Jason Mesnick Warns Arie Luyendyk Jr. During' Bachelor' Finale: 'People Are Going to Be Angry'

WARNING: This post contains Bachelor spoilers.

There’s one man in America who understands how Arie Luyendyk Jr. feels right now: Jason Mesnick.

The season 13 Bachelor is no stranger to controversy: In 2009, Mesnick proposed to Melissa Rycroft on the finale, but by the time After the Final Rose rolled around, he was second-guessing his decision — because he couldn’t stop thinking about his runner-up, Molly Malaney. He ended up calling it quits with Rycroft right then and there and reuniting with Malaney. Though the breakup was painful to watch, things worked out for the best: Mesnick and Malaney been married for eight years and have two children.

On Luyendyk Jr.’s season finale Monday, the 36-year-old race car driver pulled his own switcheroo: Two months after proposing to Becca Kufrin, 27, he realized he was still in love with his runner-up, Lauren Burnham, 26. After wrestling with his decision, he ultimately decided to break off his engagement to Kufrin to pursue a relationship with Burnham.

With that in mind, it makes sense that Mesnick, 41, had a few words of wisdom for Luyendyk Jr., which he shared during Tuesday’s After the Final Rose.

“My family, my friends — they don’t understand,” said Luyendyk Jr. “No one can really relate to what I’m going through. The person who has the closest experience is Jason. I know that Jason changed his mind and he’s happily married.”

After the two sat down together, Luyendyk Jr. asked Mesnick about his experience. “There was some backlash,” said Mesnick. “I remember the cover of PEOPLE magazine said ‘Bachelor Betrayal.’ What I heard people saying was ‘cheater,’ which wasn’t true. But people yelled at me in the street. It hurt. I mean, people are going to be angry with what you did. You’re putting yourself out there in a way that people aren’t going to like, and they’re going to say things that aren’t really nice.”

Mesnick left Luyendyk Jr. with one final warning: “Don’t do this unless you’re 100 percent certain.”

Luyendyk Jr. previously told PEOPLE he was well aware his decision wouldn’t be well received by the franchise’s millions of devoted viewers.

“I know people are going to be hard on [me],” he said. “I made a mistake. And I’m prepared for the backlash. But all I can say is I had to follow my heart.”

Later on in the After the Final Rose special, Mesnick and his wife sat down with franchise host Chris Harrison to reflect on their own Bachelor journey — and share their thoughts about Luyendyk Jr.’s decision.

“I think initially, I would actually have said try to do it privately — I did it publicly and everybody saw that,” Mesnick said of Luyendyk Jr.’s televised split from Kufrin. “I think it’s easy to say do it privately, but on the flip side, I think if people didn’t see what was going on, they’d wonder.”

“My advice is to get out of a big city like L.A. or New York and just get away and really work on your relationship,” Mesnick continued. “My thought is that a lot of people who have successful relationships — Ryan and Trista [Sutter] and Sean and Catherine [Lowe] and anybody else — they get out of this thing and they go back to their lives. So if I were Arie specifically, I’d get out of this thing, and I’d also get a plane ticket far away for at least a couple of weeks.”