The Bachelorette star Jenn Tran has explained why she only kissed one bachelor on her first night of filming Season 21.

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When The Bachelorette premiered on Monday, July 8, Jenn told the cameras, "That first kiss is so important. I want to get to know their hearts before I feel like I'm ready to take that step."

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Jenn ultimately gave her first -- and only kiss -- of Night 1 to Sam McKinney, who also earned the coveted First Impression Rose.

But Jenn revealed that she didn't initially plan on being so conservative with her kisses on Night 1 in an interview with Us Weekly.

"I didn't go into the night thinking, 'I don't want to kiss anyone.' I went into the night knowing how this process works, how this journey works, how other Bachelor/Bachelorettes have gone throughout their journeys, and, for me, a first kiss means a lot," Jenn shared with the magazine.

"And I need to be able to feel a certain level of comfortability with somebody. And I need to be able to feel like our relationship is at that point for me to want to kiss you."

Jenn acknowledged, "I knew that it wasn't going to be everybody on Night 1, and so I really just tried to listen to my gut and whoever I felt most comfortable with, I was like, 'Yes, I'll entertain it,' but I knew I wasn't going to kiss everybody."

While Jenn only had one makeout session of the evening, she admitted it was a "feral" one with Sam.

"Throughout that night, I was just like, 'Who am I going to give the First Impression Rose to?' And I kept thinking back to Sam, because we had such an easy flowing conversation," Jenn recalled.

"It was easy to give him that rose, because I just felt so comfortable and I knew that there was going to be potential there."

When Sam, a 27-year-old contractor from Myrtle Beach, SC, stepped out of a limo, he asked Jenn to picture her life 50 years from that point.

"[You're] waking up on a Saturday morning to me cooking breakfast. I just have one thing to ask you: with two shots in my hand, do you know what time it is? It's shot o'clock," Sam said.

Jenn called Sam "a sexy cowboy," and she was clearly attracted to him from the start.

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Sam was also the first person to steal Jenn for a chat at the first cocktail party of the season.

At that time, Sam shared with Jenn how he was willing to put himself out there and potentially get hurt if it meant he could potentially find true love with her. Sam let Jenn know that he was "in it for the long haul" and he was serious about wanting a relationship.

"Sam M. makes me feel excited! It's an undeniable connection and I don't know what it is. I'm also looking at how hot he is, and I definitely want to kiss him," Jenn gushed in a confessional.

When Sam went in for a kiss, Jenn quickly gave him the cheek, but she made up for it later with the First Impression Rose.

"I feel like something is there, and I can't stop thinking about you all night," Jenn told the smiling suitor.

"I don't always pick the right men, but there is something in my gut that is telling me there is something here. I'm really excited about it, and I'm really excited to get to know you more. I can't stop thinking about you and I'm excited about it!"

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Sam M. "absolutely" accepted the rose, and The Bachelorette star told the cameras how she was "digging" her relationship with him.

Jenn then shared that her kiss with Sam was "really good," and she noted how it felt "so right" after tension had been building all evening. Jenn gushed about how that kiss was definitely worth the wait.

Given Jenn is admittedly a bad picker of men, however, it remains to be seen if her gut instinct on Night 1 led her in the wrong direction.

"I would say based on my previous dating relationship history, I don't think I saw red flags very well because of the way I grew up and not having a role model of love," Jenn explained.

"I definitely dated men who weren't good for me because I just didn't understand what love really was. But through those bad experiences, I think I was able to really learn what I don't want and to take that as a lesson into what I now need in a relationship."

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Jenn also felt more than one connection during that first night of filming, which ended with Jenn narrowing down her pool of bachelors from 25 to 18 men.

"I can say that I definitely opened my heart up to a lot of different connections and explored a lot of these [men]," The Bachelorette star confirmed.

"The way that things panned out throughout the journey and the way that things ended, I'm very happy about [it]."

Click here to read episode-by-episode spoilers about how Jenn's The Bachelorette season unfolds, including her winner and runner-up.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.