Better after Bachelor! Season 20 Bachelor Ben Higgins and his fiancee, Lauren Bushnell, said in an interview with the Associated Press that they’re thrilled that they can finally enjoy their engagement publicly after the finale aired this past Monday, March 14.
Higgins helped his pick forget about those double “I love yous” (to both Bushnell and his runner-up, JoJo Fletcher) on Monday during After the Final Rose by proposing for a second time to his final pick. Though America went wild with the finale on Monday, the fame that accompanies the franchise is the last thing on their minds.
“The spotlight is not a desire of mine, right?” Higgins, a Denver-based software salesman, told the AP. “If it happens, it happens and that’s great and grand and whatever you want to call it. Opportunities? Yeah. I have a great job right now and Lauren has a great job. It’s been fun for us.”
Bushnell also chimed in on the topic of fleeting stardom — and said they were looking for something more meaningful. “I think both of us have dreams and hobbies that we like that if it could become something that we do for a living as well, that would be amazing,” the chipper flight attendant, 25, said. “But if this ends right now and we go back to normal, both of us are beyond happy.”
Higgins, 27, also shared his sentiments about Fletcher becoming the new Bachelorette, and whether he felt guilty about breaking her heart in the final moments of the season. “I’m excited for JoJo. I am. I think what we had was a great thing,” he explained. “Did I feel guilty for having those feelings for her? No. Do I feel guilty for exploring those feelings for her? No. But now that she is the Bachelorette, she has the opportunity to find somebody like I found Lauren.”
He added of Fletcher’s future stint, “I think JoJo will see if it’s still confusing at all to her how this whole thing happens when you do have so many thoughts and feelings and emotions and thoughts and relationships and decisions coming to your head all at once. She’ll see, ‘OK, I see how Ben was just conflicted and torn and it was so hard.’ But, I think JoJo is gonna do great.”
Bushnell, meanwhile, reacted to the experience of watching the season unfold. “During the show, during actual filming, I was so in the dark in terms of other relationships,” she said. “You’re really kept separate. … I think post-show has been more of an emotional roller coaster because it was reliving it and I’m surrounded by it, and even if I don’t watch an episode, it’s everywhere around me and that’s what everyone’s talking about.”
Watch Higgins’ proposal in the video above!
