Katie Explained Why John Broke Up With Her (Twice)
Apparently, surfing was involved.
Katie Thurston just spilled a whole cup of John Hersey breakup tea, and I’m extremely shook. On Aug. 24, the former Bachelorette appeared on Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off The Vine podcast and talked about all things love and heartbreak, and Thurston’s quote about how Hersey “dumped her” was pretty rough.
“He dumped me. Technically, we actually broke up twice,” she told Bristowe, according to Cosmopolitan. “The first time no one knew about. I mean, obviously our very close friends did. And maybe like a week or two, we kind of worked through it and decided to get back together, so I thought we were golden.” Famous last words, I guess.
Things didn’t stay golden for long. The Bachelor Nation couple announced their breakup on June 20, 2022 via Instagram Story. Thurston kept it short and sweet. “Statement: no, we aren’t together,” she wrote at the time. Hersey added, “The decision was not made lightly and it was obviously not an easy one to make.”
“I think it was just unavoidable,” the former Bachelorette said about their breakup on Off The Vine. “We just got on 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, you know?” Oof.
Apparently, Hersey was upset that his GF didn’t learn to surf for him, and she thought that was pretty unfair. “He said, 'I just really need someone who can enjoy my passions and who wants to watch me surf, maybe learn to surf with me.' I look at him and I go, 'You realize I jumped out of a f*cking plane three times, twice solo, skydiving, to join him in his passions,’” Thurston recalled. “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.” Ouch.
“It’s still a little confusing,” Thurston continued, “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?’ Well, I never said I was that.”
Apparently, this tension with Hersey caught her by surprise. She told Bristowe, “It just really caught me off guard, and I just really put, like, all of 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 a six months crash and burn.” Yikes.
The exes first met on season 17 of The Bachelorette back in March 2021, and it wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Thurston sent Hersey home during week two. Though he didn’t receive the final rose, Hersey and Thurston were officially dating by November 2021. On Dec. 2, 2021, Thurston explained their romance on TikTok, “Always loved him as my best friend. Then one day I looked at him and saw him differently. Like Cupid to the heart, I knew I was hit.”
Post-breakup, Thurston and Hersey tried to stay friends, but it didn’t really work. Thurston explained on the podcast, “When we broke up, we did all—us and our friends—go to a fair together, and it was very fine. It was whatever.” She added, “But then the more time apart, the more those things that were like, cute, and quirky, and fun, were more like, ‘You're annoying the f*ck out of me.’”
Yeah, maybe these two are better as just exes.
