Ben Higgins Reveals He’s In A Long-Distance Relationship That Is Surprisingly Similar To ‘The Bachelor’

Ben Higgins dropped some big dating news when talking to current Bachelor star Colton Underwood. During a recent episode of Ben and Ashley’s Almost Famous podcast, ABC’s former leading man revealed he has started “dating again,” according to People.

Higgins revealed that he is not on a dating app and clarified that he is actually dating just one person. The popular former Bachelor star also revealed that he is “excited” about his new relationship, which is surprisingly similar to his experience on The Bachelor in 2016.

“Here’s the thing … The Bachelor is a really great thing because it forces you to have conversations and right now, the girl that I’m talking to is long-distance. So we FaceTime a lot, and it feels very similar because we don’t get time together. It’s very intentional. It’s very focused. And if we’re going to spend any time with each other, it’s going to be in conversation.”

Higgins described his new lady as “the best, purest person I know.”

During his run as The Bachelor, Ben Higgins fell in love with and ended up engaged to finalist Lauren Bushnell, but the couple, who went on to star in the spinoff reality show, Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After, called it quits in May 2017. Bushnell is currently dating country music star Chris Lane.

While Higgins previously told People he was in a “pretty healthy place” when the breakup with Lauren Bushnell occurred, he realized he still wasn’t ready to date when he signed on to the Olympic-themed dating show, The Bachelor: Winter Games, last year. Higgins left the spinoff show after realizing that he didn’t connect with anyone and admitting that he still wasn’t ready to date after his split from his ex-fiancée.

Higgins made headlines during his season of The Bachelor for breaking an unwritten rule: Dropping the L word to two women—Bushnell and JoJo Fletcher—while filming the show. At the time, longtime Bachelor host Chris Harrison revealed that even he was surprised that Higgins told two women that he was in love with them.

According to People, Harrison pointed out in a press call that Ben Higgins is not an actor and that he uttered those three little words to two women because he really meant it at the time. Harrison also revealed that The Bachelor star’s double dose of “I love you” took producers of the ABC reality show by surprise and they had to pull him aside later to talk to him about it.

“I was a little bit shocked that he really did get there with two women,” Harrison said of Higgins. “It’s not something you can script. It just doesn’t work like that and he’s just not that good of an actor. It really just was something that happened and it took us all a little bit by surprise.”

Harrison also noted that Higgins was a master at compartmentalizing his relationships with his final women and that the former software salesman may have done “too good of a job” because he wasn’t even aware that he had said ‘I love you” to two different girls.

The current season of The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.