In a wide-ranging interview with PEOPLE, the former 'Bachelorette' opens up about life after dancing — and why she's not ready to define a relationship despite public pressure

• I had a crush on my coworker and decided to tell him when my contract was up.
• He told me he was flattered but that he had a girlfriend.
• I wonder if the timing was off, but I'm glad I put myself out there.

I remember noticing him early on at my former job. He was funny and had a sunny smile, but he also struck me as confident and competent. A wave of excitement filled my heart every time he was around me, and I felt like a teenager with her first crush — even though I was in my mid-20s.

Maybe you don't like spoilers, but I do, so I will tell the truth right now. This is not a love story. This is a story of rejection after declaring my feelings to my former coworker when my contract ended.

I waited until my last day of work to finally confess my feelings for him, but I'm not sure it was the best decision.

I finally asked my coworker out

I didn't take the decision to tell him lightly. I debated with myself for a long time if I should tell him while we still worked together.

On one hand, I thought it would be heartbreaking for me if he politely declined and I had to see him every day. On the other hand, if he accepted my invitations and we began going out together, an awkward situation would arise. Even if we were working in different departments, being in a small company where we met every day surely didn't help my dilemma.

So, ultimately, I decided to come clean when my contract was finally up. When my six months ran out, I said goodbye to all my coworkers and devised a plan. I decided to finally confess my feelings as he stepped out of the office. Unfortunately, he didn't leave the office alone, so my plan was foiled. But I couldn't keep my romantic feelings to myself anymore.

When I got home, I wrote him a message, finally revealing that I had a crush on him and wanted to tell him in person, but there hadn't been an appropriate occasion. A few minutes afterward, I added that we could have a coffee together one day — if he wanted to.

My hands were sweating as I stared at the three dreaded bubbles showing he was typing. A long text message appeared; he was incredibly kind, even when rejecting me.

He said that he knows how difficult it is to declare your feelings, so he thanked me. Still, he was already seeing another girl.

Being rejected is painful. It can easily affect our self-worth and make us feel like failures. Even though I expected this rejection, I wasn't prepared for that intrusive emptiness that left me feeling lost and thinking that no one would ever want me.

Telling my friend what happened made things slightly more tolerable, but I needed a way to cleanse this intoxicating mixture of emotions from my body and mind.

Summer meant a lot of exercise classes in parks and on the beach. I decided to trade emotional pain for physical strain, and I went to a total-body class in July's heat. Moving my body and sweating felt amazing. It made me temporarily forget this situation.

I'm ultimately proud of myself

One question kept nagging me: Was it even worth telling him the truth?

But now that some months have passed, I don't have any regrets about how things went. Sometimes, I think if I had told him earlier, things could have gone differently, but anguishing over how something could have been is never sensible.

Regardless of the timing, I am proud of stepping out of my comfort zone and declaring my feelings. As an introvert, this can be incredibly challenging.

Even if it was painful at the moment, being rejected was better than remaining in doubt about his feelings.

Rejection is like a period at the end of a sentence. It can feel like an abrupt close, but endings often turn into new beginnings.

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• Like regular body language, digital body language refers to what's unspoken in texts.
• It includes how often a person texts as well as how even a conversation feels.
• A dating expert shared the digital body language signs someone is interested in you.

Conversations on dating apps can be tricky to navigate.

Is it a red flag if a new connection takes three days to respond? Is a text paragraph vulnerable, or self-centered? Does replying with a lone "k" really mean someone hates you?

Logan Ury, the director of relationship science at Hinge, told Business Insider that this is what's known as digital body language (DBL), and it isn't much different from in-person body language, conveying what is unsaid.

Ury said DBL includes "how long somebody waits to respond, whether or not they double-text, what punctuation they use, and if they use emojis."

From her internal research at Hinge, she's learned that users — particularly Gen Zers — rely heavily on DBL to quickly gauge a match's interest in them. Among those daters, there are some widely agreed-upon indicators that a person isn't actually into you, even if they technically always respond to your texts.

To prevent wasting your time on a confusing situationship, "you want to be good at deciphering somebody's DBL," Ury said. She added that it's important to be aware of how you come off when you do like someone, so that they're "not misinterpreting how you feel about them."

She shared some digital body language signs that someone's not really interested in you.

They always respond, but never consistently

Healthy relationships are built on trust and communication. Naturally, daters look for signs of it from the very first message.

