Former The Bachelor star Ben Higgins responds to the news that his ex-fiancé Lauren Bushnell is now engaged. Country singer and songwriter, Chris Lane, asked Lauren Bushnell to be his wife this week, and ex-fiancé Higgins speaks openly about what he thinks of the engagement.
Higgins and Bushnell got engaged in 2016 during his season of The Bachelor, but their relationship ended in May the following year. Bushnell started to date Lane, who she’d been friends with for years, in the fall of 2018 and the two made their debut as a couple at the CMI Country Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee that November. Bushnell later moved from L.A. to Nashville to live with Lane in his home and now the two are engaged after he proposed to her in the backyard of her family’s Oregon home earlier this month. The singer even performed a song he’d written just for her before getting down on one knee. Turns out Bushnell’s ex, Higgins, has no hard feelings about the engagement and is fully supportive of the relationship.
The reality TV star said on his podcast, co-hosted by fellow Bachelor Nation member Ashely Iaconetti, that he couldn’t be happier for Bushnell and Lane’s upcoming nuptials. The former Bachelor said that he and Bushnell left their relationship saying “‘I hope life brings you a ton of joy, I don’t want you upset and alone forever. I hope you find a partner as soon as possible.” He then wished his former fiancé “congratulations” and said he was glad she found somebody outside the pressure and intensity of a show like The Bachelor.
“You found a man that you love without any pressure and in a moment, after dating for a long time, you have said ‘yes’ to spending your life with him and I could not be more excited for you,” Higgins said.
He went on to say he hopes he and Bushnell aren’t connected to one another in the media for the rest of their lives and that his “life isn’t as closely tied to Lauren anymore.” Then, he implied the two don’t really keep in touch since calling it quits. “I hope this is a chapter being closed completely,” he said, “because I don’t know Lauren anymore and my life isn’t tied to her.” It sounds like he’s officially ready to move on. Higgins, who is currently dating girlfriend Jessica Clarke, recently hinted that he’s looking to get married himself in the not-so-distant future. He and Clarke have “some timelines set.” He added, “We still do long distance and we are going to talk about next steps in August.”
Bushnell, meanwhile, is leaving The Bachelor behind her and moving full-steam ahead with her engagement to Lane, which she announced in an Instagram post earlier this week, writing, “I feel so incredibly blessed that every misstep, mistake and heartache has led me to you.”
The two are already thinking about the kind of wedding they want. Lane previously told People at the 2019 Academy of Country Music Awards in April that Bushnell would probably want a small wedding and that that was fine with him. It sounds like he’s pretty easy going when it comes to the ceremony and will let Bushnell take the reins. “Whatever she wants,” he said, “I’m down for.”
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Source: The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast
