Hannah Brown has been happily dating Adam Woolard since 2021, but her past experiences have occasionally made her question how smoothly things are going.
“I don’t even know if I actually understand love,” Brown, 28, said during a Monday, August 21, interview on Rachel Bilson’s “Broad Ideas” podcast. “I don’t think I know what love is. Because I think the experiences I’ve had have been really, like — there’s so much chemistry and it feels so great when it’s great, but I feel completely broken and not OK if it’s not. But when it’s great, it’s amazing.”
Brown explained that she has chemistry with Woolard as well, but that’s not the only reason their romance works. “I wouldn’t be with him if I wasn’t attracted to him and we didn’t have chemistry,” she explained. “I think it’s important to have that, but it cannot be the thing that is holding the relationship together, because as I’ve learned, it will fall apart. But that has been a lot of me having to unlearn.”
Brown admitted that she sometimes feels an urge to throw a wrench in her relationship when it starts to feel too easy. “I think my nervous system is used to chaos,” she said. “Sometimes I just want to blow this s–t up. I wanna do something crazy. … I literally will have moments where I’m like, ‘I want to start a fight, I want to do something so irrational.’ But I think it’s because that’s where I feel comfortable. Even though [our relationship is] safe and I feel seen, that can feel uncomfortable if you’re not used to it.”
Before she began dating Woolard, Brown competed for Colton Underwood’s heart on season 23 of The Bachelor in 2019. She then headlined season 15 of The Bachelorette, which premiered in May 2019. Brown got engaged to Jed Wyatt in the season finale, but they split while the show was still airing amid allegations that he wasn’t honest about his relationship with ex Haley Stevens. (Stevens later married Brown’s brother, Patrick.)
After ending her engagement, Brown nearly got back together with runner-up Tyler Cameron and third-place finalist Peter Weber.
“I didn’t trust myself enough to make a decision,” Brown exclusively told Us Weekly in November 2021. “If you don’t really trust yourself [and] know yourself, then it’s really hard to make decisions about love and relationships, especially in an intense amount of time.”
In February 2021, Brown went public with Woolard, who is not affiliated with Bachelor Nation. The duo moved in together last year.
“We’ve been together over two years now. He’s the best. He’s just the most encouraging, optimistic person. I think I can kind of be, like, assessing the situation … a little bit more fear-based, sometimes. And he is just so great at encouraging me and just celebrating the life that we have together,” Brown told Us in January. “We’re doing great. I’ve always said this, but he just continues to make me feel just so comfortable in who I am and who we are.”
She went on to say that she and Woolard are “not in a rush” to get engaged. “Of course we’ve talked about it, but I am so great where we’re at,” she explained. “I think he is too, but I do think it could be a possibility at some point.”
