Latest reality tilt gathers mostly broken-hearted participants

Arci Muñoz Actress-musician

He was the one who put me in the friend zone,” said actress-musician Arci Muñoz on why she broke up with Badi del Rosario, her boyfriend of four years.

In popular culture, this refers to the state of merely being friends when one prefers it to be a romantic relationship.

“I’m still hurting. I still care for him. Being together for four years meant so much to me,” the vocalist of the rock band Philia said when asked how she was holding up after the split.

Arci confirmed that she and Badi, frontman of Mr. Bones and the Boneyard Circus, broke up before Christmas of 2016. She cited the “lack of time for each other” as the major cause of the split. “We still tried to work things out, but it wasn’t the same anymore,” she admitted. “He wants things to be casual so we can at least preserve the friendship.”

Arci denied that a third party had prompted the breakup, nor the fact that one of them had already wanted to take the relationship to a deeper level, but the other was not ready for marriage just yet. “I did tell him about my dream wedding proposal—I want the guy to propose to me in Disneyland during the fireworks display,” she shared with the Inquirer. “There were other factors that led to the split, but I’d rather keep them to myself.”

To move on, Arci has been focusing on work. She will be seen in the reality show, “I Can Do That!,” which premiered on March 11 on ABS-CBN. She is also currently filming a romantic comedy with Gerald Anderson, aptly titled “Can We Still Be Friends?” This is her second teamup with Gerald after “Always Be My Maybe.”

“I assure everyone that they can still relate to the story. Gerald and I weren’t labeled #teamrelate for nothing,” she quipped.

Despite having a few suitors, Arci insisted that she wasn’t ready for a new love. “I’m still hurting. I don’t want people to say that I readily jump from one relationship to another. It’s true that I haven’t had any boyfriend from the industry—Kean (Cipriano) was my first, but we broke up even before he joined show biz.

“It’s funny because most of us in ‘I Can Do That!’ are single. We’re all part of Camp Sawi,” she added, referring to the movie she made last year, about five women who enter a boot camp for the heartbroken.

Except for Cristine Reyes, who’s happily married to mixed martial arts fighter Ali Khatibi, and Pokwang, who’s dating American actor Lee O’Brien, the show’s other participants are single or have recently broken up with their partners, like actors Daniel Matsunaga, JC Santos and Sue Ramirez; performer Gab Valenciano; comedian Wacky Kiray, and hosts Robi Domingo and Alex Gonzaga.