Gearing up to head to the Final Ceremony where he would find out Elly Miles’ decision as to if he had won her heart, Joe Woodbury had no idea how soon he was going to get the answer to that question.
Standing in his hotel room, Joe was surprised to turn around and see the Bachelorette herself walking in.
“It was a massive shock to turn around and see Elly walk through the door,” Joe told 10 play.
"But I think from the moment she walked through that door I knew something was up. I thought my time might be done.”
Sitting Joe down Elly explained that she didn’t feel comfortable taking Joe to the end when she already had her mind made up so clearly. Through sobs, Elly apologised that she couldn’t reciprocate his feelings.
“I can’t really remember it, it’s all a blur,” Joe said, “I just remember my main priority was making sure Elly was okay.
“Although I was devastated I had to hold it together and just make sure she was okay because this whole experience is about the girls finding love,” he continued. “It’s for us to find love too but, at the end of the day, that’s what it’s for. The girls to find love.”
Though Elly’s decision to break with the traditional format and let Joe know ahead of the Ceremony came as a shock, Joe was actually a lot happier with that outcome.
“I am glad she did what she did. I think it would have been a bit more confronting to have to go to that finale,” he said.
“It felt a lot more personal to me, her coming to my room and doing it that way, she said she didn’t want to put me through that and that stood out for me.”
Now that the finale has aired Joe said he can finally close the final chapter and move on from the experience.
“With most breakups you’ve got the option to talk about it with the person, have contact with the person, or talk about it with other people,” he said. “With this, when it happens you don’t think about it again until it gets aired because you can’t really talk about it to the person you broke up with.
“Moving on from it, in that way, has been a bit easier. It’ll always be in the back of your head… the band-aid’s ripped off, I don’t have that episode looming over my head. I think we both handled it pretty well and we both had each other’s best interests at heart.”
It’s no secret that Joe and Elly knew each other before being reunited on the red carpet, and Joe said he completely expects to continue to run into her in the future.
“That’s a matter of fact. We’re both in Newcastle, I used to live with her best friend. We’ve got such similar friendship groups, that’s going to happen… but it’s just part of life, isn’t it? You move on from it, stay mature about it.
“There’s no bad blood there for me. Elly holds a special spot in my heart. She’s an unreal girl.”
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