The Bachelorette alum Katie Thurston has claimed it "took a long time" for her ex-boyfriend John Hersey to pay her back for the van she had purchased him while they were dating.
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Katie and John -- a San-Diego based bartender who was eliminated during Week 2 of Katie's The Bachelorette season -- went Instagram official in November 2021, and then Katie announced in late June 2022 that the couple had called it quits on their relationship.
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Katie and The Bachelorette 17 alum had a whirlwind six-month romance, which included Katie letting John move into her former San Diego apartment.
"We lived together, I bought him, like, a travel van... I was, like, so all-in," Katie, 32, said on the July 25 episode of the "LadyGang" podcast.
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When co-host Becca Tobin expressed disappointment in the idea Katie had made such a big purchase for a guy, Katie quipped, "Don't worry, he paid me back."
But Katie laughed about how it "took a long time" for John, 29, to pay her back because "travel vans aren't cheap! Okay?!"
Katie then insisted she'll "never buy a man" an expensive present like that "ever" again.
She also shot down speculation John was wealthy when he appeared on The Bachelorette's seventeenth season.
"He was literally living in the van when we broke up," The Bachelor alum claimed.
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"He has since sold the van. I don't know what he's doing, but rich is not the way I would describe him."
Katie vented on the "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe" podcast in August 2022 how John had been the one to break up with her -- after she had bought him the van so they could take road trips together.
"I let this man quit his job. I was like, 'Whatever you need me to be, I will be' -- which, in hindsight, that's not healthy, that's not good," Katie said, acknowledging she had lost herself in the relationship.
"But it is a little, like, offensive to be like, 'Damn, like, I gave you everything,' and you're still being like, 'This isn't working out.'"
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Katie said at the time that John had agreed to reimburse her for the cost of the travel van.
"I don't want to say I regret it because I think every relationship is a lesson, but it was just six months crash and burn," Katie noted.
Katie got engaged to Blake Moynes, a Canadian wildlife manager, at the end of The Bachelorette's seventeenth season, which filmed in April 2021 and aired in August of that year.
Katie and John, who had been her best friend for months, went public with their romance only three short weeks after Katie and Blake announced in late October they had split and decided to end their engagement.
Katie faced backlash for having moved on from her former fiance too quickly with a "rebound," but both Katie and John denied any wrongdoing in the press, and Katie insisted she had never emotionally or physically cheated on Blake.
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John even posted a long Reddit message to fans at the time defending his romance with Katie and how they both had the best of intentions and only got together, romantically, once Katie and Blake's relationship was over.
But then John and Katie announced their split via separate Instagram accounts in June 2022.
"I don't know how it happened, but we just had gotten into a conversation, and at one point, I just said to him, 'I know more reasons why you don't like me than why you love me.' And that's a really sh-tty feeling," Katie shared with Kaitlyn Bristowe last summer.
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Katie suggested that being on TV changed John and he cared too much about what others thought of him. Katie said she found it annoying John always tried to "cater to the public."
"But for me, the big tipping point that, to this day, will always piss me off, is he said, 'I just really need someone who can enjoy my passions and who wants to watch surf, maybe learn surfing with me,'" Katie recalled.
"I look at him and I go, 'You realize I jumped out of a f-cking plane three times [and] twice solo skydiving to join him in his passions. [It required] eight hours of ground school,'" Katie complained, adding, "Now we're focused on surfing? At that point, I knew nothing I did was ever going to be good enough."
After John and Katie's breakup, Katie moved out of the San Diego apartment they had shared for several months because of all the memories they shared there together.
"I'm just in a good place. I realize my worth and I realize what I want," Katie said. "I feel in some ways so free right now... The only person I need to please is myself, no pun intended."
Prior to starring on The Bachelorette, Katie competed on Matt James' season of The Bachelor.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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