Ready to mingle. Bachelor star Colton Underwood confirmed he’s “happily single” after being spotted on a hiking date with actress Lucy Hale in July 2020, two months after his split from Cassie Randolph.
“I would consider myself single right now,” the season 23 star, 28, revealed during a Chat4Good panel with Us Weekly on Tuesday, August 11. “My next relationship I’m already in, and that’s with myself. I’ve decided that I want to spend my energy and focus on all my attention on myself, which I’m actually weirdly loving. It sounds so crazy [and] so weird.”
The former football player was photographed with the Pretty Little Liars star while walking on the Paseo Miramar Trail in Los Angeles on July 17. According to reports, they had been hanging out for a few weeks, and Colton’s ex is A-OK with it.
Cassie, 25, “doesn’t have any problem” with the Indiana native “moving on when he feels ready, even if it’s a little hard for her to see it in the media,” an insider exclusively told Life & Style at the time. “She wants him to be happy, so she realizes that means moving on and dating other people. She supports his decision and just hopes he has success in his future relationships whoever they might be with.”
Although Colton has been enjoying his alone time, he has a clear idea of what he’s looking for next. “I don’t want to say my exes weren’t this, but I just want somebody who complements and fits into my life seamlessly,” the author added. “I think that’s something that I’m going to be looking for, and I don’t want to feel like it has to be forced or set up or feel like we have to compromise too much. I think, while compromising is very important in a relationship, it’s something that you can only take so much of.”
The Bachelor Nation couple’s split seemed amicable at first, but things took a turn after Cassie appeared on The Bachelor Presents: The Greatest Seasons Ever in early July. She stayed tight-lipped about her and Colton’s uncoupling while speaking with Chris Harrison, but it still upset her ex.
“When our relationship ended we agreed to handle things as privately as possible as we attempted to navigate our new relationship as friends,” the former contestant from Becca Kufrin’s season wrote on July 9. “I chose to do that since we were living in this interim period, but obviously a lot changed this week.”
He added, “I’ve come to realize when you’re in the thick of it you just need to take a step back and look at things from a different perspective, in doing so I have gained so much clarity about what I want and more importantly what I need in a relationship.”
Cassie responded by admitting Colton’s comments “frustrated” and “saddened” her. “It seems you are subtly engaging in a tactic that peppers in passive-aggressive comments … in order to make me look like the bad one,” she said. The starlet also claimed Colton is adding a chapter to his book, The First Time, about her and “refused to give her any sort of approval of it.”
It looks like these two are ready to move on!