Sean Lowe got his reality TV start by appearing on Emily Maynard's edition of The Bachelorette, and his broken heart was apparently worse than he ever let on.

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"After about four or five weeks of getting to spend time with the Bachelorette, I thought, 'I kind of like being around her. Wow, I'm actually developing feelings for this girl when there are all these cameras around. This is kinda nuts. I can see myself being her husband.' And she had a young daughter. I thought, 'Wow, God has used this reality TV show to introduce me to my wife and my new daughter.' And after about the sixth week, I knew I loved her," Lowe said during a 12-minute video for the Christian nonprofit I Am Second.

Lowe finished The Bachelorette's eighth season in third place behind runner-up Arie Luyendyk Jr. and winner Jef Holm. He wondered at the time why God, whom he trusted to guide him in the right direction in life, had led him to such "heart break."

"I go back to Dallas and I'm still heartbroken. I'm still thinking about her all the time. I reached out to her. I found her phone number through a mutual friend that we had, and I call her. I'm just trying to get answers as to why this happened. I just got her voicemail and never received a return phone call," Lowe admitted.

Lowe did, however, have fun with all the fellow suitors during the season. He said there were "a lot of cool normal guys" and they'd swim in the pool, play football and barbeque when they weren't going on dates with Maynard.

Lowe also loved the traveling aspect to the show, as he got to visit Bermuda, London and Croatia.

"I could get used to this," Lowe thought at the time, according to his I Am Second film.

Assessing the good and bad experiences of being a contestant on The Bachelorette, Lowe was unsure whether The Bachelor would be for him after a casting director threw out the possibility of him becoming the show's star several weeks later.

"I'm getting over a broken heart and I'm still trying to mend, and the first go around wasn't the greatest experience for me," Lowe explained. "On the show, Bachelors traditionally, they get raked over the coals. It's hard to maintain that good-guy image when you're the star."

Lowe, a born-again virgin and devout Christian, questioned whether The Bachelor process was against his faith and struggled with the idea of dating so many women at once.

"It's unnatural to date 25 women at one time, and it felt wrong. A lot of the time, it felt wrong. I wrestled with it quite a bit, thinking, 'I'm pretty sure God opened this door, but what if He didn't? What if it's just an opportunity that came about and what if I'm actually harming my testimony by going on a show and dating multiple people at one time, and kissing multiple people?'" Lowe said during the video.

"What if people look at me and they say, 'This is what's wrong with Christianity. Look at this guy, he's professing one thing but then he's going on TV and doing the opposite.' That was a big fear."

But Lowe followed through with the show's seventeenth season and ended up finding the love of his life and wife in Catherine Giudici.


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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