A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking to Jared Haibon and Ashely Laconetti from The Bachelor about the key to their success.

In case you didn’t know, Ashley had a pretty interesting rep on the bachelor as the “crying girl.”

What’s pretty interesting about her is that from the get go she fell for Jared Haibon but he didn’t exactly return her feelings.

At one point he even told her that there was no chance that the two of them would ever become a couple.

Well, let’s fast forward to present day and…

So, how the heck did that happen?

How did she take a guy who had no interest in her at all and actually get him to marry her?

Well, today that’s what we are going to explore as they were kind enough to come on to the podcast and give me an interview.

Check Out Jared And Ashley’s Podcasts

• Ashley’s “Almost Famous” Podcast
• Jareds Help! I Suck At Dating Podcast

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter:
Okay. So today we’re going to be talking to some pretty interesting individuals. And I don’t know if I told you guys this, but I don’t watch The Bachelor, or The Bachelor in Paradise, or anything very much. I think I maybe watched it once or twice when I was growing up, just curious. But when we had our daughter, my wife and I, we put her down, which is really important, you get that time together, and we just happened to watch The Bachelor in Paradise, and it happened to be you guys’ seasons.

Ashley:
Aww, thank you.

Chris Seiter:
And what’s really interesting is we both watched the whole saga, that whole season. I think that’s, to this day, the only full season we’ve ever watched of The Bachelor in Paradise. And we remember, definitely, you, Ashley. The way they edited you was… I remember thinking this can’t be real. Because the first thing they showed was you getting super emotional. And I always thought, “There’s no way that can be real.” And then I remember you guys meeting, and then I remember you were kind of hesitant to take the date or something, Jared. I don’t remember who had the date card or whatever, but I remember you guys, for whatever reason, just didn’t work out. And then I remember thinking, I told my wife, I said, “There’s no way she’ll ever get him.”

Chris Seiter:
Flash forward to a couple of years ago, or whenever you guys got together, and I’m scrolling the Yahoo homepage, and I just see your wedding photos. And I’m like, “What? How?” And so, I guess that’s what I want to talk to you guys about today. How did that come about? Because we’re really focused on trying to understand what makes human beings that don’t want you all of a sudden want you again. So could we peel back some layers and try to understand what was it that you were thinking, Jared, as she’s trying to get you? And you’re just like, “No.” What made that 360 turn for you?

Ashley:
Well, if you want the most articulate explanation of it, we have this video on YouTube. It’s called The Story of Us, and it’s 45 minutes, and it goes through each year.

Chris Seiter:
How long is this saga? Is it like three or four years that it takes basically getting?

Jared:
Well, no. It’s not about getting me. I don’t know if that’s the right phrasing. I don’t know if I’m the prize in this one, as Ashley can attest to, being my wife now. I think we met in 2015, and then we got together in March of 2018, I think we started dating.

Chris Seiter:
Okay. So you started dating. What year was that Bachelor in Paradise season that I’m thinking of?

Jared:
2015.

Chris Seiter:
’15. Okay.

Jared:
We were on Bachelor in Paradise twice. We were on Bachelor in Paradise in 2015, and then we actually went back in 2016. And then we started dating off-camera in early 2018. So it almost took about three years to start dating after the show. So about three years of friendship.

Ashley:
What they show on the show isn’t always… I mean, it’s part of the story. It’s just not the entire story. You don’t get every detail.

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Chris Seiter:
So what happened in that time? Because I remember the way… So that’s what I don’t know. I was just a normal viewer. You don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, and I’m sure 90% of what happens is behind the scenes. They’re just editing it in a way to make it as drama-filled as possible, right?

Jared:
Was that me?

Ashley:
Yeah, that was you.

Jared:
Yeah. I mean, they… Listen, they’re a television show, of course. So they’re going to try to make the best TV show, and the way to do that is to create as much drama as possible. But everything that happens within the show is real. It’s your emotions, it’s your reaction to things. And so, I think the thing about Bachelor is that it’s very condensed. It’s a very shortened period of time, where everything happens on speed dial. And I don’t really know if that’s conducive, at least for myself, and I could probably speak on Ashley as well. I think because we both are in our own heads a lot, specifically me, it takes a longer amount of time for me to really be OK to pursue things. And so, I think what happened was it was just… It’s very convoluted and complicated, but I think when I first met Ashley, I just wasn’t really in the best spot to date someone else, especially someone like Ashley, who’s the complete opposite of somebody I’ve ever dated in the past.

