Wonderwall

'The Bachelorette''s Ali Fedotowsky Gave Up Her Job and Apartment to Find Love

Entertainment Tonight, Thursday, May 20, 2010, 12:04am (PDT)

On last season's "The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love," Ali Fedotowsky chose her job at Facebook over a chance to have a hometown visit with Jake Pavelka -- and possibly become the woman to whom he proposed. And to this day, she still believes she was right to walk away from Jake. He was meant for Vienna Girardi. What she thinks was the wrong decision was to put her job over love. And she says it will never happen again. To become this season's "The Bachelorette," she quit the job she loved and she gave up her San Francisco apartment.

"I was so confident going into this that I could find my husband on the show," she says. "I would not have done the show otherwise. When I was first approached to be 'The Bachelorette,' I had a lot of concerns. I was so happy in my career and my job and I loved being in San Francisco. I didn't know if it was the right choice. I had a conversation with my best friends, who I am living with now, they said, 'If you find your husband on this show, nothing else matters.' That was when I knew being on the show was the right choice. I was confident from night one that my husband was going to be in the room and I like to think I kept that confidence."

Ali says the experience of being the one to do the choosing, instead of being the chosen, was an eye-opener. Going in, she wanted someone who would be interesting enough to keep her on the edge of her seat, someone funny and someone intelligent.

"I think I learned as the show went on that qualities aren't what make a relationship," she says. "What makes a relationship is how that person treats you and how he makes you feel. What I went in thinking I needed is not what I [ended up] thinking I needed."

Because of her early departure from "The Bachelor," Ali also didn't get the opportunity to spend the night with Jake in the Fantasy Suite. The Fantasy Suite is where Bachelors and Bachelorettes get to spend time alone with their final choices out of the public eye. This is also the time when things can get really steamy. But Ali says that she decided that unlike Jake, she was only going to give her heart to one man.

"I knew when I was presenting those [invitations to the Fantasy Suite], and the guys got those cards, I think we were really excited to be off-camera and be able to talk," she says. "It is easy to talk with the cameras there, too, but there are some things you want to keep to yourself. It is the perfect opportunity. I didn't get any sleep those nights because we were up talking all night. It is really important those nights to building those relationships by having those intimate conversations."

Now that Ali has seen the first two episodes of the show and discovered things that she didn't know about some of the guys, she still wouldn't do anything different.

"I am happy right now," is all she is allowed to say when asked if she found true love. "I am really confident with the decisions that I made all along the way, whether it was the third Rose Ceremony, the fifth one or the last one. I don't have any regrets. I am super confident with every decision along the way and I am really happy right now."

"The Bachelorette" premieres Monday, May 24 at 9 p.m. on ABC.