Ben Higgins didn’t hold back about how he is dealing with his split from fiancée Lauren Bushnell. The reality star has been open about their breakup on his Ben and Ashley I. Almost Famous Podcast and has now revealed to Us Weekly how he feels about his ex’s new relationship with Devin Antin.
Bushnell recently went public with her new relationship on Instagram, but Higgins insists that even if it’s hard for him to see, he just wants to see his ex to be happy.
“I don’t know a lot about the situation, honestly. From what I understand and from what I hear, she’s happy. As hard as that is for me to think about — because it’s still hard to think about and I think it would be hard for her to think about if I was in that situation,” the reality star told Us.
“I was on a run a few weeks back. I was praying the whole time. It was kind of first when I heard about everything. Life was catching up with me. There was a lot going on. I was just praying like, ‘God, please clear some things up. Release some burdens or release some anxiety,’” he continued. “I just stopped and I thought, ‘If you’re the man you claim you want to be, which I’m not always, then you need to celebrate Lauren being happy and you need to do that well and you need to mean it when you say it.’”
Still, Higgins has nothing but nice things to say about his former flame. “Lauren is an incredible person. She’s great and she’s beautiful and she has a ton going for her. That girl is going to crush it when it comes to this world. She’s a good friend to people. We need people like her happy and so if she’s happy right now, I will celebrate that the best I can.” he said.
Higgins and Bushnell, who met on season 20 of The Bachelor, announced they were going their separate ways in May 2017 but have kept mum on the details.
“I think in fairness to Lauren and myself, the details of our relationship have been kept quiet and they should be kept quiet. But I will say there was no big, dark hidden secret,” Higgins told Us. “You can probably assume what happened if you’ve been around. We grew apart. It’s unfortunate because I think we both really cared about each other. But, for whatever reason, life brought us in two different directions.”
The TV personality, 29, has been coping with his breakup by expressing his feelings and keeping a positive outlook on the relationship. “I wrote a letter right after things ended. I wrote a letter because my buddy recommended I did. He said, ‘Write down your feelings, write down your thoughts right now. Even if you never do anything with it.’ I read back through that letter last week,” the Bachelor alum told Us.
He continued, “It’s just really saying, ‘Hey, I love this person. It’s hard, but it’s also life. These moments are the ones that hopefully — instead of looking back on and bad mouthing each other kicking each other when we both at some point felt down — we will learn from whatever happened in this relationship and consider it a good thing.’ And it was. It was a great thing and it was a real thing.”
Although Bushnell seems to be happy with her new man, the podcast host is not quite ready to start dating again.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’m not ready to date. It still feels weird to me. I don’t know if that makes sense. How do you take that first step and that’s where I’m at right now,” he revealed to Us. “I do desire a relationship. I do long for a commitment. I do long to love somebody really well and really hard and through life and I long for somebody to do the same for me. I’m ready to find that. I’m not closed off to that.”
After everything they went through with their breakup, Higgins still doesn’t want anyone to harbor any negative thoughts toward his ex, saying, “She really does deserve something great and I hope she’s found that.”
