The Bachelorette winner Jed Wyatt is apologizing again for his behavior towards star and ex-fiancée Hannah Brown, but maintains he is no cheater.
On the season 15 finale this week, was revealed that Brown and Wyatt got engaged, but later split after he told her that he had dated another woman up until a week before the show, adding that their relationship was not serious and had ended. Brown said that she later read a story about him and his alleged ex, whose name is Haley Stevens, which contradicted his version. Wyatt apologized to Brown on the after-show, to no avail.
“The main thing is just how sorry I am,” Wyatt said on Friday on Bachelor Happy Hour with Rachel & Ali, the “official Bachelor podcast,” hosted by show alumni Rachel Lindsay and Ali Fedotowsky. “I really have had time to think about the things that have happened and how Hannah has felt. I’m very remorseful and ultimately just want to become a better person because of all of this.”
In June, Stevens told the press she and Wyatt, a fellow Nashville musician, were a few months into a relationship before he began filming the show, and that he did not contact her after filming concluded and never formally broke up with her.
“If you really do love someone, no matter how promising they’ve made it seem, if they’re going on a dating show, regardless of why they’re going on a dating show, why would you stay with them?” Wyatt said on Bachelor Happy Hour. “If I was in a relationship, I would not have gone onto a dating show. That’s just me. I’m not a cheater.”
“And with my time with Haley, I did hang out with other people,” he added. “I did date other people. I slept with other people. We were not in an exclusive relationship.”
He said Stevens was unaware that he was sleeping with other people, and that they had never had a conversation about their relationship “saying this was this.”
“She’s rightfully hurt and I see that, I understand that. But the facts are the facts,” he said. “There was conversation and clarity on my path.”
Wyatt also denied rumors that he cheated on Brown with other women after they got engaged and stopped filming the regular episodes of The Bachelorette.
“Absolutely not…100 percent no,” he said on Bachelor Happy Hour.
Stevens had said she and Wyatt had an awkward run-in at a music venue after not speaking to her since he left for The Bachelorette.
“We ran into each other at a bar,” Wyatt said on Bachelor Happy Hour. “This was before she gave her story. She came up to me, we’re surrounded by people, this is right when I got back from the show. One episode had played at this point, and people were videoing me standing there. I was trying to have a conversation with my friends and she walked right up to me and goes, ‘You weren’t going to call? You weren’t going to say anything?’ And I just told her I didn’t feel like this was the time or place to have this conversation.”
“People are like…why weren’t you honest about the whole Haley situation?'” Wyatt continued. “In my head, I had more closure than Haley. I felt like we had a conversation on the phone once I landed in L.A. and we knew that I was stepping into a very unforeseen future and that anything could happen. We had talked about all the variables. If they wanted me to be The Bachelor or something, [Bachelor in] Paradise, falling in love, it was all discussed and understood.”
He also said he did not consider reaching out to Stevens because “my relationship with Hannah was my number one priority.”
“I am not angry at all [at Brown],” he said. “I think more than anything, I’m just really sad. I know she’s sad and hurt, too. I know that she now has her closure and will move on and that’s great.”
Brown ended up reconciling with Wyatt’s biggest competitor, the season 15 runner-up, Tyler Cameron.
“Tyler is an amazing guy, I don’t fault her for saying what she did, or asking him,” Wyatt said on Bachelor Happy Hour.
Brown and Cameron recently spent the night together at her home.
Wyatt said he and Brown have not spoken since the finale and that he would like to mend his relationship with Hannah and eventually become friends.
“I think she’s an amazing woman,” he said.
After Wyatt admitted to still dating Stevens just before The Bachelorette, Brown also relayed a message to his ex via an E! News interview.
“I hope that she knows what she’s worth and what she deserves, and learned a lot through her relationship just like I learned a lot through mine,” she said.
Stevens told E! News she would be “so open” to talking to or grabbing a drink with Brown.
“It’s definitely the ball is in her court,” she said.
“I have thought about her every single day about how this must have affected her,” she said. “It was heartbreaking for me and I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it is for her.”
—Reporting by Spencer Lubitz