Danny Explains How His Mum’s Death Affected His Time On ‘The Bachelorette’

Last night saw two blokes head home from The Bachelorette, 39-year-old chiropractic student Danny Harris-Wolf and 27-year-old salesman Pete Stephen.

After being brutally picked apart by Ali Oetjen‘s best mate, Jess, and her cousin, Bianca, Oetjen chose to pull Harris-Wolf aside during the rose ceremony to tell him that she say him as more of a friend. And then she followed through on the rose ceremony anyway, booting Stephen out of the mansion not long after.

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Speaking to Harris-Wolf today, we found out the reason why Oetjen wanted Harris-Wolf to be spared their tension of a rose ceremony elimination – he had recently lost his mother.

He told PEDESTRIAN.TV that he lost his mum less than week before he entered the mansion. He saw Oetjen’s choice to let him down easy as a “really strong sign of her respect of our friendship“: “Also, I had lost my mum six days before I met Ali on the red carpet, and Ali knew about this a little bit later through the show. I felt like she really didn’t wanna hurt me.

Harris-Wolf says he considered dropping out of the season, but ultimately decided to stay on the show because his mum wanted him to find love.

It was obviously really hard, but it brought my mum a lot of joy – she knew that was I was gonna meet Ali, and I knew that that would make her happy. I suppose the hardest thing was being in there in that situation with some very strong personalities trying to make friends, trying to be happy and smile and have a good time, but it’s just really hard for me to relax.

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Last week, Harris-Wolf tried to kiss Oetjen after he won one-on-one time during a group date, in one of the cringier moments of the season. He says his heightened emotions at that time probably contributed to his failed kiss.

In situations like where I made the attempt to kiss Ali obviously I think everything with mum certainly didn’t help. When emotion’s high, logic’s low, and I just don’t think it helped me read the situation. In hindsight, with a clearer mind, I probably wouldn’t have gone in for the kiss, and I probably would’ve left it.

Still, he sees the logic in his taking the opportunity while it was there – he says he felt it was his best chance to see if they had a spark: “That was probably my best opportunity to see if we could translate into something romantic. I didn’t wanna disrespect her or the other boys by doing it at the mansion in case they saw us.

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If he could do it all again, he’d go back to The Bachelorette at a different time in his life.

Obviously I would’ve had a better time – it was just really hard for me to relax. I honestly didn’t relax and have a good time until the last day, until I went home. That was the first time I really felt like I let my guard down, had fun with the day and just laughed all day. It was a really amazing time. Given the chance again, of course, [I’d be] going in with a fresh mind and not having a broken heart.

Harris-Wolf says he applied for the show because he really wanted to give love a crack, after many years living partly overseas as part of his job with the Australian Border Force and the Australian Federal Police.

My last job I worked for Border Force, I worked away month on month overseas so I didn’t have much of a social life. And [I had] a job with the feds before that with the same. Then I went to become a uni student, and it being a doctorate, I found again socially I just wasn’t really going anywhere to meet people. So I just saw it as an opportunity to put the books down and do some old-fashioned dating. Put the phone aside and see if there was love there.

Ultimately, he saw that he and Oetjen were “pretty strong and compatible as friends“, and recognised he hadn’t built the kind of strong, immediate connection with her as some of the other blokes. He also knew that their “timelines didn’t match up“.

I had nothing to hide from Ali, and she knew early on that I’m a university student and I just don’t have the means as a student to have children in the next few years. I definitely knew that I was probably going to be on the chopping block because she wasn’t willing to compromise on when she wanted children.

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Still, Harris-Wolf could see that some blokes might be a little similar to the ones she’s dated in the past, and that Bill Goldsmith and Charlie Newling might be getting too caught up in their ongoing rivalry.

The only concern I have is especially with Bill and Charlie. If they don’t leave their differences aside I think they’re gonna spend all their time and effort arguing with each other rather than focusing on why it is that they’re there.

I tried to convince Ali the whole time that she typically goes for the same type of guys and that hasn’t worked for her in the past. It’s hard – a leopard never changes its spots, -and I just hope that she can maybe look at one of the softer spoken, more gentle guys. I think that would work out better for her.

He says he thinks Daniel Noonan – that guy we have maybe never heard speak, probably because he’s “averse to drama and soft-spoken” – would be a “really good match for Ali“.

Now, Harris-Wolf says he’s back in the dating game, in the very early flirtation period with a new woman: “I’m back, I’m ready, I’m single. I am talking to someone but it’s very early, so I’ll just wait and see where that goes.

Best of luck, Danny.

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