Country star Chris Lane was not expecting to ruffle feathers within Bachelor Nation when posting a photo of Ben Higgins last month.
“Before I even posted that, I actually texted Ben,” Lane, 39, said during the “Almost Famous” podcast on Tuesday, June 25. “The last thing I would ever want to do is do something disrespectful like that. So, I asked him if he was cool with me posting that and that, obviously, I don’t mean anything by it.”
He continued, “I didn’t realize I was going to shake things up and I guess I should have posted, ‘Ben’s OK with me posting this photo.’”
iHeartRadio Chief Programming Officer, Tom Poleman, was actually the first to start the drama by sharing a throwback photo of Higgins, 35, along with Lane and his now-wife, Lauren Bushnell.
“How it started / How it’s going,” he captioned the May 5 post. “The moment when Chris Lane met his future wife, Lauren, at our iHeartCountry Music Festival in 2016!”
Bushnell — who was engaged to Higgins at the time the picture was taken — did not address the image. Lane, however, shared it via his own Instagram. (Higgins did leave a comment on the post.)
“Her and I didn’t even start dating until four years after that photo was taken,” Lane continued during Tuesday’s “Almost Famous” appearance. “I think people, I guess they thought that I met her that night, and then we started dating immediately after that, which was just not even close to the case.”
Lane thought the photo would be a “fun way” to show how life worked out. Higgins and Bushnell called off their engagement in May 2017, and she went public with Lane in November 2018. The pair got married in October 2019 and share two sons, Dutton, 3, and Baker, 20 months.
Higgins — who has since moved on and married Jessica Clarke — addressed the photo days after the social media debacle went down.
“I thought it put Chris and Lauren in a very awkward situation,” he said on the May 8 episode of his “Almost Famous” podcast. “These pictures, I thought, would feel weird to them. As a result, I felt weird about that. I also just felt weird that there [were] pictures of Lauren and I together again. I haven’t seen a picture of Lauren and I posted in a long time.”
The former Bachelor star did say that Lane had texted him about the entire thing.
“As I’ve mentioned before, I really like Chris. He’s a great dude. We’ve gotten to golf together. I have nothing but respect for him,” Higgins said. “I’m so happy that he and Lauren found each other, and they have a family together. All that’s so good, and there’s never been this animosity. Honestly, there’s never even been a weirdness.”
