her next boyfriend? a charming, attractive, NFL recruit named Ed. at the time that they met, ed was going through some things.
he had a pregnant ex-fiancee. injuries took him out of the NFL, leading to a foreclosure on his home and no health insurance. he had a two year old with a different woman. but he was open, honest, charming, and funny. they began talking all the time and rachel eventually admitted to her parents that they were together - she had never introduced a boyfriend to her parents before. and, they liked him!
90 days later, ed showed his true colors.
they went out to a club for a friend's birthday celebration. ed got wasted and started a fight with his best friend who was trying to help rachel order drinks at the bar. as in they came to physical blows, getting everyone kicked out of the club. in the car on the way home, rachel was embarrassed but began to make excuses for ed's drunken behavior and excessive drinking in general. he broke down and said he didn't deserve to be with her: jobless, directionless, absentee father. but rachel wanted to stay.
“ I romanticized my savior role in Ed’s life, pledging to stand by him through this dark period.”
for five years she spun her wheels with ed, fully embracing a dysfunctional, asymmetrical relationship. she was his therapist, organizer, planner, academic support, and personal financier. she did his homework and paid his bills. he lived in austin while she lived in dallas, but she frequently went to visit him. he rarely took her out and accepted a job offer 200 miles away even after promising to move to dallas.
two years in, she discovered he was texting other women. he denied it naturally, but rachel became deeply insecure and more resentful. she was tired of waiting and wanted a ring. after bickering about it, they agreed to break up but never stopped talking and were back together by the summer of 2015.
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still frustrated by the elusive ring and promises for the future, rachel began to have an affair with an "obama-esque" attorney in houston. he tried to convince her to leave ed, but rachel refused, convinced that their issues were temporary. delulu! she states that the affair fulfilled her love language: quality time.
eventually she ends the affair, but nothing is moving forward with ed. she begins an emotional affair with a DJ (lol) and ed demands she stop speaking to him. eventually, ed sees on social media that she went to the DJ's show (again, lol) and they break up. but after a month, they start speaking again. around and around the dysfunctional merry-go-round, rachel continuously begging for a ring that ed has no intentions of giving her.
finally, one night a woman from ed's phone calls her. ed is in houston, sitting in jail with a DUI. when rachel questions him about the woman, he says she's just a colleague. thanksgiving, christmas, and new year's pass without ed spending time with rachel. valentine's day passes without their normal tradition of him buying her a classic disney dvd released from the vault. finally, finally, after a tense phone call in which ed remains silent when rachel asks if he wants to be with her, she breaks up with him.
she spends interceding months club hopping, dating random guys, and eventually adopts copper.
of course, by june, ed wants to get back together and rachel takes him in. she begins therapy to try to convince ed to commit to her.
therapy became the key to release rachel's chains and feckless attachment to ed. she realized that she should have never been with him.
“I entered therapy for the wrong reasons and came out with the right answers. I went to save a relationship with a man and ended up saving myself.”
around this time, rachel's coworkers convince her to go to a bachelor audition. as we all know, she gets cast on nick viall's season.
at the same time, she never fully cuts ed off and even hosts him in houston, spending the night together and rekindling the flame. by the fall, ed has gone back to essentially ghosting rachel, never reaching out unless she called him first.
so when she received the contract for the bachelor in september, she decided to sign it, while secretly hoping ed would propose instead.
“I don’t think I’m going to fall in love, never mind get married.” I’ll turn it down if you tell me you want to give us another try. The pathetic thing is that I didn’t even need Ed to say he wanted to be with me. I was hungry for the tiniest crumb he would throw my way.
He couldn’t even give me that. “Okay, don’t mention my name.” Five years summed up in five words. I had been looking for someone to tell me not to go on the show, and the person I wanted most to say no dispatched me in five words”.
After a heated text conversation in which ed makes nasty accusations and casts aspersions on rachel's character for considering going on the show, she admits that if ed had told her he wanted a commitment, she wouldn't have gone.
and then rachel goes on reality tv, gets the first impression rose, makes it to final 3 and became the first black bachelorette.
