Early connections for Jenn Tran on Night 1 of 'The Bachelorette'

Jenn Tran is making good on her commitment to locate The One her own way.

During the Monday, July 8, premiere of The Bachelorette, the season 21 star was only shown kissing one contestant: 27-year-old Sam M.

“I didn’t go into the night thinking, ‘I don’t want to kiss anyone.’ I went into the night understanding how this process works, how this trip works, how prior Bachelor/ Bachelorettes have gone over their travels, and, for me, a first kiss meant a lot. And I need to be able to have a certain degree of comfortability with somebody,” Jenn told Us Weekly in an exclusive interview before the premiere. “And I need to be able to feel like our relationship is at that point for me to want to kiss you. I knew that it wasn’t going to be everybody on night one, and so I really just tried to listen to my instinct and whoever I felt most comfortable with, I was like, ‘Yes, I’ll entertain it,’ but I knew I wasn’t going to kiss everybody.”

Sam M. not only earned a “feral” – and lengthy — first makeout session, but he also won the coveted first impression rose.

“Throughout that night, I was just like, ‘Who am I going to give the first impression rose to?’ And I kept thinking back to Sam, since we had such an easy flowing conversation,” Jenn said. “It was easy to give him that rose, because I just felt so comfortable and I knew that there was going to be potential there.”

Sam M. is a general contractor from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — and sure, his intro package brought Us slight Tyler Cameron flashbacks on the construction site.

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“Picture your life 50 years from now, waking up on a Saturday morning, to me cooking breakfast. I just have one thing to ask you,” Sam M. said when he got out of the limo before making a joke about Jenn’s love for shots. “With two shots in my head, do you know what time it is? It’s shot o’oclock.”

While Sam M. looks to be a decent option for the first impression rose (historically, many Bachelorettes’ first impression rose recipient), Jenn is the first to confess that she hasn’t always had a great picker.

“I would say based on my previous dating relationship history, I don’t think I saw red flags very well because of the way I grew up and not having a role model of love,” she stated. “I definitely dated men who weren’t good for me because I just didn’t understand what love really was. But from those negative experiences, I think I was able to truly learn what I don’t want and to use it as a lesson into what I now need in a relationship.”

Jenn concluded to Us that she is “very happy” with how the season develops.

“I can say that I definitely opened my heart up to a lot of different connections and explored a lot of these men. The way that things worked out along the voyage and the way that things concluded, I’m extremely thrilled with [it],” she said.