In every young Bachelor's life, there comes a time when he has to date a whole bunch of ladies at the same time. And with the new season of The Bachelor premiering Jan. 4, you gotta wonder how Ben Higgins is going to handle kissing multiple women in front of other women who are... y'know... maybe not too into that. It's one of those trip-ups that seems super glaring to me, but that no one seems to contemplate in advance. In real life, it's super messed up when you're dating someone and they kiss someone else, but on the show, that's totally normal and expected, so I'm always surprised how little (and how poorly!) some contestants plan for it. But luckily, this seems to be something that Ben has put a great deal of though into, as Live! With Kelly and Michael aired a clip on Jan. 4 of him meeting up with past Bachelors and trying to get some advice when it comes to dating multiple women at once — specifically, locking lips with them.
During the clip, viewers met the group advising Ben, which was made up of three former Bachelors — the happily-married Jason Mesnick (Season 13, married to Molly Malaney since 2010), Sean Lowe (Season 17, married to Catherine Giudici since 2014), and Chris Soules (*crickets*). They joked around with Ben a little, recommending that he make sure to kiss people in front of each other, and "kiss 'em all!", but they didn't actually give him advice on how to get past the super awkward reality of doing so on the show. So naturally, once it was over, Kelly Ripa wanted to know how Ben got over the strangeness of his situation, and here was his answer.
It was important for me that I kind of compartmentalized each relationship. But i also didn't want to jump into this and just experience the physical part of the relationship. Because it is a weird situation, and i think if you can try to hold back that part and really get to know the women first, and then obviously the physical part comes in any relationship, that was important to me. Because kissing them all in front of each other, or doing that, just doesn't feel right to me either.
I think that's actually a really good answer. On a show like The Bachelor, if you're really giving it your best shot and looking for love, there's going to be some overlap in the spittle-swapping department. It sounds like Ben knew that going in, was prepared for it, and really did his best to make sure that he was placing more importance on personality than on how quickly any given physical relationship was moving forward. And that's really what matters, right?
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