Ben Higgins has revealed he and wife Jessica Clarke decided it's not good or healthy to watch old footage of his The Bachelor season, which originally aired in 2016.

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Ben first competed on Kaitlyn Bristowe's season of The Bachelorette in 2015 and finished in third place, and then he was selected by ABC to star on The Bachelor's 20th season in 2016.

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Ben's The Bachelor past and his prior engagement to Lauren Bushnell is often rehashed in the media, which Ben admitted Jessica probably doesn't love, but he explained during a recent episode of the "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" podcast that it's more difficult for Jessica to see footage of his season rather than just hearing or reading about it.

"One of the things that was hard was, if you remember during COVID [in 2020], The Bachelor was running re-runs of seasons, which I was excited about because it's cool to be back involved at some level and to feel, like, 'Hey, this thing, even though the relationship didn't work out, it doesn't just die and get put on a shelf,'" Ben shared.

"So they were doing the re-runs and they asked Jessica to be a part of that with me, and that was really cool."

But Ben continued, "And so we were watching it that night and then, like, very quickly turned it off and were like, 'Yeah, this isn't healthy for us! This isn't good for us!'"

At the time, Ben and Jessica were engaged and had been dating for more than two years.

Due to a postponed wedding amid the coronavirus pandemic, they didn't actually tie the knot until November 2021.

Ben acknowledged how "seeing" the old footage of his journey on the show was "harder than reading an article."

"It's not fun, and honestly, we try to protect ourselves from that the best we can, because I don't want to see it and she doesn't want to see it," Ben explained.

"And so why would we watch it? Or why would we read about it or talk about it, unless it was really, like, aching at one of our souls? There's no reason to bring it up."

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Back in March, Ben expressed annoyance over The Bachelor airing footage from his season in promos on ABC because Clayton Echard's Season 26 storyline of saying "I love you" to multiple women was similar to what Ben had gone through when filming his season. (Ben professed his love to both Lauren and his runner-up JoJo Fletcher before the Final Rose Ceremony).

"I just saw a preview of my proposal [to Lauren] during The Bachelor [Season 26 finale teaser], and I was like, 'Come on, guys. I'm married, like, can we stop ABC?'" Ben vented on "The Ben and Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast."

Ben suggested at the time that his old The Bachelor footage was causing problems in his marriage.

"I think it's more hard for Jessica than it is for me... I don't have to like it. I don't have to enjoy it. And I hope they care about me enough at this point where they're like, 'I don't want to show something that, like, ruins his marriage,'" Ben lamented.

Ben went on to clarify to his podcast co-host Ashley Iaconetti, "I don't know if they have that power, but [I hope] they don't show something that causes, you know, drama within my marriage."

"I hope they respect me enough for that. I don't know. That has yet to be seen," he said, adding how reminders of his The Bachelor mistakes and broken engagement make him "cringe."

"Gosh damnit, I don't want to watch myself with another human. That's not where my mind is at," Ben shared in March. "But I understand what I did and I understand that I gave up [that footage willingly]."

Luckily, Ben said on "Talking It Out" in early May that he and Jessica have a strong-enough relationship to overcome such adversity.

He also insisted the door is always open for Jessica to ask questions about his past or demand an explanation about something she sees or reads.

"I'm not going to lie or hide anything. It's hard to do because, well, it's televised," Ben told the podcast's co-hosts Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo.

"But also, I think it's one of the coolest parts [of our relationship]. In the past, I often had a lot of insecurity when it came to somebody having eyes for somebody else when you're dating them, right?"

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Ben said in past relationships, he always had an underlying feeling of, "I need to control or protect," which he confessed was "a very unhealthy attitude towards a relationship."

"It's not good of me to feel that way. But I just always had to fight that," Ben acknowledged.

"But with Jessica, one of the main reasons why I knew that we were going to be awesome together is, like, there is no jealousy. There is no fear in my heart of stepping out and there is no fear in my heart of her stepping out."

Ben concluded that Jessica "knows enough about my past to know I've done things in my life that maybe she hasn't done," referring to how Jessica abstained from sex until marriage and Ben had already lost his virginity prior to his The Bachelorette appearance.

"But that isn't who we are now," Ben said. "And so yeah, I think it's weird."

Following Ben's The Bachelor season, he and Lauren starred on a spinoff, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, which aired on Freeform and featured them planning a wedding.

But Ben and Lauren called off their engagement and split in May 2017, and then Ben looked for love on The Bachelor: Winter Games in 2018 but realized he wasn't quite ready to date again yet.

Ben became romantically involved with Jessica in December 2018, and the couple went Instagram official in January 2019.

They continued to make a long-distance relationship work, with Ben being in Denver most of the time and Jessica living in Nashville, where she attended esthetics school.

After Ben proposed marriage to Jessica in March 2020, they purchased their first home together in Denver in December of that year.

Ben and Jessica went on to marry in a "simple and beautiful" wedding ceremony at The Estate in Cherokee Dock near Nashville, TN, in November 2021.

Ben has said he and Jessica are now looking to expand their family; however, they are in no rush to have children and decided to start with a dog named Waylon.

Jessica has stayed by Ben's side even during the most difficult times, such as a "breakdown" last summer that left Ben soul-searching and reaching out to family and friends for support.

Ben previously admitted that he "lost" himself from being so wrapped up in fame and struggled to navigate life once that attention from The Bachelor "started to fade."

For Lauren's part, the Season 20 The Bachelor alum is married with one child to country singer Chris Lane.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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