According to a 2024 Hinge report surveying 15,000 Gen Z users, Ury said users have a 44% higher chance of getting responses when they answer messages within 24 hours. Their matches sense more seriousness.

This goes beyond the first few messages. She said 76% of users also look for message consistency. Someone who texts for hours one day but then is MIA for three is widely considered as disinterested.

Because of that, she discourages matches from "playing it cool" or delaying responses when they really like someone. "It's much better to just not play games and respond quickly because those people are more likely to get onto dates and into relationships," she said.

Your text bubbles are imbalanced

Deep relationships require reciprocity and a sense of evenness. Beyond timing, Ury said the flow of conversation is a big sign of how interested someone is in you.

But it's about more than just taking turns hitting each other up, Ury said. "For iPhone users, there needs to be that mix between blue and gray" text bubbles, she said. That includes the match "leading with a question and then offering answers that build conversation," she said.

If they write you walls of text without asking anything back, it doesn't indicate that they're interested in knowing who you are. Ury has a term for these people: "ZQ," or "zero questions." ZQs indicate a lack of genuine curiosity to learn more about you, she said.

They're 'bad' at texting, but don't connect in other ways

Not everyone loves texting a lot — plenty of people prefer calls or simply can't be on their phones during the work day.

Ury said that if they're interested, they should be communicating with you about how they want to stay in touch. If they're offline during the workday, they should be transparent about that — and find other ways to share that they're thinking of you, such sending voice notes, memes, or photos of their day.

But if they don't make an effort to be clear about liking you, it comes off like they're not that interested in you.

It's why Ury emphasizes meeting in real life quickly if you hit it off with someone: digital body language isn't a science, and sometimes it's worth having conversations around communication differences.

Plus, the better way to confirm if someone likes you is to meet them in person.

"You need to get to the date as soon as possible," she said. "You don't know if somebody's in-person vibes will match their digital body language."

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• I was dating a guy I met on Hinge for two months before we had a fight.
• After the fight, he sent me a voice note, telling me he wanted to end our relationship.
• I felt hurt because I deserved better, but I'm proud of how I handled the situation.

At the start of this year, I dated a guy for two months.

We met on Hinge. I loved spending time with him because he never made me question whether he was into me. He was always attentive and validated my feelings. He'd bring me flowers and ask me about my day.

We got into the habit of sending each other voice notes and keeping each other updated on our daily lives. Sometimes, I would rant to him if I had a bad day at work, and he was always there to listen and validate my emotions. He'd tell me about his family, his dog, and his friends.

But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he would break up with me via voice note while I was on a work trip abroad.

We had gotten into a fight right before my trip

I expressed that I didn't like it when he had no plan for our dates in advance. We started bickering about gender roles in relationships, and then our fight escalated.

I felt angry that we were bickering over something in texts that was supposed to be an in-person conversation and was only getting worse. But at no point did I think something so silly could lead us to call things off.

I thought it would be good to spend 10 days apart. I traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia, for work, which was a seven-hour flight away from him.

But five days later, during my trip, I decided to send a voice note, apologizing. I'm an only child, and as a kid, whenever my needs were unmet by my emotionally unavailable parents, my coping mechanism was to throw a tantrum to get them to notice my needs. Hence, when I felt like he wasn't meeting my needs, I bull-dozed into complaining rather than healthily addressing it. He sent a voice note back, breaking up with me.

Of course, it was confusing and painful. I couldn't believe it was real. I cried for two weeks straight after the breakup.

The pain still haunts me

Finding out I was single again via a voice note was hard. I understand that no one really owes anyone anything for just two months of dating, but I still feel like I deserved a face-to-face conversation. It felt like my feelings didn't matter in this scenario.

But I'm proud of myself because I was vulnerable for the first time in a relationship, especially during those breakup voice note exchanges. Before that, I was always playing the chill, cool girl who just didn't care because I wanted to hold the power. I am also proud that I didn't try to get him to change his mind once he said that he wanted to break up. A previous version of me would have done that.

Plus, I definitely won't be sending constant voice notes in the future when I have just started dating someone. I realized it builds a false sense of intimacy. We got into a pattern of constant voice notes because I was anxious that he would be dating other people, so I wanted to know what he was doing throughout the day. I can see that now — now that I've had some space from this experience.

Thankfully, I've learned to be more secure in my relationships. Moving forward, I plan to move important conversations about relationships out of the phone and prioritize connection via in-person experiences.

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