The Bachelor alum Ben Higgins has opened up about how starring on Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? was a "mistake" that definitely contributed to his breakup with ex-fiancee Lauren Bushnell.
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After The Bachelor wrapped, the pair starred on Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, but they announced their split in May 2017, about six months after the spinoff's finale aired on Freeform.
"I think doing that show was a mistake for our relationship. It was not a mistake professionally, necessarily, but it was a mistake for our romantic relationship," Ben told The Bachelorette alum Jason Tartick on the Monday, September 4 episode of his "Trading Secrets" podcast.
Ben elaborated how his priorities were "misaligned at the time," adding, "I was young and naive. I thought we could get through [it]. So when we broke up, Happily Ever After? stopped... I don't know why I said 'yes' to it."
Ben said when he and Lauren filmed that spinoff, they were already "struggling through stuff" as a couple.
The "stuff" presumably included how Ben had professed his love to runner-up JoJo Fletcher on The Bachelor before proposing marriage to Lauren at the Final Rose Ceremony. Lauren even told The New York Post's Page Six in May 2022 that she had "hit rock bottom" after The Bachelor.
"We'd have really great times and then really hard times... There were many reasons why we did not work as a couple, but I think that show was going to be -- I would say impossible for us to have a healthy relationship through it and coming out of it," Ben explained of Happily Ever After?.
"Because we became working partners. We had no time. Any time that we had privately, away from the cameras, we were exhausted, or I was working."
Ben admitted he and Lauren stopped communicating and expressing their true feelings to each other.
"We weren't sitting down and [asking], like, 'How are you?' The normal stuff that I have now with [my wife Jessica Clarke], like, 'How are you doing? How do you feel about our relationship?' That was gone!" Ben said.
"It had been gone for months, and so we were in survival mode, at that point."
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Ben detailed the time commitment Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? required and how it affected his relationship with Lauren.
"In the midst of stuff that was already hard for us, this show is being filmed at the same time for 10 to 12 hours a day in my 700-square foot house," Ben recalled.
"Black vans were parked outside of our garage, that was their production studio. There were people in the house at 7AM and leaving at 10PM, like, every day. They would tear down and set up with new lights."
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Ben, however, accidentally backed into filming a show about his relationship with Lauren. The spinoff was initially supposed to be about the former software salesman running for office in Denver, CO.
"There was a whole mess behind-the-scenes of what happened there, but the agreement was that they were going to support me in my run for office. Politics looked a lot different back then, and what the two parties stood for looked a lot different back then," Ben explained.
Ben shared how he's always wanted to represent a community and its people, but due to legal matters the network had run into -- such as needing to equally represent the opposite party in the political race -- production needed to switch its focus.
"I was still under contract for a show, and [Freeform] was like, 'We still need to do a show, so you can run for office and film the show on the side, or you can choose to drop out,'" Ben told Jason.
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And that's when Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? came about.
"It was a show, then, about our life and about the things we were trying to figure out," Ben noted.
"[Filming] was a really good business decision for us because we were not married and we were two separate pieces of talent."
Ben revealed on the financial podcast that he had made between $50,000-80,000 for starring on The Bachelor. But he and Lauren were each paid $100,000 for filming Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?.
"And then they used our house to film it, so obviously, then there's the rental income for them to film a show in our home," Ben added. "We split [the rental income] up until the very end."
Ben recently said on his "The Ben and Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast" that he and Lauren realized during filming they just weren't right for each other.
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Ben insisted that while Happily Ever After? portrayed him as coming down with a case of cold feet before his wedding, he was actually just having doubts about whether he and Lauren were truly meant to be.
A source close to Lauren told E! News in May 2017 that Ben and Lauren just "wanted different things," and that Ben "would have kept wanting to make it work" and so their split was "really sad."
And Ben agreed on his "Almost Famous Podcast" it was "a very mutual" decision to part ways and end their engagement.
Ben said he now looks back fondly on "that season of life" and says he's glad they tried.
"I have no emotion wrapped around my past relationship with Lauren [now]," The Bachelor alum insisted. "You could not get me to cry [now]."
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"Personally, I hear her now say that maybe love feels differently for her than it did back on her time on the show. And I go, 'I'm glad! Like, you're married with kids. I'm married [too] and, like, yes, love does feel different,'" Ben confirmed.
"I'm glad you're in love with your husband more than you liked me -- or if you liked me at all, like, I'm just glad you like him! That's cool!"
But Ben confessed Lauren "should've gone home" and quit The Bachelor if she wasn't sure about him or serious about their relationship and future together.
"That show was really real for me... I invested, personally, a lot of effort into trying to figure out if it was the path that was going to help me find my partner or not," noted Ben, who also had a brief stint on The Bachelor Winter Games.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
