It’s all over between Katie Thurston and John Hersey.
This isn’t exactly a newsworthy opening, it’s been all over between Katie Thurston and John Hersey for about two months now.
“Statement: no we aren’t together,” the former Bachelorette simply wrote on Instagram to announce the split in June, hinting at some bitterness between the exes.
Appearing Wednesday on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off The Vine podcast, Thurston did far more than just hint at this bitterness.
“He dumped me,” Thurston said on the broadcast.
“Technically, we actually broke up twice.
“The first time no one knew about. … Like a week or two [later], we kind of worked through it and decided to get back together, so I thought we were golden.”
And then?
Thurston didn’t delve into any real specifics.
“I think it was just unavoidable,” she saidd.
“Like, we just got [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.”
Thurston and Hersey — who the former sent home during week two of her Bachelorette run — went public with their romance in November 2021… just one month after she ended her engagement to Blake Moynes.
“He said, ’I just really need someone who can enjoy my passions and who wants to watch surf, maybe learn surfing with me,” Katie continued on this podcast.
“I look at him and I go, ‘You realize I jumped out of a f-cking plane three times … to join him in his passions.
“Eight hours of ground school, all these things to partake in ‘his passion’ and somehow that was completely ignored and now we’re focused on surfing. At that point, I knew nothing I did was going to ever be good enough.
“It was really a blessing in disguise. … 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.”
Thurston, who has confessed to mental health struggles since her time as The Bachelorette, labeled her romance with Hersey as “six months crash and burn.”
She said she bought him a van. She let him quit his job. She adjusted to him in every way possible.
“I was like, whatever you need me to be, I will be,” Katie noted to Bristowe.
“In hindsight, that’s not healthy. That’s not good.”
Thurston says she and Hersey are on “good” terms now, but there’s clearly at least some tension there.
“I was very frustrated with how our breakup was handled after the fact because I do think he cares what these strangers think about him and us,” Thurston said on Wednesday.
“I was literally, like, cornered into a wall to essentially come out quicker than I wanted to about it. So I said ‘Fine.’”
In his own post-split message, Hersey wrote on social media:
“As Katie stated earlier, we are no longer dating. The decision was not made lightly and it was obviously not an easy one to make.”
Looking ahead? Thurston will obviously date again, but Bachelor Nation is now off limits, she says:
“I am not dipping into that pool anymore. … I don’t want to generalize that much, but it’s a certain type.
“Either they’re a certain type or the show changes them a little bit and they become a certain type. … I’ve already done it twice.
“I’m not interested and, like, there’s been some that have slid into my DMs and in talking to them, it’s just, like, so cringy.”
