The Bachelor alum Ben Higgins has explained how starring on the franchise changed his "robotic" life.
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Ben first competed on Kaitlyn Bristowe's season of The Bachelorette in 2015, and then he was selected by ABC to star on The Bachelor's 20th season in 2016.
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Although Ben is now married to Jessica Clarke, a woman he met outside of Bachelor Nation, he revealed that starring on the series affected and changed his life "in every way."
"I'd say the biggest change for me is career. I was a software salesman. I wasn't a good one. I was sitting in the basement of this company in Denver, writing software user manuals as a business analyst," Ben revealed during a recent episode of the "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" podcast co-hosted by Bryan Abasolo and Mike Johnson.
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"When you're a business analyst, you're kind of account managing and also assisting in the development of the software. I won't go any more into that, I'm getting bored myself."
Ben elaborated, "That's what I was doing, but I didn't love it and I wasn't good at it. I knew I wasn't good at it. I wasn't passionate about it."
Ben admitted when looking back on his former job, "I felt like a robot. I did it for five years."
Ben also noted he even continued the same job for a year-and-a-half after he starred on The Bachelor's 20th season, despite being a new celebrity in the reality space.
Ben said he worked in the software industry "until" he could afford his own health insurance -- and then he started a business, which is now Generous Coffee Company.
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More doors then opened up for Ben, who has long been a fan favorite in Bachelor Nation.
"That's when a podcast for me started, which was a huge gift to my life," Ben explained.
"And so, I would just say career-wise, I've been able to do now and invest in things that I really love instead of sitting in a basement and feeling like a robot."
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Ben concluded, "That's been the most drastic change for me in my life, which has also made me more human. And I like that more."
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However, some aspects of Ben's life have remained the same, and he's happy and relieved about that.
"I think the cool thing is my friends are still the same. I haven't lost any close friends that were friends in middle school and high school and college... They don't think I'm cooler. They told me I was going to become 'King of the Nerds' if I became the Bachelor, and then I became the Bachelor," Ben joked.
"I don't know if they've ever watched it. I don't know if I ever talked to them about the show much, other than, like, back in the day, I was like, 'Hey, I'm going to L.A. for this.' So my friendships have stayed the same."
And Ben said his family relationships have only strengthened since starring on the show.
"My family relationship has gotten even better because we get to do cool stuff together. My dad gets to caddy for me now at golf tournaments that I get invited to, and we play alongside people that I grew up watching on television," Ben said.
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"And he gets to sit down and have dinner next to some of the old former Cubs [baseball players]. He's a big Cubs fan, so we freak out about that. That's cool."
And Ben added, "My mom is an incredible human with a really complex and beautiful story, and she's got to go on interviews and podcasts talking about her experiences. And we travel together, so that's been cool."
Ben got engaged to Lauren Bushnell during his The Bachelor season finale in 2016, and then the pair starred on a spinoff, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, which aired on Freeform and featured them planning a wedding.
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But Ben came down with a case of cold feet, and he and Lauren called off their engagement and split in May 2017.
Following his breakup with Lauren, Ben also appeared on The Bachelor: Winter Games, which aired on ABC in 2018, but he quit the spinoff after admitting he was still struggling to get over his relationship with Lauren and wasn't ready to date again yet.
Ben and Jessica's relationship began in December 2018 when Ben apparently saw Jessica's photo from a hockey game she had gone to with her father and decided to DM her on Instagram.
After chatting on FaceTime, the pair met in person and Ben asked her to be his girlfriend.
Ben and Jessica 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.
Ben proposed marriage to Jessica in early 2020, and then they purchased their first home together in Denver in December of that year.
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Ben and Jessica had to postpone their initial 2020 wedding due to the coronavirus pandemic, but they ended up getting married in a "simple and beautiful" wedding ceremony at The Estate in Cherokee Dock near Nashville 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" in Summer 2021 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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