Jonathon Johnson was all in on Bachelorette Jenn Tran when she sent him packing, but he wasn’t quite ready before that.
When cohost Joe Amabile asked whether Jonathon, 28, was ready to get down on one knee after hometowns, the second runner-up admitted he wasn’t there yet.
“No, absolutely not. No, not at that point,” Jonathon said on the Thursday, August 29, episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast. “At that point I got a lot of clarity I was looking for.”
Jonathan noted that the turning point in his relationship with Jenn, 26, was when his family said they could see him having a future with the season 21 lead.
“From that point on, I was like, ‘Alright, I’m not crazy for having the feelings I do. It’s time to actually jump in,’” Jonathan recalled.
In hindsight, Jonathon said he didn’t take “time off camera to ask the kind of questions that push the relationship” with Jenn forward. Jonathon noted that the time to ask those questions would’ve been at a cocktail party or another event, but he “took the fantasy suite time to really just ask those kinds of questions.”
While walking into the rose ceremony after fantasy suites, Jonathon had a feeling that his relationship with Jenn could be coming to an end.
“She’s confessing her love for Marcus [Shoberg] and Devin [Strader]’s saying that he’s in love with her and I’m sitting there in this middle ground with her, where everything’s great, it’s fun, we have no issues with each other, no drama,” Jonathon said. “It’s easy, but that next step isn’t there.”
Jonathon admitted that he got a “ton” of clarity watching the episode back and seeing Jenn’s relationship progress with Marcus and Devin.
“You see her relationship with the other two guys and you’re like, ‘OK, now this makes sense,’” he said. “She clearly has so much love for Marcus and that is a part of where her head’s at that really shows us she’s able to get there. On the flip side, you have Devin who’s just able to get there so quick. He got feelings for her faster than everybody … That’s the closure of being like it wasn’t you, it wasn’t her, it just wasn’t right.”
When asked whether he had any sort of indication whether Jenn was handing her final rose to Marcus or Devin, Jonathon admitted that he wasn’t sure where her heart lay.
“If it came down to me and Marcus, because we’re very similar individuals, I’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s definitely Marcus.’ But I think it was like weeding out the two options at the end. Like him and I are very similar, but she had more feelings for Marcus, so that would be the placeholder for that,” Jonathon explained. “And then there’s Devin. I feel like to an extent, she has this unspoken draw toward Devin that she’s always had.”
Jonathon continued, “We all know he’s got a silver tongue, he can talk left and right, in circles wherever, but he means what he says. And I think Jenn saw that really early on.”
Jonathon noted that Devin was getting called for the first rose at rose ceremonies throughout the season. He added, “I’m sitting here against guys that are getting first roses, two to one-on-ones, and I’m just kind of like, ‘Hm.’”
The Bachelorette season 21 finale airs on ABC Tuesday, September 3, at 8 p.m. ET.
