When Shawntel Newton crashed the cocktail party on this week’s episode of The Bachelor, inviting Ben Flajnik to keep her around so they could continue pursuing whatever it was they had started up last summer, you probably assumed they had been on a date or two. Perhaps went out for coffee. Maybe he had taken a spot on her embalming table a la Brad Womack.

Surely they had at least met, right?

Er, no. Shawntel appeared on this week’s Bachelor eliminated contestant conference call, and had to admit that the supposed “connection” with Ben that prompted her to hop in the hearse with the intent to join the show three weeks in amounted to posting to each other on Twitter, texting, and the odd phone call. Even in 2012, this doesn’t qualify as a relationship in the eyes of most people.

According to Shawntel, she made some remarks on Twitter last summer to the effect that she found Ben attractive, and one day he responded. They exchanged some private message, texts, and phone calls, and talked about meeting someday but never did. Eventually, his contact dropped off, and before long she realized why: he had been chosen for The Bachelor.

“I really didn’t want to go back [the show], I wanted to meet Ben, and this is the only chance I have” before his presumed engagement, Shawntel said, explaining why she asked Chris Harrison if there was any way that a meeting could be arranged. “Unfortunately it had to be on national television.”

This seems like an awfully thin bit of evidence from which to draw the conclusion that you might have a chance with the Bachelor, given that he had been with the other women for three shows’ length of time by then, and had been on solo dates with and even kissed several. Shawntel wasn’t buying it. “Our conversations were really good! There was a connection there, and I know he felt the same way,” she insisted. She believes that he simply felt asking her to stay would be a violation of the implied rules. “I guess it is unfair, but I’m sorry – the whole situation is unfair,” she said, stating that Ben has the right to think about himself rather than the hurt feelings of others.

And it was that raw emotion from the other women in the house that Shawntel believes sealed her fate. Ben might have been willing to keep her, she feels, if there hadn’t been such a pushback from her rivals. “I think Ben was scared of the other girls, especially Courtney. I think Ben is head over heels for Courtney, and she gave him an ultimatum … his decision to send me home I think wasn’t so much his,” she said. She is disappointed enough in what she sees as his lack of courage that she insists she wouldn’t be interested in starting something up with Ben in the event things don’t work out with whoever he ends up picking on the show (I know, what are the odds).

Shawntel still sounded puzzled by and angry at the reaction she received from the other women. Even the few who were somewhat pleasant to her face, like Kacie and Lindzi, later had some harsher comments to the cameras. “I was beyond surprised. I expected going into that cocktail party to have the girls upset with me or confused. I would be the same way,” she said. “But I did not expect to get the reaction I did. It was really, really uncomfortable to have 15 really pretty girls pick on me. It was out of the movie Mean Girls, to have girls say to my face really harsh things.”

She said she hopes to get apologies from the other women on “The Women Tell All,” and was firm in saying she would walk off the show rather than be berated again. “I think they would have gotten over it [had Ben kept her], because they need to understand, this is about him. It’s not about them as a group. It’s going to come down to one person anyway,” Shawntel said. For the time being, she’s continuing her education and dealing with the dead. And hopefully, not overreacting every time someone says something nice to her on Twitter.

Another of the women who departed The Bachelor this week spoke with reporters. Denver’s Brittney Schreiner pulled the unusual move of leaving the show in the middle of the third episode, just after she had been awarded a solo date with Ben. Such dates are usually seen as signs that a Bachelor might be showing special interest, and that’s what apparently prompted Brittany to quit, as she had started to realize by then that she didn’t feel the same way.

“There was something that just didn’t feel right, and my heart wasn’t in it … I felt like we weren’t connecting on that level. I just decided to do a very selfless act and make the harder decision and let him carry on his search,” Brittany said. She didn’t mention anything she found specifically wrong with Ben, saying their lack of a connection was just one of those things: “We just don’t have that spark you look for when you start dating a guy.”

Even more than the way she left the show, Brittany will likely be remembered for how she was introduced, as her grandmother emerged from the limo to make a pitch to Ben on her behalf. Given how quickly Brittany left, there was the suspicion she only went on The Bachelor to fulfill Grandma’s dream, but she disputed that, saying she applied on her own and only invited her grandmother to come along because she thought it would be a cute way to make an impression. She says she has no gripe with the show or the process, and even said she would be willing to star in The Bachelorette if asked. Well, she might not want to hold her breath for that one.

Tags: ben flajnik, brad womack, brittany schreiner, chris harrison, shawntel newton, the bachelor, the bachelor 16