Jared:
Somebody who’s, like you said, very emotional, very honest, very transparent, very persistent. All wonderful qualities, but I don’t think at that time I was ready. And then I think I started developing feelings a few months after the show, when we started hanging out. I got to see her in her element on the East Coast, we were hanging out, watching football games because we had a charity event together. And seeing her dynamic with her family, and it just made me more and more attracted to Ashley. It’s hard to put myself back into the place of why we didn’t start dating back then, but I think it just got to a point where it became so confusing and complicated, that it was so complicated, it was difficult to start dating.

Jared:
And then I think we got in this lull of like a year and a half of true, just only friendship, and she wasn’t dating anybody and I wasn’t dating anybody. And so, I think, at least from my end, it just became this comfort thing, where it was like, “Well, things are really good right now. We talk almost every day. We hang out all the time.” So it’s kind of like we’re dating, but we’re not dating, because we’re not boyfriend/girlfriend, and we go on dates with other people, and we’re not romantic with each other. And then of course, she started dating someone else, and then I had to look in the mirror and reevaluate my values and what I was doing with my life and what I wanted to go for. And that’s what I did, and luckily, she still had feelings for me too.

Ashley:
I used to tell people that he was my boyfriend who didn’t touch me. People will say like, “How long were you together before you got married?” And the answer is technically a year and a half, but we pretty much say we were together for four years.

Jared:
Well, we don’t say that.

Ashley:
We don’t really say that. But it’s like, “Too soon.”

Jared:
Because it wouldn’t be true.

Ashley:
No. But we knew each other the way a couple would know each other for four years.

Jared:
Yeah. We were best friends.

Chris Seiter:
So you attribute the feelings to getting cropped backed up based on you getting off the show and just being together for a long time, and just opening up and talking about things that normal friends wouldn’t talk about? So there was an extra layer to your relationship?

Ashley:
Well, I think with Jared, a lot of his confusion and stuff was that he didn’t want to look, on TV, like he was confused. So he acted as if he was sure he didn’t want me, because he honestly thought that would probably look better on TV.

Chris Seiter:
It seems like they really try to push you fast to make a decision on the person, right? That show, in particular.

Jared:
Well, of course, because you only have… Bachelor in Paradise films for like 25 days. So it’s like, you’ve got to make decisions fast in that environment. And so, it wasn’t even so much a TV aspect for me. I’ve realized that I just do that in everyday life, where I try to put this persona on of me putting up this image in the world that I know exactly what I’m doing, and I know what I’m going for, and I have things together, which is the complete opposite of what is actually going on. But luckily, especially after being with Ashley, I’ve started tearing away at that facade, and being more honest with people, and vulnerable, and telling people, “Don’t listen to me. We’re all just learning every day.”

Chris Seiter:
So Ashley, I remember you just being obsessed with him from moment one. Did that go away at all for you, especially when things didn’t work out on the show, or were there always underlying feelings there, as your friendship was going on?

Ashley:
For the most part, the feelings were always there. There was times where it would be lessened, but that was honestly, usually because of times where he would be acting dumb, or he’d be pushing me away, and then I’d be like, “Oh, okay. Fine. I’m done with this.”

Chris Seiter:
So you basically do, “I don’t care anymore.” And then just come back to it later, when you catch the feelings again?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Chris Seiter:
That’s interesting. So in preparation for the interview, because I only knew what I knew based on the season I had watched, I was watching some YouTube videos. And you guys have a real interesting proposal story, but it’s also kind of awkward in a weird way, because it looks like one of your exes was there to watch this proposal?

Ashley:
Yeah.

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Chris Seiter:
Was that ever a weird vibe to have with a proposal? Because it seems to me like no one knew what was going on, except maybe Jared. And then they push you over and the host is like, “Hey, let’s come watch.” Is that ever a weird feeling? Do you ever look back on that? Because I also saw you have some really amazing wedding videos and you have a really amazing wedding just to begin with. But do you feel like that was kind of a weird situation to be put in?

Ashley:
Well, the televised aspect of our engagement was definitely flawed.

