Leaving it all on the table. Tayshia Adams revealed she was ready to join The Bachelor in 2018, because she’d tried everything imaginable to save her marriage to Josh Bourelle more than a year prior.
The phlebotomist, 29, spoke out about her Bachelor journey and how she got there on the Thursday, October 22, episode of the “Click Bait” podcast. She told her cohosts, Hannah Ann Sluss and Joe Amabile, that her separation and eventual divorce didn’t happen until after she put in a lot of effort to try and salvage the relationship.
“When things were getting really bad, we were like, OK, we need to go see a counselor,” she explained, noting the pair were married for nearly two years. “Actually, that was my doing, because I knew I needed to do absolutely everything in order to know that was the end of the road.”
The Bachelor in Paradise alum added: “In my mind, divorce isn’t a thing. Marriage is forever.”
Before pulling the plug on her relationship, Adams said the couple did go to counseling, but when things didn’t change, they split.
“At that point, you kind of walk through some things and you try as hard as you can, but you can’t force someone to love you,” she said. “So, if you do that for a couple of months and it’s still not working, you’re trying to do everything you can and the other person’s not … You gotta go your own separate way.”
Adams married longtime beau Bourelle in February 2016, after four years of dating. Their divorce was finalized in November 2017, one month after the roofing contractor filed the papers.
When the opportunity to compete on The Bachelor came about in 2018, Adams revealed it was the perfect time for her to start over.
“That’s why I was so happy and content to go look for love when I went on The Bachelor because I knew I did everything. That was a chapter closed,” she said. “It’s a very different scenario when there’s still, like, open doors.”
The California native added: “People never know the true story. I was ready for it.”
After coming in as the second runner-up on the ABC show, Adams appeared on BIP and found love with John Paul Jones. The pair split midway through season 6 of the spinoff series but reconciled by the finale. The two called it quits for good in October 2019.
Us Weekly confirmed in July that Adams would be taking over season 16 of The Bachelorette after lead Clare Crawley walked away from the show. The hairstylist, 39, chose to step back two weeks into filming after finding love with one of the contestants.
ABC has not publicly confirmed the lead switch, but host Chris Harrison hinted last month at Adams’ arrival later in the season. “[She’s] not not the Bachelorette,” Harrison, 49, told Entertainment Tonight in September.
The Bachelorette airs on ABC Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
Listen to Here For the Right Reasons to get inside scoop about the Bachelor franchise and exclusive interviews from contestants!