Eeeeeeeeeevery rose has its thorrrrrrrn.
Okay, it's trite, but it is starting to feel as though for every time Bachelor Nation giveth (consider us officially Team Tayshia and Zac), they taketh away in the form of stripping us of another beloved couple who'd long ago sucked us into their journey.
Truthfully, we hadn't fully absorbed the pre-holiday news that the love between one of the franchise's most delightfully quirky pairs had wilted, when 2020 struck one final blow.
Sure, Peter Weber's relationship with top five contender Kelley Flanagan had just gotten off the ground this spring after the airline pilot sped past that whole Hannah Ann Sluss-Madison Prewett debacle, but we had kinda assumed they'd reached the cruising altitude stage, considering their plans to move to New York City together and hints that a non Neil Lane-provided ring was in the offing.
So it was quite the jolt when the former Bachelor revealed on Instagram Dec. 31 that "while our relationship was filled with countless beautiful memories, our relationship simply didn't work out in the end."
Turns out the two had been experiencing turbulence for some time, their plans to cohabitate causing more anxiety than excitement. "They had been fighting a lot," a source explained to E! News, "and the move was very stressful and put a lot of pressure on them."
Or, as Chicago-based lawyer Flanagan put it on Jan. 3, "Him and I are in two different stages of our lives and saw our future paths differently."
And while we spent NYE pouring one out (a flute of champagne, that is) for ol' Pilot Pete, it's the breakup of Carly Waddell and Evan Bass—Guinness World holders for the longest habanero pepper kiss—that really stings.
A match made in Paradise that few saw coming after their awkward AF first date, the pair won us over with for their persistent-nice-guy-wins-in-the-end narrative and growing school of Bass children. And then they up and split seemingly out of nowhere, some three-and-a-half years after we all watched them wed on a Mexican beach.
One of the love stories that determined singles would cite as they entered Paradise filled with hope and visions of Instagram followers, Waddell and Bass now join a long list of once cherished duos whose bloom has come off the rose. As Bass' ex Marie Bass, mother to his three eldest boys, heads up his support squad, claiming that he and Waddell have been secretly split for more than a year while Bass tried desperately to save their union, Waddell is giving her own take on YouTube.
"We tried, ya'll, for a really long time to make it work," she shared in the Jan. 3 clip as she saged a spot in her new Nashville home that she'd dubbed the "divorce room." Ultimately, she insisted, it was his call to stop trying. "I'm just not the person who would ever be 'out,'" she explained. "So what are you going to do? If someone doesn't want to be with you, they don't want to be with you."
Oh, almost paradissssse. We're knocking on heaven's door...
At least they'll always have the Playa Escondida Resort. And we still have a not short list of couples that swear they can see forever in each other's eyes. So let's all raise a (champagne) glass to the Bachelor Nation pairs whose future is still looking rosy.