"We Got Super Close To Say the Least" — Woman Claims She Dated Sam M. Before 'The Bachelorette'

Spoiler warning: This article contains potential spoilers for Season 26 of The Bachelorette.

If there's one thing Bachelor and Bachelorette fans don't like when it comes to the contestants, it's being there "for the wrong reasons." And having a girlfriend or boyfriend back home is definitely up there with no-no's for any show in the franchise. So when fans caught wind of Season 21's Sam McKinney potentially having a girlfriend before The Bachelorette, they were not happy.

But how true is the rumor that Sam, who is known on the show as Sam M. thanks to another guy named Sam on the show, had a girlfriend before the season started filming? It wouldn't be the first time this happened, and it probably won't be the last. But before we persecute Sam for being a lying, cheating villain, let's dive into the rumor.

The rumor started when a woman by the name of Raeley Polasek shared a TikTok about someone she dated who went on The Bachelorette right after they were seeing each other. In her initial video, she didn't mention Sam by name, and in her follow-up video she didn't either. However, she did share photos as proof that she went to a wedding with Sam after they met in Nashville, Tenn., and that she briefly dated him long distance before he left to film The Bachelorette.

"We got super close to say the least," she shared in her first TikTok. "I don't really wanna spill our business on TikTok that much, but, yeah, we got close. And he flew back to his state and we obviously kept in contact every day and made a plan of when he was going to come down next. I was in school at the time, so it made it kind of difficult for me to travel up to go see him, so he came and saw me again."

From there, they saw each other as often as they could and they talked multiple times every day. According to Raeley, they had a conversation about being exclusive and, while they both had strong feelings and said they "liked" each other very much, it was even more than that for them at the time. The red flag popped up when Raeley went to Florida for Spring Break with a friend and invited Sam, but he wasn't sure he could make it.

After she got back from the trip, and felt something was wrong because of Sam's lack of text messages which was out of the norm, he asked to call her to talk.

"He wasn't replying to my texts as fast and I think we only talked twice a day, and so then this threw up some flags because I was used to talking to him 24/7 throughout the day, no matter if it was Instagram, Snapchat, TikToks, [or] text message. But yeah, he got silent," she said in her video.

She explained that Sam told her he was going on The Bachelorette and that he had applied to be on the show before he even met her.

"He did say that he applied before he met me, but yeah, it doesn't make it any better," she added. "So that's where we are now."

Sam hasn't responded to the rumor on social media or otherwise just yet, however. So for the time being, the rumor that Sam had a girlfriend before The Bachelorette is supported only by Raeley's story and the photos she shared as her proof.

According to Reality Steve, Sam makes it pretty far in Jenn's season. If the spoilers are accurate, he is there all the way to hometowns, though Sam is sent home right before the week of hometown dates. Does that make the experience and the alleged breakup prior to filming worth it for Sam? It's certainly possible. But for now, the rumor mill is definitely milling.

Watch The Bachelorette on Mondays at 8 p..m EST on ABC.