they reportedly broke up around December 2010. They got back together after the broken engagement, but Michael eventually broke things off because he says he was hurt about Holly’s refusal to be engaged to him. A few months after the final break-up, they landed on Bachelor Pad 2 together. We’re two episodes in now, and it seems obvious that Michael still has feelings for Holly, but she’s really into Blake Julian (who appeared recently on Ashley Hebert’s season of The Bachelorette.)

On the episode before the finale, tensions really rose when the couples were forced to pair up, and Holly accepted Michael’s invitation. Blake was paired up with Erica Rose, who tried to seduce them during the date they won in a Newlyweds-style game. When he refused that, she tried to convince him to stay the night for appearances, but he was concerned about what the others (namely Holly) would think if he spent the night with yet another girl. B and E didn’t receive roses themselves, but they got roses to give to another couple. They chose Vienna and Kasey, thinking they had a powerful pull, but it turned out V & K weren’t as powerful as they thought. The deciding vote came down to Holly, who didn’t want to send Blake home, but felt it was the right decision for the game. She voted for Blake, but sent him home with a note promising it wasn’t the end for them.

Apparently it wasn’t just a fling, because according to Reality Steve, Blake and Holly are still together, and actually got engaged. They filmed a Neil Lane sponsored proposal video that will air during the Bachelor Pad Season 2 finale.