Ben Higgins admits the memory of proposing marriage to Lauren Bushnell on The Bachelor is tainted in his mind. 

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"I look back on the day Lauren and I got engaged and say, 'I'm really glad I did this. I found the woman of my dreams.' But there is this cloud over it still, because I think it did hurt Lauren," Higgins told People while promoting the couple's new Freeform reality series Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?.

Bushnell said she felt blindsided after filming wrapped because she learned Higgins had told his runner-up, JoJo Fletcher, he was also madly in love with her. Higgins seemed to love two women almost equally, considering his final decision was excruciating, when he popped the question to Bushnell in The Bachelor's finale, which aired in March.

"It put a mark on our relationship instead of just being able to jump into this really happy time," Higgins explained.

"There were still months and months and months of watching the show and waiting for the show and then months after the show when JoJo was brought up. So the first number of months into our relationship really did consist around difficulty and strain."

While Bushnell had a really tough time moving on from the whole ordeal, Higgins said he did not.

"For me, it didn't really matter," he said of the dual love confessions. "I think it was kind of weird in all honesty. I was happy and JoJo knew that. I think the hardest part is... I had to see [Lauren] hurt by something I had done, and I had really no great way of fixing it."

Higgins insisted to People his feelings for Fletcher ceased to exist the moment he proposed to Bushnell in Jamaica.

"I don't know what's going on in [JoJo's] life. I don't really have a desire to. Even before I proposed to Lauren, my heart was already hers," Higgins revealed. "From that moment forward, JoJo didn't really have a place in my mind."

Higgins, however, never apologized to Bushnell for his behavior on The Bachelor because it resulted in their happy, loving engagement.

"[The Bachelor] was a helpless situation in a world where you are never going to do it right," Higgins admitted.

Bushnell has been living with Higgins in Denver, CO, since April, and as of recently, the pair has been working out their issues by going to counseling sessions at their church.

Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? premieres October 11 at 8PM ET/PT on Freeform.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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