Bachelorette Charity Lawson dug into him during Monday’s Men Tell All special, but Brayden Bowers just brushed it off.
“You can’t take it too seriously,” Brayden, 24, tells PEOPLE of the show’s drama.
During the Men Tell All special, Charity, 27, told Brayden she thought she gave him “a lot more grace than I think I should’ve given you” during his time on The Bachelorette.
“I will be honest, I did not like how you talked about our relationship to a lot of the guys,” she said. “That was really hard for me to watch back. I was caught off guard by like, you know, the comments of wanting me to not … turn off of being the Bachelorette of just like wanting to see me off. And I’m like, I feel like I was my 100 percent authentic self to you the whole time.”
Bachelorette Charity Calls Out Brayden for How He ‘Decided to Navigate Our Relationship’ (Exclusive)
The other men piled on him, too, and host Jesse Palmer asked Brayden why so many people took issue with him.
“Maybe the way I can come across sometimes can come across as maybe arrogant or maybe cocky or something like that,” Brayden said. “I’m not like your traditional type of guy I guess.”
Brayden told PEOPLE the negative feedback also extended to social media.
“I’ve been getting positive feedback on social media, but I’ve also been getting negative,” he said. “And even in person, I’ve gotten some negative.”
Charity Lawson and Brayden Bowers on ‘The Bachelorette’ season 20.
ABC/Craig Sjodin
Brayden recalled being at a bar with a friend back in California when a father of a fan asked the reality star to come over and meet his daughter.
“I come over to say hi and she’s like, ‘I kind of thought you were a little bit of a douchebag,’” Brayden recalls. “And she’s like, ‘I thought you should’ve gone home night 1, but I’m going to go to the restroom.’ She got up and left and her dad was sitting there like, ‘Can I buy you a drink, man?’”
Ultimately, Brayden thinks “the jokes and the memes are hilarious,” he says. “I think it’s just funny to see people’s takes on me. Some of the videos people, the comedians that are coming out of the woodworks with some of this stuff. My friends, they’ll still call me and be like, ‘Brayden’s going to Brayden.’”
Brayden received Charity’s first impression rose and proceeded to score a one-on-one date with her early in the season. But when Charity heard Brayden had been telling the other men he didn’t think he could propose at the end of the show, she decided to let him go.
“The idea of getting married at the end of this with all the drama, I just couldn’t do it,” the travel nurse told Jesse, 44, during Men Tell All. “And once I realized I couldn’t give her what she wanted, I realized it shouldn’t be there.”
Bachelorette Charity Lawson Wants to Put an End to ‘Foolishness’ and Threatens to Take Back a Rose from 1 Man
Jesse announced that Brayden will be part of the cast of Bachelor in Paradise season 9 and teased a kiss he shared with Bachelor alum Kat Izzo.
“I’d say that you were definitely in your element,” Jesse said of Brayden’s turn on Paradise. “I’d say Paradise was more your dojo.”
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The Bachelorette finale airs Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
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