IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Cheating reports don’t worry ‘Bachelorette’

At a time when Bachelorette Jillian Harris and her fiancé Ed Swiderski would like to be celebrating their engagement, they’re being hit with allegations that he was not faithful.
/ Source: PEOPLE.com

At a time when Bachelorette Jillian Harris and her fiancé Ed Swiderski would like to be celebrating their engagement, they’re being hit with allegations that he was not faithful — and carried on two relationships while filming “The Bachelorette.”

Two women, Lindsey Johnson and Bethany Steffen, claim that Swiderski, a Chicago computer software consultant, was stringing them along while he was wooing Harris on the ABC reality dating show, and that he continued to do so even after he and Harris got engaged on May 24. The reports claim Harris feels betrayed and that her relationship with Swiderski is destroyed.

“I am not destroyed!” Harris tells PEOPLE. “There’s a little bit of anxiety that comes with this news, but I am absolutely not destroyed.”

“What did he do wrong?” Harris asks. “My biggest concern is with everything that happened after the day we got engaged, and after we got engaged he has been so open with me. He’s told me all of this, every little text message and every little phone call. I use his computer. I know that any communication he had with the girls post-show was platonic. I’m not worried about it.’

Last month, Swiderski talked openly with PEOPLE about his relationship with Johnson prior to getting engaged, confessing, “When I left for this show we were not dating, but I certainly still had feelings for her.”

Harris: He's been exclusive since engagementA very forgiving Harris says she understands that with previous relationships “feelings and emotions are involved. I know what it feels like to fall in love with somebody and to be in love with somebody [while] they are in love with somebody else. It’s very heartbreaking,” she says. “I feel so awful, but since we’ve been home and since we’ve been engaged we’ve been exclusive and he’s done nothing wrong.”

For her part, Harris says she’s been in a similar situation with “exes that are still in love with me, they want to go to dinner and stuff and I’ve had to tell them I can’t do that stuff.” An even better example, says Harris, is what she was going through the days leading up to The Bachelorette finale. “I was falling in love with two other guys two days before we got engaged. That’s a double standard. If he had feelings for these two other girls while he was on the show, that’s normal.”

As for how she and Swiderski are getting through this time, she says, “Ed and I are trying to find humor in all of this — and there isn’t much — but it’s bringing us closer.”

The best solution, she says is for them to “get out of the limelight” and focus on their relationship. “I think he feels very bad that I’m getting dragged into this and he feels bad for the girls as well.”

Harris assures that everything is “going strong with our relationship.”

The couple have a trip to Las Vegas planned later this week. “We talked last night until three in the morning about how much fun we’re going to have in Vegas and he said to me ‘I can’t wait to get married to you. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.’ Our relationship is very legitimate and it’s getting stronger. We’re a team and we’re going to get through this.”