Jason Tartick says he's not 'mentally ready' to date yet after 'hard' breakup

The Bachelorette season 14 contestant Jason Tartick has found love and unfortunately heartbreak twice during his time as a Bachelor Nation alum. Fresh off the heels of his latest "hard" breakup with fellow Bachelor Nation contestant Kat Stickler, he said that he's not quite ready to date again yet.

Jason Tartick and Kat Stickler were first rumored to be dating in April 2024 and made their relationship social media official two months later, but in October of this same year, the two of them announced that they had chosen to go their separate ways.

"It's fair to say that I love hard with all my heart and fall fast. Sometimes in life, that works out and other times it doesn't. This time, it didn't," Jason Tartick wrote on his Instagram story in October after fans began speculating that something had happened between the two of them.

"It's not love wasted. I feel like sometimes, it's so easy to think when a relationship ends that the love was wasted but love is never wasted," Kat Stickler wrote in her own statement on her Instagram story to confirm the breakup and confirm that there was no bad blood between the two of them despite the fact that they had chosen to go their separate ways.

At Heidi Klum's annual Halloween part on October 31, Jason Tartick spoke to PEOPLE and E! News about how he was handling their breakup and why he's not quite ready to get back into the dating world so soon after they had called it quits.

"I'm just trying to take care of myself right now," Jason Tartick told PEOPLE and said that he's "mentally not there right now" when asked if he was ready to move on and find love again two weeks after making his breakup with Kat Stickler public.

In his statement, he said that he was "rooting for her happiness" as well as for his own and at the Halloween party, he told PEOPLE it was his first time getting back out into the world and he said, "It's good to change it up a little bit."

"Breakups are just really hard," he told PEOPLE but said that each day that goes by "gets a little better."

According to Jason Tartick, focusing on himself and allowing himself to have feelings about the breakup has been the key to moving on. Although he's not sure what the future holds for him as of yet, it sounds like he might be considering a move to a new location now that he's single.

He told E! News, "I live in Nashville, and I have nothing tying me there anymore. It's like a full reset and an unexpected one. But hey, onward. Just figuring it out."