The former Bachelor found himself at the same event of his former fiancée's husband.
Ben Higgins had a run-in with his ex's new man. The former Bachelor recently appeared on Chris Harrison's The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever, and revealed that he and Lauren Bushnell's husband, Chris Lane, played at the same golf tournament.
Higgins met Bushnell during his season of The Bachelor, which aired in 2016. They ended the show engaged, but split up the following year. Bushnell went on to marry Lane in 2019, and they've since welcomed two children, Baker, 3 months, and Dutton, 2. Meanwhile, Higgins tied the knot with Jessica Clarke in November 2021.
While Higgins described his and Bushnell's split as "amicable," he admitted he wasn't too thrilled to learn that his locker was directly next to Lane's locker at the week-long tournament.
"I haven't seen Lauren since we broke up. I don't think I've seen her once. And obviously, life now has moved far beyond that relationship, but that relationship is still an important season or time in my life," he said. "And so I would be lying if [I said] I wasn't a little anxious at the idea of being at this tournament."
"No matter what we're all adults, so I wasn't worried about the outcome or how we would handle it. I was mostly just saying, 'Hey, this is a fun week of golf. This is going to feel odd. That first run-in, what's that going to be like?' I don't know if anybody out there... is super jacked to see somebody who they've split ways with in their life. Amicably, but they've split ways with them," Higgins added. "I was anxious about it, and then to walk into the locker room and see that, 'Oh, we're going to be definitely running into each other... We're going to be putting our shoes on, changing together.'"
The guys' first run-in didn't happen in the locker room, though. Instead, it happened when Higgins, Harrison and fellow Bachelor Nation star Wells Adams were at the hotel bar on the first night of the tournament.
"Right away, I saw him. He didn't see me [because] he kind of had his head turned. I walked up and I said, 'Hey Chris, good to see you,'" Higgins recalled. "I had told Jessica I wanted to say hi. There's a lot of things to congratulate him on... He's down here at the golf tournament for the first time [and] this is my fourth year, so I'm kind of a vet at this. And so I told her, 'If I see him, I'm just going to go say hi, because I would like to say hi anyways.'"
Harrison praised his pal for his decision to go up to Lane, stating, "You could've easily ignored the situation [and] acted like the elephant was not in the room... You guys could've easily just ignored each other and acted like this thing didn't exist and instead, you burst the bubble and say, 'Hey man, good to see you.'"
Higgins is certainly glad he behaved how he did, noting that the situation was "nothing but great" and even saying that "it's been nice to talk to" the country star."
"When I said that he could've been a jerk to me and he wasn't, so it moves it to a healthy place," Higgins said. "... He could've been like, 'Dude, don't talk to me,' and then it would've been like, 'Well, crap. Now we have four days of weirdness.' He didn't at all! It was a healthy interaction."
The men had multiple other interactions throughout the week, all of which went off without a hitch.
"It's been fun to be around them at this tournament and I'm glad we did it. When you go through a breakup, there's always that moment where the Band-Aid gets ripped off afterward and then you can start to heal," Higgins said, before noting that, if he did happen to see Bushnell during the tournament, ". It will be nice to say, 'OK, we've done this next chapter of our lives.'"
While things went well between Higgins and Lane, there was one awkward moment during the tournament. As Adams explained, he, Harrison and Higgins were eating dinner with a caddy at the event, who decided to look Lane up when his name was mentioned because he was unfamiliar with the country star.
"He finds a picture and he goes, 'Look, his wife's pretty freaking hot. Look at her!' He points the phone... at me and Ben. I had this look of utter terror," Adams recalled. "I was like, 'I don't know if you're messing with us or not... You know who that is, right?' He goes, 'No, it's a hot chick.' [I say,] 'That's Ben's ex! Who he got engaged to on television!'"
"He was going on and on about how hot Lauren was to Ben and Wells and I," Harrison added. "I finally just said, 'Buddy, you gotta stop talking. You gotta shut up'... It got worse and worse and worse, Ben Higgins."
Higgins admitted that the situation was "awkward for a long time," but he thinks it's "funny now."
"I just didn't say anything for a while, because I was like, 'This is so weird. I don't know how to respond... There's no good thing I can say here. There's no way out of this,'" Higgins said. "Finally when he finds out she's my ex, to heal it, he finds a picture of my wife and he goes, 'Well she's really hot too!' I'm like, 'Dude, stop!'"
Higgins chalked the whole thing up to "very weird life moments," stating, "It could've not gone better in real life than what I could've imagined. It's been a really good thing, there's just been these funny little moments in between."
When ET spoke to Higgins in August, he opened up about his and Clarke's marriage.
"We're having a really good time," he gushed. "It takes a learning curve of figuring out what everybody's life wants to look like, and what the dreams are, and how you best support your partner."
"It's going really well," Higgins added. "I see it being a very successful marriage."
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