The Bachelor alum Caila Quinn has publicly apologized to Jared Haibon and Ashley Iaconetti when recalling their “tense” Bachelor in Paradise love triangle.
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“I’m so happy for them. They have a baby… Everything worked out the way it’s meant to be, and I’m so happy for them,” Caila said of the married couple on a recent episode of the “Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation” podcast hosted by Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo.
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“I think what I take away from the situation, it was so long ago, but it wasn’t the best for me… I was in a love triangle that I didn’t anticipate when they asked me to do it. I was told I’d be meeting other people as well, but when I arrived on the beach, there was only one single person for me to go on a date with.”
Caila recalled, “I have this pit in my stomach still, and I still feel really sick about it because I don’t feel like everything was fully resolved. And it doesn’t feel good to think there is someone out there that hates you.”
Ashley and Jared met on Bachelor in Paradise’s second season and had a brief fling before Jared decided he just wanted to be friends and then both individuals appeared on Bachelor in Paradise’s third season in 2016.
Jared fell hard and fast for Caila on Bachelor in Paradise 3 and ignored Ashley’s competing advances. Jared didn’t seem interested in Ashley at all but still wanted to maintain a complicated friendship with her, knowing Ashley really liked him.
Jared and Caila continued dating once they returned home from Paradise, and Caila — a bachelorette from Ben Higgins’ The Bachelor season who was living in New York City at the time — even met Jared’s family in Rhode Island.
But things fell apart for Caila and Jared within six weeks, and Caila revealed in August 2016 “mystical forces” caused their split.
It was pretty obvious at the time Caila was referring to Ashley when she explained, “Friends call him often and he answers. And things were brought up that we couldn’t really let go of, and it made it really hard to go forward.”
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When asked whether Jared needed to cut ties with Ashley in order to find love, Caila replied, “I hope not.”
But she went on to say people only have so much room in their hearts, suggesting Jared gave too much space in his heart to Ashley and so he didn’t have much room left in his heart for anyone else.
Caila said on “Talking It Out” that she’s not sure if Ashley hates her now and if they’ve moved on from things. Caila said she never got “closure” from that situation and just remembers feeling like Ashley “really hated” her.
On what wasn’t resolved, Caila continued, “I feel I owe both of them an apology, because when I was going [to Paradise], I had just three weeks to a couple months prior been off The Bachelor. I was just seeing somebody else and I think I was still processing that experience, which was very real to me.”
Caila remembered being “very guarded” during her first date with Jared and quickly realizing that he was “more invested” in their relationship than she was.
“I was looking for fun times in my twenties, and when you have a third party who is interested in Jared, I think it was just a tense situation, obviously,” Caila said.
“I feel like I owe them both an apology because I should’ve let them see each other. I should’ve just let that happen and I shouldn’t have stayed with him for as long as we did. I don’t think what happened was very smooth or graceful, and I don’t think I handled it very well.”
Caila said at the end of the day, she felt “really afraid” and “very alone” on Paradise and so she tried to connect with Jared “and maybe stay in a relationship that wasn’t meant to be.”
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Caila reiterated how she “should’ve broken up with Jared” right after the show and not dragged their romance out much to Ashley’s dismay.
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“I should not have left with him,” Caila said of her Paradise choices. “I think my character was questioned, and understandably. I think she really loved him and they were meant to be!… I felt like I was in the middle, blocking them… and in the way.”
Caila concluded, “To Ashley and Jared, I am so sorry for how things happened. I genuinely had a friendship with Ashley before that… I think she’s a really good person… and I’m sad for how things ended up.”
After Ashley engaged in a brief romance on The Bachelor Winter Games with Kevin Wendt, she and Jared announced in May 2018 via a lengthy “The Story Of Us” video they had officially begun dating in March of that year.
Ashley and Jared went on to get married in August 2019, and they welcomed their first child together, a son Dawson, in January 2022.
For Caila’s part, she married husband Nick Burrello in June 2021 in Sarasota, FL, after canceling an overseas wedding in Lake Como, Italy due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Bachelor in Paradise is returning with its eighth season on Tuesday, September 27 at 8PM ET/PT on ABC.
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.