What Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo learned from their first year of marriage

Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo are celebrating one year of marriage — and looking forward to what comes next for their lives together.

The couple, who got engaged back in 2017 at the end of Lindsay’s season of “The Bachelorette,” recently jetted off to Aruba to celebrate their milestone, telling In The Know’s Gibson Johns during a recent interview that they recognized that they needed to maintain a high level of safety while traveling during the pandemic.

“It’s one of those things where you sit back and you’re like, ‘Has it been a year already?’ We wanted to cap it off in a great way, not thinking that we’d have to factor so many other things into it to make it happen,” Lindsay explained. “That’s why were grateful that Aruba had taken the right precautions to make us feel safe and be safe. In picking Aruba, it was where can we go that has everything that we want, but is taking into consideration the times that we’re living in. From the moment we decided we were going, we had to get a COVID test within 72 hours before the flight, and we get there and you go through a medical screening.”

“We definitely felt like they’re doing everything they need to to not only keep us safe, but also the residents that live there,” she added of the “One Happy Island,” with Abasolo echoing her sentiment: “It took that pressure off that everyone leaving that airport and going into the country was safe and healthy.”

For Lindsay and Abasolo, married life hasn’t changed much in terms of how they see one another or what they’ve learned about their partner. In many ways, this first year has just intensified what they already knew.

“I think communication is key in relationships, and we do a great job. There’s always a learning curve, and you grow and learn to communicate better as a couple,” Abasolo told ITK. “Loving each other, respect and honesty — those are keys we live by.”

“It solidifies that we’re best friends,” Lindsay said of being married to the man she chose to be her fiancé on national television. “We knew we had a friendship before, but spending every single day together in quarantine going on six months at this point, we realized that we just like to have fun. Whether it’s cooking together or watching sports or playing board games together, we just have fun with the two of us and our dogs.”

As for expanding their clan in the future, both Lindsay and Abasolo are resolute on the fact that they want to have multiple children — but they’re a bit at odds when it comes to how many they want to have.

“In the next couple of years, we’re definitely talking children,” Abasolo smiled. “She wants four. I say three. Let’s have a couple first and see how we feel.”

“As the years go on, the number goes down,” Lindsay laughed.

For now, Lindsay is focused on her ever-growing number of professional commitments: In addition to co-hosting “Bachelor Happy Hour” and MTV’s “Ghosted: Love Gone Missing,” the former reality star is no co-hosting The Ringer’s “Higher Learning” alongside Van Lathan. It’s the latter, which launched in May of this year, that has really amplified Lindsay’s voice in the culture beyond Bachelor Nation, and the she told In The Know that it really comes down to just being herself and “perfect” timing.

“What I find interesting is that my friends who listen to it say, ‘This is Rachel. This is the Rachel we’ve always known,'” Lindsay said. “I’m a bit more watered-down in the ‘Bachelor’ world, let’s be honest. We’re really proud of ‘Higher Learning.’ The timing is perfect. A lot of people think we put this podcast together in response to what’s happening in the world, but we didn’t. It’s just the time it was released, and we feel like we’re the pulse of the culture.”

If you enjoyed this article, check out In The Know’s recent interview with “Real Housewives of Potomac” star Monique Samuels here.

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