The Bachelor franchise is notorious for pairing people together for a short, 3 month relationship, but not for pairing people together for the long haul.
There are the famous, OTP couples like Shawn and Kaitlyn; Jojo and Jordan; Trisha and Ryan; Jade and Tanner; Carly and Evan; Sean and Catherine.
We are now adding Ashley I and Jared to that list of beautiful bachelor couples.
Ashley and Jared make Bachelor Nation believe in love again because their love story is the realest we've seen in a while.
They met on Bachelor in Paradise and afterwards became best friends. They both dated other people and Jared eventually realized that he was in love with Ashley the way she was with him when they first met.
There love story resembles real life. Girl likes guy, guy friend zones girl, they become best friends, and then they fall in love. Fans of their love story can see their interview about their road to falling in love. In their interview we learn that again, much like real life, Jared would play games and wasn't ready for the real deal with Ashley.
I think we can all learn something from Ashley and Jared.
We can all take a page out of Ashley's book: don't wait to be out of the friend zone, keep living your life. We can also commend Ashley for not playing Jared's game and knowing what she wants.
From Jared we learn to have the courage to go after the person we love, even when we were in denial about loving them the entire time. Today, it's so rare to find someone who isn't playing a game or has the courage to be vulnerable enough to put their feelings out there.
In the grand scheme, even though it took them 3 years to get together, God has a plan and love works in mysterious ways.
Ashely and Jared are the couple that Bachelor Nation needed after Arie and Becca. Arie proved that you should know what you want before putting a ring on it. That should be common knowledge, but obviously wasn't to him.
Ashley and Jared fill us with hope.
Whether you are on the fence about someone, playing a game, completely in love, or dissatisfied, look to Ashley and Jared to give you hope or reaffirm you in the relationship you want or already have. You might have already found who you've been looking for.
