BachelorNation, meetBen Higgins‘ new girlfriend!
One month afterThe Bacheloralum revealed on his podcast that he was dating someone new, Higgins, 29, made his relationship with Jessica ClarkeInstagram official.
“I’ve been selfishly keeping this girl to myself for too long! Hey friends meet @jessclarke_! I successfully slid into her Dm’s a few months ago. I took a risk and I am glad I did,” Higgins captioned a photo of himself and Clarke, which was captured in Honduras, on Wednesday.
“She is someone special, and I look forward to where life is going to take us,” theGenerous Coffeeco-founder continued. “Stay tuned for the journey. In addition, this picture was taken this week in Honduras. I got to spend some time with an incredible group of people from all over the USA on a @generous_coffee_ adventure. Life is good!”
Ben Higgins and Jessica Clarke.
Shortly after, Clarke, 23, also introduced her followers to her “secret boyfriend.”
“My secret boyfriend, Ben!” she captioned twoInstagramphotos of the couple. “He has one of the biggest hearts and kindest spirits, I got to share Honduras with him this past week and I’m excited for many more adventures!”
Clarke is an avid runner and competed on the University of Mississippi’s (Ole Miss) women’s track and field and cross-country team.
According to herathlete bio, Clarke “stayed in a special needs orphanage in China for 10 days.”
She graduated from Ole Miss in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in integrated marketing and communications, according to herLinkedIn, and currently works at Valet Energy in Nashville.
Last month, on the Jan. 14 episode ofThe Ben and Ashley I.Almost Famouspodcast, host and season 20Bachelorstar Higgins casuallyrevealed the news that he was dating someone.
“I was just telling someone the other day, I’ve started dating again,” he said. “This is big news, right? I am dating.”
When current leading manColton Underwood, 26, asked if he was on a dating app, Higgins clarified that he’s seeing one person in particular.
“I’m actually dating one person that we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks on the podcast,” he said. “I’m excited about it.”
Reflecting on the budding relationship, Higgins pointed out some similarities with his experience on the show in 2016. (He ended up engaged to finalistLauren Bushnell, but the couplecalled it quitsin May 2017.)
“Here’s the thing …The Bacheloris a really great thing because it forces you to have conversations and right now, the girl that I’m talking to is long-distance,” Higgins said. “So we FaceTime a lot, and it feels very similar because we don’t get time together. It’s very intentional. It’s very focused. And if we’re going to spend any time with each other, it’s going to be in conversation.”
“She’s like, the best, purest person I know, so a lot of those conversations are about our lives,” he added.
Broadimage/REX/Shutterstock
“I was in a committed relationship for so long that I accepted these boundaries in my life for commitment — like for example, you can’t be alone with another woman or you’re not going to text with another woman,” he said. “I set those up and they were in my life for 18 months and doing that again felt almost still like I was doing something wrong. So I had to get over that mentally. I don’t know why that was a block.”
Higgins alsotold reportersduring a conference call ahead of his appearance on theBachelorspinoff that his relationship with Bushnell “did affect the way I interacted with women [on the show] and it does that in real life.”
The Bachelorairs Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.
source: people.com
