The Bachelorette alum Katie Thurston has revealed that John Hersey was the one who broke up with her, and explained the surprising reasons why he chose to end their relationship.
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"Technically, we actually broke up twice. The first time no one knew about. Obviously our very close friends did. Then maybe a week or two [later], we kind of worked through it and decided to get back together, so I thought we were golden."
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Katie reasoned, "If you get back together after a breakup, you're really committing to whatever situation it is."
Katie and John -- a San-Diego based bartender who was eliminated during Week 2 of Katie's The Bachelorette season -- went Instagram official in November 2021, and then Katie announced in late June that the couple had called it quits on their relationship.
Katie simply wrote on Instagram Stories at the time, "Statement: no we aren't together," and declined to provide any details or specifics.
Katie later shared in a Q&A session with fans how her breakup was "complicated" but she and John were on "good terms," adding, "At the end of the day, you just want the person you love to be happy and you support whatever path they want to take to find that."
Katie admitted to Kaitlyn, who starred on The Bachelorette's eleventh season and also co-hosted Katie's edition of the show alongside Tayshia Adams -- on the podcast that her breakup with John was "just unavoidable."
"I don't know how it happened, but we just had gotten into a conversation, and at one point, I just said to him, 'I know more reasons why you don't like me than why you love me.' And that's a really sh-tty feeling," Katie shared.
Katie pointed out how "there's a lot of give and take when it comes to a relationship."
"But for me, the big tipping point that, to this day, will always piss me off, is he said, 'I just really need someone who can enjoy my passions and who wants to watch surf, maybe learn surfing with me,'" Katie recalled.
"I look at him and I go, 'You realize I jumped out of a f-cking plane three times,' [and] twice solo, skydiving, to join him in his passions. [It required] eight hours of ground school, all these things, to partake in 'his passion.'"
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOWKatie complained, "And somehow that was completely ignored and now we're focused on surfing? At that point, I knew nothing I did was ever going to be good enough."
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Katie, however, said John leaving her was "really a blessing in disguise" because she probably wouldn't have been happy with him in the long run.
Given she considers herself a "nurturing" woman, Katie said, "I think I would have stuck it out a lot longer than I should have. So like, now I'm in a very good place about it. Then, I was probably the saddest I've ever been."
Kaitlyn confessed that she was surprised to hear Katie had kind of lost herself in her relationship with John.
"I think I was just a little bit, maybe, in denial at first. It was such a big deal to date him so quickly after ending my engagement with [Blake Moynes]," Katie explained.
Katie got engaged to Blake, a Canadian wildlife manager, at the end of The Bachelorette's seventeenth season, which filmed in April 2021 and aired in August last year.
Katie and John went public with their romance only three short weeks after Katie and Blake announced in late October they had split and decided to end their engagement.
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Katie faced backlash for having moved on from her former fiance too quickly with a "rebound," and Blake said on the "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" podcast in November that he felt "flabbergasted," shocked and "speechless" upon finding out about Katie's romance with John.
Blake also said he believed Katie had been emotionally cheating on him with John -- which Katie and John have both firmly denied in the press.
"But I was like, 'He's worth it,'" Katie recalled to Kaitlyn of her mindset when she had decided to pursue love again with John.
"And, to this day, it's still a little confusing, because since John and I got to know each other as friends, I was like, 'You knew who I was before we dated, so why is it that once we started dating, you started to question like, oh, I need someone who's this?'"
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The former bank marketing manager insisted that she had "never" allowed John to believe that she was "that" kind of person.
"It just really caught me off-guard and I just really put, like, all my eggs in one basket with this man, and I don't want to say I regret it because I think every relationship is a lesson, but it was just six months crash and burn," Katie said.
Katie revealed in April 2022 that she and John were living together at Katie's apartment in San Diego, and the couple, although they weren't ready for an engagement yet, gushed on "Off the Vine" how they were madly in love with each other.
Katie lamented about how she basically gave in to John's every whim, supporting his need for travel and adventures.
"I bought this man a frickin' travel van. I let this man quit his job. I was like, 'Whatever you need me to be, I will be' -- which, in hindsight, that's not healthy, that's not good," Katie acknowledged.
"But it is a little, like, offensive to be like, 'Damn, like, I gave you everything,' and you're still being like, 'This isn't working out.'"
Katie said John is paying her back for the van but the situation still hurts.
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"They say the best way to get over someone...," Katie began.
"Is to get under someone," Kaitlyn interjected.
"She said it, not me!" Katie noted.
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Katie confirmed that she's single and dating again, but she's not looking for a serious relationship any time soon.
"I'm just in a good place. I realize my worth and I realize what I want," Katie said. "I feel in some ways so free right now... The only person I need to please is myself, no pun intended."
Once Katie and John's split made headlines earlier this summer, John defended the former The Bachelorette star on social media.
A troll wrote on the @BachelorWhatever Instagram account, "I feel like Katie is the reason she can't get a guy."
And John responded in the comments, "You will speak a finite number of words throughout your life. I urge you to speak more kindly, especially about someone you don't know."
"I have never been so supported or unconditionally loved by a partner," he added. "Assuming and implying that Katie is doing something wrong does not sit right with me. The Internet can be a mean place -- let's not add to it."
When John confirmed his split from Katie, he wrote in a statement of his own, "I love being able to share special moments with you all -- the funny ones. The happy ones. The outrageous, embarrassing, and heartfelt ones. But I don't know if it will ever get easier to share the sad ones."
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"I appreciate every one of you that has supported us throughout this journey. We could not (and would not) be here without you."
Prior to starring on The Bachelorette, Katie competed on Matt James' season of The Bachelor.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
