Jordan Kimball and Jenna Cooper were one of the two happy couples to get engaged on Tuesday’s episode of Bachelor in Paradise. But their engagement bliss was short-lived after cheating rumors involving Cooper and an unidentified man surfaced online.
On Tuesday, before the BIP finale aired, spoiler king Reality Steve posted what appear to be text messages from an unnamed man who said he had been having a relationship with Cooper before and during her engagement to Kimball. According to People, Kimball believes the rumors, but Cooper has denied the allegations altogether.
If a text conversation is posted between me and someone that allegedly NEVER took place and is made up/fake/fabricated, etc, I’d be screaming from the rooftops it’s not true. I reported this 12 hrs ago, and not once until now has she said she never sent those texts.
— RealitySteve (@RealitySteve) September 12, 2018
The text conversations featured in the Reality Steve’s blog post are pretty dramatic, and allude that Cooper and the man had a sexual relationship. In the texts, Cooper allegedly writes, “Me and Jordan aren’t together for real. I don’t even like him let alone love him. I’m better than him and once I’m able to I’ll break it off for good and make up some story to make him look bad if it’ll make you feel better.”
Reality Steve told his readers he did his due diligence and checked out that the texts were indeed from Cooper’s actual phone number. Cosmopolitan.com was not able to independently obtain or confirm the text messages.
After the reports surfaced, Kimball shared with People how blindsided he felt by the whole ordeal.
“I would never have expected this,” he told the magazine. “I feel sick about it. I just don’t understand why someone would say that they’re better than me and have ill intentions. If this whole thing sticks, and it’s true, I will be hurt much more than the depths of romance. I will be hurt as a person and as a friend. There are so many layers to a relationship and right now I feel all of them peeling back.”
“This is embarrassing and it hurts my pride,” Kimball added. “And our friendship is just tarnished. I don’t even know what piece to pick up or how to put it back.”
Kimball said he knew something was wrong when Cooper called him feeling nervous and anxious after seeing a post on Twitter Monday night, before he learned about the allegations, about someone getting “roasted” after the upcoming episode.
“I tried to calm her. I went back to bed for a few hours, woke up, had my coffee and she called me again and said she was anxious and felt sick to her stomach,” Kimball told People. He then continued to try to calm her down via telephone since she was in New York, but he changed his tune once fellow cast members started to warn him about the rumors.
“I started getting calls from castmates like Chris Randone,” Kimball said. “I started getting screenshots sent to me. I didn’t know what to think. I sank in my seat.”
On Tuesday night, Kimball and Cooper announced on Bachelor in Paradise they planned to get married in the summer of 2019 on the same beach Kimball proposed to Cooper in Mexico. The couple even asked host Chris Harrison to officiate the wedding.
But despite the drama that has surfaced since, Kimball says the relationship was real for him. “This was not a TV romance. This was real,” he said. “And whether you like me or not, I deserve love. I found it, and this is what happened. So for the sake of anyone who’s ever been in love, be understanding.”
Cooper denied the rumors in a statement to People, saying, “I am aware of the allegations being made against me and they are simply untrue. I am choosing to focus on my relationship right now. Thank you for respecting my privacy at this time.”
The couple has not announced whether they have split because of the cheating claims. However, Kimball says he believes the allegations.
“I know my Jenna, and I read those texts and in my heart, I know it’s her,” he said. “She was saying she didn’t do it, but hinting towards the fact that there’s a possibility that it happened. In all reality, I don’t expect her to own it.”
Kimball announced on Instagram that he has called off his engagement to Cooper. “I deal with unreasonable circumstances reasonably and have come to terms with a decision to remove myself from the relationship, it breaks my heart to think, feel and fall for this,” he said.