Tonight’s the night!

As we kick off this highly anticipated season of “The Bachelorette,” our leading ladies Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia stopped by for an exclusive chat with BachelorNation.com.

The two Bachelorettes shared what they learned about themselves and what they learned from each other on their journey to find love.

Gabby started off by saying, “Both of us have different strengths and weaknesses, so something I learned from Rachel is how to be vulnerable and really wear my heart on my sleeve. She helped me to not be so afraid of falling in love. We really got so close throughout the whole journey and when tough times would arise, we could go to each other and ask one another for guidance. We talked about if the other had experienced something and what they did in that situation. Having someone else to validate the feelings you’re already feeling was such a great part of having her with me.”

Gabby went on, sharing that throughout the experience, “I learned how to trust myself and really lean on my intuition and not second-guess myself.”

And Rachel agreed that she was really able to get to know herself better throughout the process.

She said, “I feel like I learned so much about myself throughout this whole experience. I feel like having Gabby next to me throughout it all has really helped me come into myself more and made me so much more confident. Going through this, you learn so much about what you want and what you don’t, so looking back, I’m really happy that I got to learn so much about myself.”

And Rachel also revealed what she was able to learn a lot from her fellow Bachelorette Gabby.

She shared, “Gabby is just such an incredible woman; everyone watching her knows that. She is just so confident and comfortable in who she is, and anytime I was confused, she was always there for me and helped me find my confidence. It was great having her there for me.”

Rachel went on, “My favorite thing was being able to have little sidebar conversations with her. We would have a really big night and crazy things would be happening. Getting to take a second to sit down with a friend and tell her everything that happened helped me get all my thoughts out. I think it really helped us both figure out what we wanted.”

And to anyone who is worried about these two being pitted against each other at all throughout the season, Rachel and Gabby both shared their thoughts on the concern.

Rachel said, “I totally get where people are coming from if they are worried about us being pitted against each other, but just take one look at me and Gabby now and see how we are. You’ll know that us being pitted against each other is so the opposite of what actually happened. I am just excited for everyone to see two love stories unfold at once.”

And Gabby agreed, adding, “Rachel and I just always put our friendship first and didn’t let anything or anyone stand in the way. We always had great communication, so regardless of what things look like, we knew where our priorities lied.”

Rachel shared how to the two of them got so close they even started to be able to communicate without talking, saying, “We are both really good at reading people and have really open communication. So sometimes we would just look at each other and Gabby cannot hide any of her emotions, so I could just tell how she was feeling about someone. We talked a lot and always had a really open dialogue.”

And while we all get excited to watch their entire journey unfold, Rachel said she has no regrets.

The Bachelorette said, “I really feel confident in all the decisions I made. At the time, they were all the right decisions for me and I still stand by everything that I did.”