For better and for worse. Clare Crawley‘s love for fiancé Dale Moss only grew after she watched him speak with her ailing mother, Lilia.
Crawley, 39, and the former football player, 32, opened up about life outside of The Bachelorette bubble during a joint interview on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast on Friday, November 6. One day earlier, fans watched in awe as Moss proposed to the Bachelor Winter Games alum after less than two weeks. After bowing out of the reality show early, Crawley took her fiancé to visit her mom, who has been receiving care for Alzheimer’s and dementia at a facility in Sacramento, California.
“It’s brutal. Dementia’s brutal,” Crawley said on the podcast. “There was a moment where we’re going through this process where people don’t know we’re [engaged] and we can’t talk about it or anything like that. Obviously, this season there was not hometown [visits] but … it was when they were just allowing window visits with my mom because of COVID. But he had come up and had a talk with my mom.”
Though the hairstylist’s mom suffers from conditions that get “rapidly worse” over time, Moss was still able to spark a connection.
“She was like, ‘Where do you live?’ And he said ‘New York,’” Crawley remembered. “And she’s like, ‘Are you taking my daughter to New York with you?’ And he said, ‘Nope. We’re keeping her right here in Sacramento with you.’”
Crawley lost her father, James, to brain cancer in 2004 and has since spoken openly about her special bond with her mom. Watching the South Dakota native spend time with the woman who raised her only made Crawley more certain that she’d found her perfect match.
“Things like that are just reconfirming everything that I have been looking for and that I wanted in a man,” the Bachelor alum explained on Friday. “Somebody that will understand this and real life stuff. The fun stuff aside, I always said I want a guy who will be around for the hard stuff, for the nitty gritty, for when it’s not pretty, for when it’s not easy, and he’s just embodied that.”
The duo made an instant connection after meeting on night one of season 16 of The Bachelorette. Though many fans have questioned whether their chemistry will last, Moss revealed that there was never a doubt in his mind that he would spend the rest of his life with Crawley.
“After we had our first group date, in my mind and in my heart, everything was already written,” he said during an interview with Good Morning America on Friday. “So, everything after the fact validated that … I said from the beginning, ‘There was never a time I wouldn’t be there for you.’ And my heart was so full. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Never a second thought.”
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