Grant Ellis isn’t the first Bachelor to drop a premature “I love you” — and he wasn’t interested in preventing any fallout from using the L-word on the dating series.
“My plan was to go in there and lead with my heart, and that’s what I did,” the 31-year-old Bachelor told Us Weekly earlier this year when asked about any rules he set for himself regarding the word love. “I didn’t really have a strategic plan. I know I’m a pretty sound thinker and I use logic, but emotions are a different thing. I was like, ‘I’m gonna lead with my heart and I’m gonna give this everything I got.’”
As Bachelor Nation knows, there are unofficial degrees of expressing your feelings on the ABC series: “I could see myself falling for you,” “I’m falling for you,” “I’m falling in love with you” and “I love you.” Season 20 Bachelor Ben Higgins made history for telling two women — Lauren Bushnell Lane and JoJo Fletcher — “I love you” and later made it clear that he regretted his decision. Since his season in 2016, some Bachelors have learned from Ben’s mistakes, and others have done it their own way.
Grant, for his part, acknowledged that not having rules can sometimes “backfire,” but he stood by his decision.
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“You don’t want to be in there all uptight. I don’t think you should approach dating like that, even though it’s a platform where people judge you,” he explained to Us. “You can’t go in there and say, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna say it.’ You just have to go in there, be yourself, and hopefully you make the right decision.”
During the Monday, March 17, episode of The Bachelor, Grant said “I love you” to Litia Garr ahead of their overnight date. The next morning, he was worried about his words since there were two other women — Juliana Pasquarosa and Zoe McGrady — still in the competition.
“Maybe I should have waited a little longer,” Grant told the cameras. “I do love her, but I also am falling hard — and, if not, very close to — in love with somebody else. I never thought it would be possible to be in love with multiple women.”
Grant sent Zoe home at the rose ceremony. In his Us cover story, he confirmed that he did indeed fall in love with two women, seemingly his final two, Litia and Juliana. “I didn’t think it was possible, but it is,” he said of being in love with two people at once. “You probably should avoid it, though.”
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He added that “it’s very hard” to be the lead “when you develop feelings and then tell people how you feel.”
“You’re honest and sincere, and you try not to hold back — because that’s the way you find your person — but it’s easy to be villainized because you don’t want to lead anybody on,” he said. “A man dating multiple women is already at a disadvantage. You just have to be careful and see where the cards fall.”
The season finale of The Bachelor airs on ABC Monday, March 24, at 8 p.m. ET.
