Signs Rachel Lindsay & Bryan Abasolo's Marriage Wouldn't Last

2023 ended with a breakup in Bachelor Nation. Bryan Abasalo filed for divorce from Rachel Lindsay, with December 31, 2023, listed as the date of their separation, according to Us Weekly. This comes after they met on Season 13 of "The Bachelorette" — a reality TV experience that changed Lindsay's life, most notably with her engagement at the end of the show to Abasolo.

Abasolo posted about their decision to split up in an Instagram post on January 2, 2024. He called it a "difficult decision," and went on to say, "My parents have been married forever and I'm a family man, but sometimes loving yourself and your partner means you must let go."

Lindsay hasn't as of yet posted anything publicly, but there's perhaps a coded hint about their separation in Lindsay's 2023 Instagram wrap-up post, in which she wrote, "Definitely one of the hardest years of my life, but choosing to focus on grateful moments and carrying that energy into 2024." Commenters who'd noticed Abasolo's post wrote condolences to Lindsay on her page about the end of their marriage. While it's certainly sad to see a love story come to an end, there were some signs that their union wouldn't last.

Bryan Abasolo went down on one knee in Spain to propose to Rachel Lindsay for the finale of Season 13 of "The Bachelorette" in 2017. The couple then got married in Mexico in 2019, which makes them one of just four couples who got engaged on "The Bachelorette" to actually go ahead with a marriage over 19 seasons.

Statistically speaking, the couples who get together on "The Bachelorette" don't end up staying together — relationships fare even worse on "The Bachelor." So while Lindsay and Abasolo did beat the odds by actually making it to the altar, their split seems to fit with the overall poor track record of lasting relationships being formed via "The Bachelorette." It makes sense that all the relationships started on "The Bachelorette" don't work out though, as they're started on under unique circumstances that are decidedly not a reflection of everyday life, and the circumstances seem designed for the contestants to fall in love quickly.

There's also the pressure of being a Bachelor couple out in the world. In "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe," Lindsay explained how "you feel like you have to perform" when out and about. That level of scrutiny on a relationship sounds like a real challenge to overcome that could easily become too much.

It's a fairly basic assumption that after a couple gets married, they then live together. But not Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo. After "The Bachelorette," Lindsay moved to Los Angeles to focus on her career; she's a television personality, co-host of a podcast, and author. Abasolo focused on continuing his chiropractic work in Miami after the show, and the two stayed on separate coasts even after they got married. Long-distance relationships are definitely a challenge. 

On a February 21, 2021 episode of the podcast, "Talking it Out with Mike & Bryan," Abasolo said that their bicoastal marriage and careers had caused some friction. "From my perspective, it's like, I have this business, it's growing, I have certain goals, I want to reach certain thresholds," Abasolo said. "And at the same time, she wants to be together, she wants to start a family. Don't get me wrong: I want the same exact things. It's just when you set goals and you're achieving them — but you haven't gotten to the height of them — you kind of want to see them through."

It wasn't until late March 2021 that Abasolo joined Lindsay to live together in Los Angeles. The couple may have gotten used to living their own lives and having their own schedules after spending so much of their early marriage apart. Trying to blend those lives together may have been too hard to overcome.

Even when Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo were living together in Los Angeles, it doesn't sound like they were living lives in sync with each other. In an interview with "Realitea with Derek Z," about how they were coping during the pandemic lockdowns. She said: "Absolutely we've had fights. Absolutely we get on each other's nerves." If you think back to the pandemic, lots of couples were getting stressed over being in close quarters during such uncertain times. But it seems to have been a sign of things to come for Lindsay and Abasolo.

"The key to surviving quarantine is space," Lindsay went on to say. "[...] And I do my work from here and it's like we separate, we do our thing, and then we come together at the end of the day. And it's fantastic. And it's what works for us. We're independent." It sounds like their independent lives, even when they were in the same place and after the pandemic was over, just diverged too much to keep their marriage going.

In his divorce filings, Bryan Abasolo requested spousal support from Rachel Lindsay. If he's asking for spousal support, that likely indicates that Lindsay was the main earner in the relationship. It reminded us of a moment in their season of "The Bachelorette." The two were in Geneva and they were looking at luxury Breitling watches. Then Lindsay says she's going to buy him one of the watches as well as one for herself. After he got over his initial disbelief, there was lots of kissing, and Lindsay told him, "You're welcome. I got you." Granted, we don't know if Lindsay actually paid for the watch or if it was part of an arranged promo with the show's production company, but it still seemed to set up a money imbalance between the two.

Income disparity can certainly cause friction in a marriage. So while Abasolo seemed excited and thankful for the gift of an expensive watch on the show, that type of extravagance early on could become an issue over time. If someone started a relationship thinking gifts like a luxury watch would be commonplace, that could be problematic. On the flip side, it could signal the start of a building resentment over who is the provider.

Some people don't think that Bryan Abasolo was genuine with Rachel Lindsay, including fan favorite contestant Dean Unglert from Linday's "The Bachelorette" season. He once referred to Abasolo as, "[a] 37-year-old man living in Miami who has spent the last 18-plus years of his life swooning and sweet-talking women on a daily basis, to the point where he's gotten good at it," according to People. Sounds like Unglert saw him as there to win rather than fall in love.

Some Redditors discovered that Abasolo registered for his trademarks "Ab Doctor" and "Dr. Abs" shortly before filming started. Dr. Abs is now the handle he uses on TikTok and on YouTube. That would track with the trend of some people going on "The Bachelor" shows to try and boost their own personal business and/or brand. So while he did perhaps actually fall in love with Lindsay on the show, Abasolo's motives going into it might not have been entirely about love.

Lindsay posted to her Instagram stories the same day that news broke about Abasolo's divorce filing. She didn't mention it directly, but she wrote, "all of this" to a list of "Lessons of 2023," which included: "if it's forced, it will probably fail" and "it's okay to outgrow people, places, and things." It could be easy to infer that those apply, at least a little bit, to her relationship with Abasolo.