Bachelor Nation got to know Hakeem Moulton as he looked for love on Season 21 of “The Bachelorette” and again on Season 10 of “Bachelor in Paradise.” 

Since his time on the show, Hakeem has been keeping fans updated with his life online and took to social media at the end of last year to hard-launch his new relationship with girlfriend Monica Marie.

Now, the Bachelor Nation star is discussing more about his relationship on the “Bachelor Happy Hour: Golden Hour” podcast and opening up about struggles they’ve faced. 

While discussing how they met, Hakeem explained that he and Monica had previously dated but broke up due to racist behavior from her family.

“She’s actually a person that I dated in my past,” he shared. “I met her via Hinge once upon a time, so we dated from 2021 to 2023. And then we had some unfortunate things happen within her family dynamic… There were racist things that were happening in the family at the time.” 

He continued, “I took her mom out for Mother’s Day for her, and I didn’t even get to take my own mom out that day. But [her mom] first started out with saying, ‘Hey, I thought your person was this other person that you were dating in junior high.’ And I was two years into dating Monica at the time and she was like, ‘Yeah, you were supposed to marry that guy, he was the guy for you.’ And I’m just kind of like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m not enough. What am I, invisible?’ But there were just a lot of things that happened. I’m trying not to say exactly the things that kind of went on, but there were a lot of micro aggressions.”

He went on, “A lot of things were kind of escalating, so I kind of removed myself from there… I was actually living with her at that specific time when I was with her in 2023. So I leave, I go with my mother, and I’m kind of like, ‘I’m not doing that, I can’t deal with that. I’m not gonna marry somebody whose family treats me the way they treated me.’ Even though I loved her so much.”

Hakeem explained he went on the Bachelor Nation shows after their breakup. But he rekindled his relationship with Monica when he was off the shows, following an unfortunate situation. 

“I got these text messages, like really aggressive text messages [from her brother], like hard ‘er,’ ‘I’m gonna get people and beat you up’ and all that. And I’m just kind of confused, like, ‘Where is this coming from in the first place?’” he shared. “But in that case, she was like, ‘Whoa.’ Responding to the text messages like, ‘This is disgusting. I can’t believe you would say something like that after all he’s done for us.’… Actually made it very easy for us to get back together because it was kind of like us versus her family at that time.”

Hakeem continued, sharing that Monica no longer speaks to her family, “Monica, she’s absolutely anti-racist. And with all that, she basically told me, ‘I don’t want anything to do with my family because if I do have kids with you, my kids are going to be Black. So ultimately speaking, they need to do intense therapy and then they also need to take accountability with certain things. That’s not okay’… When all of that happened, she checked in on me. Made sure I was okay throughout the whole entire process… She’s been amazing.”

We’re happy that Monica has been supporting Hakeem. And as a reminder, here at Bachelor Nation we don’t tolerate any sort of hateful or racist behavior. 

Listen to the rest of his conversation in the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour: Golden Hour” below.