Jared:
Yeah. So I was talking to producers about possibly going down and proposing to Ashley, and I never even thought that they would try to make it awkward, just because it’s a proposal, they’re not going to really do anything with it to ruin the moment. But then, of course, the night bef… We fly down there and I have this plan thing. And then I was talking to a producer beforehand, and I said, “Listen, if her ex is still down there…” Because you don’t truly know if somebody is still down there or not while they’re filming. They don’t tell you. And I was like, “Listen, if he’s just down there, please just have him go into an interview, or have him go on a date with someone. Just make sure he’s just not there, so it’s not awkward at all.”

Jared:
And they couldn’t promise me that, but they said it wasn’t going to be awkward. Like, “Listen. You’re going to go. You’re going to see Harrison. He’s going to introduce you in front of the group. We promised that…” His name was his name is Kevin. “That he was going to be in the back of the crowd. And then you guys would go off and do your own thing. And that would be it, and it wouldn’t be awkward at all.” And so I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” Well, I didn’t say it was fine, but it was either do that or just cancel the proposal. So it was like, “Okay. Well, shit.”

Chris Seiter:
Yeah. You have to go forward with it.

Jared:
Yeah. I mean, it was 12 hours away.

Ashley:
I obviously didn’t know I was going to get proposed to. I had an inkling there was a chance, but I knew that even being down in paradise, that they would add that annoyance to the storyline. Because they’d be like, “Oh no. We can’t have a pure storyline just celebrating Ashley and Jared at this moment.” So I was a little concerned, and I actually can’t believe that Jared was so naive to the fact that they would do something like that.

Chris Seiter:
Well he’s in love. He wants to marry you.

Jared:
Yeah. And the reason, too… So one of my buddies, his name is Tanner. He and Jade got engaged on Bachelor in Paradise, our first season, and they had a televised wedding. And Tanner was telling me a story about how he didn’t want her ex there, the former bachelor. Obviously it’s very different now. We’re all friends. But at the time, there’s still that awkwardness. And they were like, “Well, listen. He’s coming. He’s going to be there.” And they promised him it wouldn’t be awkward, and it wasn’t awkward at all. So I was like, “All right, it’ll probably be the same thing with me.” But then of course, lo and behold, we’re watching the engagement back, and Harrison invites everybody, including her ex boyfriend, to come watch the freaking engagement. It’s like, “Come on, guys.”

Ashley:
Yeah. In real life, it wasn’t as awkward-

Chris Seiter:
As it looks on TV.

Ashley:
Yeah. But then they absolutely played with it.

Jared:
But honestly, it’s fine. It was still a memorable moment. It sucks, because I would change some things, of course, because I wouldn’t want to do it in front of anybody. But I’m certainly over that, and we had such a spectacular and incredible wedding that it was honestly the best day of my life.

Ashley:
Yeah. I don’t think about the proposal the way that it was on TV anymore. I think we did for a while. But now, the only time that I’ll think about the annoyance around it is when somebody brings it up like that.

Chris Seiter:
Oh, okay. I’ll stay away from it. What I’m actually curious about… So, you guys start dating. At what point did you realize you knew you wanted to marry her, Jared?

Jared:
Like I said, we were best friends for three and a half years.

Ashley:
We kind of went from not dating to being married.

Jared:
We knew that once we started… Because we knew each other so well, and there was a little bit of a romantic background with us. And honestly, it is true that because we were best friends, we knew each other so well, that the only missing part of our relationship was the romantic part. So once we started dating for a month, two months, and it was so easy, the romance felt so right, it was like, “Okay, this is obvious. I want to…” They always tell you, “Marry your best friend.” And then, here she is right now. So I knew very early on, and I think Ashley did too, that we weren’t dating just to date and have fun. We were going to date and figure out this was a lifelong partnership.

Chris Seiter:
What was it about Ashley that… I’m sure you’ve had friends that were girls before, but Ashley just seemed to stand out from the rest. You’ve mentioned she’s your best friend, so what was it about her that got you to open up?

Jared:
Ashley pushes me to be a better person. She pushes me to open up. Because I do have a lot of friends that are girls, but not romantically, obviously. Just friendship. The thing is, my friends that are girls are also not interested in me romantically. So with Ashley and I, there was a mutual want for romance there. But Ashley just pushes me to be a better person. She knows how to handle me better than anybody in this world. So those are some factors.

Chris Seiter:
What about you, Ashley? What was it about Jared? Because it seemed like there was instant attraction from the moment you saw him, and it doesn’t seem like it ever went away.

