Jed Wyatt slept with another woman the night before he left for The Bachelorette… told this other woman he loved her… and then never broke off the relationship while he starred as a suitor on Season 15.
Once Hannah Brown learned this information, she understandably sent the lying cheat packing just two days after accepting his proposal.
As any self-respecting woman would, right?
What possible excuse could Wyatt have for his behavior?
How could he possibly explain that he had someone back at home (Haley Stevens) who had been told she was his one true love AND someone on the show to whom he was saying the same thing?
ABC viewers found out on Thursday morning when Jed appeared as a guest on Good Morning America.
“I was really overwhelmed with how much I actually did fall in love with [Hannah],” the singer-songwriter explained, adding of why he never mentioned the whole girlfriend thing:
“I was fearful to lose her, and I was acting, really, more out of fear than my actual love for her. That’s my mistake, but that’s kind of what happened.”
It’s definitely true that Jed likely would have lost Hannah is he told her he was dating someone else while being a contestant for her heart.
But we’re not really sure if that excuse means anything.
You just shouldn’t have been dating someone else, dude. There’s no way of talking yourself out of this one.
Stevens (pictured below with Jed) came forward in numerous interviews this summer to reveal that she and Wyatt had been in a four-month relationship when he joined the cast of the ABC reality dating program.
Hannah confronted her fiancé about it on Tuesday night’s finale, even circling details in a People Magazine article that didn’t add up with what he had told her previously.
Ultimately, she chose to call off their engagement over the phone.
“We had discussed that situation prior to the article and then we discussed it the day before the article came out,” Wyatt said on GMA, adding:
“We had touched a lot of bases on it, but still, you know, I was fearful and held out on some of the details that in turn caused us to end.”
Those details likely included the fact that, as Jed admitted during the After the Final Rose special, he never actually ended his romance with Stevens.
He confessed on air that he assumed it was just a given the two were over once she saw him on The Bachelorette.
Hannah and Jed came face-to-face for the first time since their split when he joined her on the couch during this week’s season finale.
He apologized “from the bottom of my heart” to her friends, both of their families and Bachelor Nation at the time, prompting this reply from Brown:
“I just hope that from this you will be honest and learn and grow into the man that I do believe that you can be for whoever in your future.”
When asked on Thursday whether he had to do any sort of soul-searching before his public apology, Jed replied:
“I knew how sorry I was, I knew how much I loved her and how her happiness was in my best interest.
"And, you know, it would have been easy to turn away and not even show up to After the Final Rose.
"I just wanted to be there for her so that she could have her closure and so that, not only in her eyes, but in the eyes of everyone else, let everyone know that I am sorry.”
Is Jed truly sorry, though?
Whatever, though.
Hannah has moved on and asked out Tyler Cameron and, as you can see below, she’s clearly much better off for it…