Ben Higgins Reveals Early Doubts About Lauren Bushnell Relationship

Bachelor alum Ben Higgins began to have doubts about his relationship with ex-fiancée Lauren Bushnell Lane during the final week of his show — something that she also picked up on.

Higgins, 35, made the admission in a January 26 episode of his “Almost Famous” podcast, which he cohosts with Ashley Iaconetti, as the two looked back on his 2016 season of the show. “When the decision was made, I never looked back and had the what-ifs,” Higgins said. “It was how it was supposed to play out, obviously, look at my life now. I was always very confident in whatever path was moving forward. But I am confused about that kind of last week on how that all went down the way it did.”

After Iaconetti added that Bushnell Lane “was pretty convinced that you were having what-ifs,” Higgins answered that he thinks “that’s just natural.”

“I mean, I think it’s always the comparison,” he explained. “And then every interview you do post-show, the questions are brought up comparing the two. And so I think having those what-if ideas are natural in that moment, especially coming off of it and watching it and seeing how conflicted I really was.”

“Because at the time, I felt like this is the biggest, hardest decision I’d ever make,” Higgins said of picking between the flight attendant and JoJo Fletcher. “It should have never — I don’t think it should ever be that hard. Like, when you know, you know, right?”

Iaconetti then asked Higgins if he now thinks he should have known “in that moment” that neither Bushnell Lane or Fletcher were the right match for him. “I think that’s the only what-if I’ve ever had is, like, why did I go through with any of it?” he replied. “And not because it wasn’t great and real and fun and excited, but it was like, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right thing.”

Higgins’ finale episode was packed with drama. He was the first contestant to say “I love you” to two women, something Lane and Fletcher were not aware of at the time.

Higgins and Bushnell Lane ended their relationship in 2017. On an episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast released last year, Higgins explained, “We had already been struggling for about a month [before the split]. We were in couples counseling. We were really trying to make it work. I mean, we were butting heads.”

“We were kind of more work associates,” he said. “We were living in the same house. We weren’t really speaking to each other off-camera because the cameras would leave at 9 o’clock, we’d be exhausted. I might have to go into work the next day. She’d be doing her thing with her job. She was still flying as a flight attendant a little bit. We’d just be, like, dead tired. We wouldn’t talk to each other. We hadn’t talked to each other really, truly in weeks.”

Higgins went on to marry Jessica Clarke, who is pregnant with their first baby. Bushnell Lane, meanwhile, married country singer Chris Lane in 2019 and they share two sons: Dutton, born in 2021, and Baker, born in 2022.