Bachelor no more? Ben Higgins is ready to take the next big step with his girlfriend, Jess Clarke.
The former reality star, 30, made his relationship with Clarke, 24, Instagram official in February 2019 after admitting that he “successfully” slid into her DMs a few months earlier. Though they’ve barely been together for a year, Higgins says he’s “definitely” going to propose to his girlfriend at some point before the end of 2020.
“I don’t think that’s a question,” the Bachelor alum told Us Weekly exclusively on Wednesday, January 29, while promoting his upcoming Bachelor Live On Stage Tour with Becca Kufrin. “We’re great. It’s fun. It’s just healthy … I think she would say the same. Our relationship is healthy. I’m a better version of myself, a more free version of myself than I’ve been in a while.”
Higgins previously expressed an interest in popping the big question to Clarke during an interview with Us in August 2019. The Bachelor Winter Games alum said at the time that he felt “excited” for the possibility of a future with his new flame.
The couple has been maintaining a long-distance relationship between Denver and Nashville, Tennessee, but will be hitting the road together for some of the Bachelor Live On Stage Tour before they officially move into Higgins’ Colorado home.
“We’ve lived apart based on our own moral and personal choices and history of what we’ve done in relationships, what’s worked and what hasn’t. So the tour bus will be close confines,” the former Bachelor joked.
Engagement isn’t a completely new experience for Higgins, who proposed to ex-fiancée Lauren Bushnell at the end of season 20 of the ABC reality dating series in 2016. By May 2017, however, the couple had called it quits.
Bushnell, 29, has since tied the knot with country singer Chris Lane — and her ex couldn’t be happier that she’s found love.
“I’m ecstatic that both of us have been able to move on in such a way that is making us both better people … I wish them nothing but the best,” Higgins told Us a few days after Bushnell’s October 2019 wedding.
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