UPDATE 2/1 4:30 p.m. ET: Ben Higgins denied the split rumors on Instagram, sharing a throwback photo of himself kissing fiancée Lauren Bushnell. “No need to respond often to rumors or ‘fake news’ but the feeling I have in this picture is the same feeling I have for this girl today,” he wrote. “We have entered into a world where rumors will exist we know that, but just know as @laurenbushnell celebrates her birthday tomorrow I am still extremely lucky to be able to share life with her and be by her side.”
Original story below:
Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell’s happily ever after still has a question mark dangling at the end.
The engaged pair from Bachelor season 20 may not officially be done, but “a breakup has been coming for awhile,” says a source. “They don’t get along. She’s told people recently how hard it is. He’s a great guy, but they should split.” Find out more in the video above, and detailed below.
Fans began speculating as to whether there was trouble in paradise after Bushnell, 26, spent a weekend in Nashville January 19 without her fiancé, 28, and then jetted off to Mexico January 31, again without her main man — or her 4.25-carat Neil Lane sparkler, according to her Instagram story.
Still, the account manager posted a shot while getting a haircut on January 24, captioning the Instagram, “Gettin my hair did for date night.” Later that evening, the blogger shared a picture of the Denver-based pair at the Nuggets basketball game.
In November, on their reality series, Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After, Higgins pulled the plug on their wedding plans, noting that the couple had their “issues” and that they needed to “take a step back” from their relationship.
When Us Weekly caught up with the pair of more than a year in January, they still had not set a date. “I feel like the last year of our life has been a blur honestly,” Bushnell told Us. “Both of us are in this limbo of what’s going to happen next. I think we’re just focusing on ourselves and what it is we’re passionate about and what we want to do. I have a blog and it’s like, ‘Where do I want to take that? What direction?’ It’s going to be hopefully a creative year and also one of those years where we just focus on each other and ourselves also, and what our future looks like.”
For his part, Higgins was also unsure if 2017 would feature their vows. “I’d love to say that we have a wedding planned, a date planned that I could tell you, ‘Hey this is when it’s happening.’ We don’t,” he said. “People have watched us get engaged but one of the things that we’ve learned post-Bachelor is that it’s important to get to know each other too and that’s what Lauren and I want to do. We don’t want to keep jumping to the next thing because before you know it we’ll look back in five years and be like, ‘What in the heck did we just do?’”
