Despite the chemistry Graham Bunn visibly shared with DeAnna Pappas, he feels they simply weren’t a good fit on a romantic level.

“I don’t think we were right for each other… I don’t think I could have fallen in love with DeAnna,” he told reporters during a Thursday afternoon conference call.

“I think that she and I suffered from a severe case of miscommunication. I don’t question that her feelings were very strong for me, and I also shared some strong feelings for her. Where we were in the process may have been different. Because obviously as much as she wanted me to open up and say that I was falling in love or that I was ready for marriage, I never heard those things directed towards me in an individual setting.”

The 29-year-old former professional basketball player from Raleigh, NC was sent packing by Pappas during last Monday night’s The Bachelorette twelfth-season episode after she visited the hometown of her four remaining suitors.

“I was not surprised at all to go home at that Rose Ceremony,” Bunn told Reality TV World during the conference call. “I knew that she and I had gone through some difficult times. And what she says on the bench [after I was eliminated] is very revealing — there was some things that I knew she wanted me to get to a place that I couldn’t get to in the timeframe she needed me to get there.”

Bunn described Pappas’ decision to give him the boot as a “totally understood mutual decision.”

“I think we both agreed that in that setting she and I were not the right match,” he explained, adding it still didn’t make the ouster any easier. “I know that both sides felt pain the night that I left, and causing her pain was something that I never wanted to do. Obviously it was a painful thing for me to leave her knowing that we wouldn’t be hanging out anymore and we wouldn’t be spending time. So leaving the show was difficult.”

Bunn also admitted his parents weren’t shocked by the ultimate outcome of his The Bachelorette journey.

“My parents were not surprised that I didn’t come home with DeAnna as my fiance or girlfriend,” he said.

Bunn added had he and Pappas enjoyed “the natural evolution of a relationship,” he thinks they might have “opened up” more with each other.

“The better you get to know someone, the easier it is to open up,” he said. “We were moving along in that direction. It just wasn’t at the speed that we both agreed upon.”

Still, Bunn said he “wouldn’t have opened up faster” if given the chance.

“I honestly opened up as much as I could — in an honest, genuine manner. I never told her anything I didn’t mean, and that’s something that you can’t change. I was never going to tell her something she just wanted to hear. And I think anyone that watched the show can see that,” he said before admitting his fatal mistake.

“She was put in a position where she was dating people that were willing to say or do what they felt she needed to hear in order for them to grow together, and I really wasn’t willing to do that as much as I should have been,” he said. “If I had to go back and do it again I would just try to make a concerted effort to express some of the things that I felt I was expressing through actions, and through our interactions, more vocally. Because I think that’s something that she needed. She needed that reassurance from me that I was trying and I was opening up.”

Bunn opened up best after his failure to receive a rose, which led to a somewhat heated exchange between him and Pappas. However he assured reporters there was no “anger” on his part “in any way.”

“It was just kind of the realization that the process itself was over because it was an unbelievable thing to go through,” he said. “I did have a special connection with her. And I think she had been very open about that; that she and I shared something that she didn’t share with anyone else.”

Bunn said he isn’t currently dating anyone but added the show has changed the way he approaches it.

“It definitely is going to change the way that I approach it — definitely there is someone that I would like to sit down and speak with, that I think the experience has shown me that sometimes words mean more to some people than actions,” he explained. “If you just vocalize what you’re feeling I think that would make a huge difference in somebody’s vision.”