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Ashley:
I don’t know. It was really love at first sight. It was weird, because it was even before Jared spoke. So that’s just indescribable. I can’t even put to words what that phenomenon is. But with Jared, I just have always admired his passion, the way that he gets so excited about certain things. And I had never seen that in a guy before, a guy that I was attracted to. And there’s just some sort of understanding that we have between the two of us. This is weird to describe, but it’s kind of like my sister, where I don’t really have to explain how I feel about something, he just comes and gets it.

Chris Seiter:
So it just seemed like you guys were always on the same wavelength from the get-go.

Ashley:
Yes.

Chris Seiter:
What’s interesting, though, is during The Bachelor in Paradise, he seems to be kind of unsure if he wants to be with you or not. And I remember there was some guy who came up to you and was like, “He’s not going to be with you.” But you were just like, “No.” You just didn’t want to hear it. What was it about you that kept fighting?

Ashley:
That was our best friend, Nick, who told us that, who cried while giving a speech at our wedding.

Chris Seiter:
Okay. So you were right, and he was wrong.

Ashley:
Yes.

Chris Seiter:
So what was it that kept the faith going, so to speak?

Ashley:
Honestly, Jared’s behavior toward me.

Chris Seiter:
So it was sort of like, he’d give you signs that he was interested, but he wasn’t all in just yet? Because it seems to me you may be a victim of the speed at which that show goes. If you’re only filming for 25 days, it’s hard to make a life… They almost seem like they want you to get engaged by the end of the show, and 25 days just isn’t enough.

Ashley:
Yeah. There’s no, “Oh, you can leave as friends, or you can even leave as boyfriend and girlfriend.” You’re pretty much expected to either make a lifelong commitment, or I could leave single. But with Jared, I could just tell right after that moment with Nick. We had a two hour conversation, Jared and I, on a bed on the beach, and he couldn’t get up from the conversation. So I was like, “He obviously cares about me enough that he doesn’t even want to leave my side right now.”

Chris Seiter:
And what was it like for you, Jared? Because it seems to me like maybe the circumstances just made it difficult for you to commit that fast. You just needed more time? Would you say that’s accurate?

Jared:
Yeah. I think that’s accurate. I think it was a combination of circumstances and overcoming my own demons, so to speak. Not to cause sympathy, because that’s not what I’m trying to do. But I think for me, and just dating in everyday life, I have difficulty for a lot of reasons. And I think the problems I have in dating were just magnified within the Bachelor franchise because of the timeframe.

Ashley:
And also, we like to say that just because I was right and Jared did come around after some mixed signals, I am the exception to the rule when it comes to, “He’s just not that into you.” I am the Ginnifer Goodwin character in the movie.

Chris Seiter:
Well, I still think there’s something you can learn from your approach, potentially. Do you feel like you did something different than the average girl who’s in your circumstance? There’s some guy, he’s giving her those mixed signals, but he’s not super into her. Do you feel like there’s anything special you did to catch his interest?

Ashley:
No. I got a boyfriend. I tell all girls who are getting mixed signals and are confused about a guy’s behavior and whether or not they have a future together to just start dating someone else. Because if he doesn’t come around when you’re dating someone else, he’s never going to come around.

Chris Seiter:
So I don’t know if you know this about me, but we have quite a bit of people going through breakups that come through our website. And so, what we have as a ton of data. And what you said is something that we’ve learned. So after dealing with literally thousands of breakups and seeing what works to re-attract an ex or even get over an ex, a huge factor is moving on to someone new or emulating moving on. So believe it or not, you maybe just stumbled into the key. But I’m actually kind of curious to hear Jared’s perspective. When she started dating someone new, did that bother you on any level?

Ashley:
Yeah. That’s what made him admit his feelings.

Jared:
Yeah. Of course it really bothered me. And so I got-

Ashley:
He had this whole something with his mom during Christmas break.

Jared:
It wasn’t something with my mom. I just talked to my mom.

Ashley:
No, he just revealed his feelings very dramatically, like in a movie.

Jared:
Yeah. No. Because here’s the thing. It’s an ultimatum. Because now you’re really losing the person you want to be with, so you either have to fight for what you want or continue going down the path you’re going down, which is comfortability and not speaking up.

Chris Seiter:
So ultimately, you guys get together, you have this really amazing storybook wedding, I mean truly storybook. How have things have been going, now that you guys are married? Because I noticed when I got married, actually things got a lot better. It just felt deeper. I’m wondering if you guys experienced something similar.

