The Bachelor alum Lauren Bushnell has revealed that she hit "rock bottom" following her stint on Ben Higgins' season in 2016.
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Lauren, who accepted a marriage proposal from Ben on The Bachelor before they split and called off their engagement over a year later in May 2017, admitted she was "really in a low place" after filming the ABC reality series, The New York Post's Page Six reported.
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"I was kind of at that rock bottom place," she told Page Six.
"I needed to get there, though, in order to reflect and figure out who I was and what I wanted. I think I needed to just be alone, refocus on myself and rebuild who I was without a camera in my face."
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Lauren said in late March that she felt stressed and "a little bit tricked" coming off The Bachelor because she didn't know the extent of Ben's feelings for his runner-up JoJo Fletcher and how he had also told her that he loved her.
Not only did Lauren choose to move away from her family in Los Angeles, CA, to join Ben in Denver, CO, but she was also dealing with headlines about Ben's love for JoJo.
Lauren and Ben, who was thinking of pursuing a career in politics at the time, then jumped into filming a The Bachelor spinoff, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?, which aired on ABC's Freeform sister network.
Lauren confessed she doesn't "think it was the best idea" to appear on Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After? because she "was definitely still processing a lot of what happened."
In addition, Lauren was "having doubts" about her relationship with Ben and their future together. Ben was also shown on the Happily Ever After? series coming down with a case of cold feet when Lauren was trying to plan their wedding.
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Lauren also said being in the spotlight was difficult when she had some private issues to take care of.
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"I don't necessarily like all eyes on me. There was a lot of criticism involved," Lauren shared.
"The foundation was rocky already, and not just the relationship but my own mental health."
Lauren actually preferred her time living in a house with nearly 30 women than filming Happily Ever After? with Ben alone.
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"I enjoyed my time on The Bachelor more than I enjoyed doing that show," Lauren revealed.
"I was more comfortable in a setting like The Bachelor where you're one of 20 or 25 women and it wasn't just cameras on you all day long, every day."
However, Lauren has since moved on and is happily married to country singer Chris Lane.
The couple got married in October 2019 and then welcomed their son Dutton Walker Lane in June 2021.
Now that Lauren is a wife and mother who has settled down, she told Us Weekly earlier this year that she has "no regrets" when looking back at her time on The Bachelor -- "not at all," in fact.
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"I feel like I want to give 25-year-old me a big hug, because I feel like, for never having been in that situation -- even though I made mistakes along the way and was in some really dark times and said and did things I wish I wouldn't have -- overall, I... actually handled that really well for [my] age and not knowing what [I] was getting into," Lauren said.
Lauren also conceded how the show has "opened a lot of doors" for herself, including how the former flight attendant from Oregon can now work from home and spend quality time with her son.
"All of these experiences, even my experience on The Bachelor, totally prepared me and led me to where I [am, and to become] the person that I was when I met my now husband," Lauren noted.
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Ben, who also appeared on The Bachelor Winter Games, is now married to Jessica Clarke, a woman he met outside of Bachelor Nation. They tied the knot in November 2021 and recently got a dog together and have discussed starting a family in the near future.
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