Opening up.

The most recent season of “The Bachelorette” is currently on pause. And as fans wait to see what happens next, the men from Season 22 have been appearing on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast.

Each guy has been exclusively discussing how they’re feeling and sharing more of their stories so listeners can get to know them better. Richard has joined the podcast this week to open up about living with partial deafness and how it impacted his experience on the show. 

Telling the story of how he lost his hearing in one of his ears, he said, “It’s definitely, obviously, a large part of my life and how it’s affected me. But it was an accident that happened when I was 14 years old.”

Richard shared that he and his friends were hanging out at school and were given fake roses, which he noted was “ironic.” While they were hanging out, his friend was poking around his ear with the fake rose when Richard accidentally flinched and it went “all the way down inside.” 

“It was really hard because immediately I fell to the ground," he reflected, “It was so traumatic for [my mom] because she was there. She saw it happen.” Richard recounted that after having surgery, the doctors told him he would never hear out of that ear again.

“It’s definitely led into difficulties,” he shared. “Being in large settings or dinner tables and concerts or house parties or friend events, and it’s really tough because I can feel left out and not able to contribute to conversations. I wish that I had captions over people’s heads all the time. But it’s definitely shaped me more into who I am and given me more confidence in myself. And I think at the end of the day, it’s something I’m now trying to be more vocal about because I realized there is a massive community of people that struggle with that and struggle with all of the things that come with hearing loss.”

Richard went on, discussing how his hearing loss impacted his time on the show and communicating with the other men. 

“It was okay at times. Other times when we’re inside and sound is bouncing off walls it could be really hard,” he said, “I would try and if there was a group of guys talking I’d come up or I’d be in the conversation. But it’s always tough when there’s so much noise trying to get into one side. And so having to latch onto words and conversations, that’s the hardest part sometimes. Not being able to piece together full sentences. So I might get a gist of an idea but I’ll miss out on an inside joke or I’ll miss out on a specific detail.”

“I did [disclose it], it was in certain situations,” he continued. “It’s not something I just start out with always. But you know there’s [a situation] where I was on the couch talking with, I don’t remember who it was, but they were sitting on my left side and then I, about halfway through the conversation, was like, ‘I’m so sorry to do this but can we switch seats?’ And part of the fun of that sometimes is just seeing the look on people’s faces like ‘that’s weird why would you want to switch seats?’ But then being like, ‘I can’t hear out of this ear and I’m piecing together your words and I’ve understood most of it but it would be really helpful if we could just switch.’”

Hear the rest of Richard’s interview in the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below!