On Sunday night, Jed finally popped the question to Alesia, but it turned out to be a very different question. Having discussed how she was not comfortable with an engagement at the end of the experience, Alesia clearly wasn’t going to say yes to Jed’s proposal of marriage after seven weeks.
Jed later revealed that he had again offered it to Alesia after the attempted proposal, this time as a ‘promise ring’, and as a symbol of his commitment to their relationship.
Standing alongside Felix and Jess, and Thomas and Leah, Jed and Alesia are the only couple still together from the season, but they’re hesitant to put a specific label on what their relationship is at this early stage.
“Me and Alesia are in a really good place," Jed told 10 Play, "we’re taking it day by day and are excited to actually just have a coffee with each other and live a normal life after this.”
“We’ve had to hold a relationship together by phone and text," Alesia added, "to not have actually gotten out to have a coffee with someone is so odd in a dating sense.
“It’ll be good that we can actually go out and do that and see what it’s like to be with each other in a normal setting,” she added.
Jed added that the pair are aware things won’t immediately be “normal-normal” after the show wrapped up, “But I think it’s all going to have a lot of pressure relieved for the both of us… we’re going to take it day by day and see how we go.”
Much like the proposal, Alesia said it was so important to her to remain true to herself and what she wanted, “And not fall under the pressure of it being a TV show or what Australia might think or how they might feel… I still want to maintain that today and say look let’s be real.
“We haven’t seen each other for this long… it’s something that we’re not coming out saying yeah, we’re together. We just want to be together in a real setting and see where it goes from there and if it does flourish into something more.”
While Jed and Alesia have been able to stay in contact and see each other in a scant handful of secret rendezvous since filming, the pair said it feels like now they get to start from scratch, in a physical sense, but emotionally they’re still going strong.
“Regardless of if it’s media, the show, distance or our own personal things we went through coming off this show, I think it nearly strengthened us on a deeper level in a sense,” Jed explained.
“But I also think, romantically, it does add a bit of pressure that doesn’t really allow you to grow in that exciting phase. I think one of the cool things about the show airing is that it has allowed us to look back at those fun moments.
“Now it’s going to be such a relief of that pressure for us where it’s starting fresh in that sense of physically being able to go out, but I personally feel like [since] coming off the show we know so much more about each other.”
Alesia also admitted that, during the show, she was a lot more guarded because she was so aware of drama in the house, or how her outside life could be affected.
“I just wanted to go back to life as normally as possible… so, when we had the rendezvous, I felt like the walls completely dropped,” she added. “It was like the relationship hit a completely new level straight after that and that’s the way it has continued since then.”
With just the proposal-shaped hurdle as their only stumbling block during the show, an obviously shocked Alesia struggled to come up with the words in that moment to explain herself to Jed, but the pair worked through it.
“When he did get down on one knee I was like, what the hell? Were you not present for the last eight conversations,” Alesia said as Jed laughed in the background. “The profanity coming out of my mouth I think was worse than he had on that roller coaster… it was not good.
“He said no, I know you’re going to say no, I just had to ask. And I was like, am I being punked? Why would you do that to my heart?”
“I fell for Alesia the day I met her,” Jed replied. “It sounds os corny, but for me, the entire time I had no question. I consider myself the luckiest man on that show 100 percent.”
“I truly do feel like I was lucky enough to be with someone who was emotionally in tune with himself as well as with me,” Alesia continued.
“We heard each other really well and we both felt heard by each other… other than at the end when he asked me the question,” she said as Jed laughed.
“The really nice thing about it all was that even though Jed had said the ring’s really important to me and I said it’s really important we don’t get engaged, in the end, there was still a result we met in the middle with,” she said.
Jed agreed adding, “We’re not doing this for the show… I think we’re a work in progress and I think it’s a credit to us, her, especially because if this was just left up to me it would be an absolute pile of sh*t,” he said as the pair laughed.
“We’re not saying all this official stuff just for the sake of it, that actually goes to show the care we have for each other and also the maturity between the relationship that we currently have,” he said.
“We’re not doing this for anyone else anymore, we’re doing this for us and we’re going to move at our own pace, and I think people will respect that.”