Ashley:
See, we think it feels the same.

Chris Seiter:
The same?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Chris Seiter:
What about you, Jared?

Jared:
Yeah. The thing is, we lived together for over a year before we got married.

Ashley:
Did you guys live together before?

Chris Seiter:
We lived together for about six months, but our story’s a pretty complicated too, because we were long distance for like… It was very similar to yours, where we talked for months and months, and we felt like we knew each other. And then she lived in Pennsylvania, I lived in Texas, and I just decided to move, to take a chance. And we lived together for like six or seven months, and I just knew. So it was kind of similar, but for me, it was a real big shell shock. Because I moved where I knew everyone and my family was to just nowhere. I didn’t know anyone. So it was a lot of dealing with that. So when I had married her, I felt like, “Okay. Now I can relax. Because I don’t have to worry about her meeting some new guy and leaving, and I’m up here alone.” So maybe that’s sort of what came into it, but I’m always curious to talk to people like you.

Ashley:
Oh, I can see how you’d be more comfortable and secure with that. I don’t know. When we moved in together, it didn’t feel like any sort of transition, which is really weird. I imagined moving in together would drive me nuts, because I’ve always liked my own space and the way it needs to be just so. But for some reason, I just didn’t feel bothered by living together with somebody after so many years of living alone.

Chris Seiter:
What about you? Because I noticed, when I moved in with my wife, there’s really not much that bugged me about her, except the fact that sometimes she would eat these pretzels and leave them on the ground and forget to clean them up, and I’d have to clean them up. Was there any, moving in, you noticed these weird habits that kind of irked you?

Ashley:
There was just honestly the stupidest things.

Chris Seiter:
Yeah, it’s like the pretzel thing, right?

Ashley:
Yeah, it’s exactly like that. He would leave his wallet, and some change, and, I don’t know, his headphones and stuff on the bedroom dresser. And I’m like, “That’s supposed to look all pretty and put together. That’s not a place for that. Put that in a drawer.”

Chris Seiter:
I’m with Jared. I just put it. I just put it there.

Jared:
Literally, it’s just my wallet, my keys, and AirPods. She’s making it sound like I’m throwing papers on this thing.

Ashley:
But that’s a place for decor.

Jared:
No. Not to toot my own horn, but I find myself very easy to live with, because I just clean up after myself, and I don’t really like to make my presence known. So it was very easy. It was very easy for me.

Chris Seiter:
So, I want to give you guys, and I’ll let you guys talk as much as you want, but we were talking before we actually started recording about you guys have a couple of podcasts. It looks like Ashley has a podcast or a couple of podcasts, and you, Jared, maybe have a podcast as well. So could you tell me about them? And why should people listen to them?

Ashley:
Well, for all the Bachelor fans out there, I have the Almost Famous podcast with Ben Higgins, and we recap whatever the episode is that aired that week, and we just talk about all the latest Bachelor Nation drama, and we have a lot of guests that come on and do in-depth interviews with us. And then I have the I Don’t Get It podcast, which is basically about millennial girl lifestyle. We like to think it’s kind of like a conversation that you’d find on Sex in the City, but on a podcast. And then, Jared has, ironically, a podcast called ‎Help! I Suck at Dating.

Jared:
That’s right. It’s called Help! I Suck at Dating.

Ashley:
It’s probably similar to yours, where it’s all about relationships.

Jared:
Yeah. So I host it with another bachelor alum. His name is Dean Unglert. It’s an iHeartRadio podcast, but you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. And why should people listen to it? I don’t know. It’s just two guys giving their opinion on dating, and that’s really it. No. And then, we have a lot of dating experts that come in, dating coaches. We have celebrity couples come in. We have a lot of really cool guests to come on and just give their perspective on dating or relationship, and try to advise us and help us get better at dating, whether you’re single, married, in a relationship, doesn’t matter. We all have things within the dating world that we can get a lot better at.

Chris Seiter:
True. Very true. Where can we find these podcasts? So Jared mentioned iHeartRadio, or wherever. What about you, Ashley?

Ashley:
Wherever podcasts live. Apple Podcasts app, iHeartRadio, Spotify, all the good stuff.

Chris Seiter:
Well thank you guys for coming on, so much, especially with everything going on in the world.

Jared:
Of course, man. Thanks for having us. This was fun.