Clayton Talks Emotional Susie Split: I Had ‘Zero Energy to Fight’ Any Longer

Season 26 of The Bachelor had a pleased ending when Clayton Echard and Susie Evans reunited, however it didn’t take wish for the couple to recognize they required to deal with themselves prior to they might be in a healthy relationship.

“I would never ever wanna promote her. We’ve been really cautious with what we’ve shared since a lot of what we went through is personal and it doesn’t requirement to be shared,” Clayton, 29, started on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast while promoting his brand-new book. “We simply desired to eventually be there for each other and be helpful. And that’s why we’ve been really determined about letting individuals understand that like, ‘Hey, I’ve got absolutely nothing however love for her.’ We both understand that we might have done things in a different way, however eventually, the result was the result.”

Fans discovered throughout the March 2022 ending that Clayton and Susie, 29, had reconnected off air. The duo formerly divided on the program when the wedding event professional photographer discovered the previous football gamer slept with his other finalists, Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey.

“It was truly, truly made complex since we were pitted versus each other. That was that night of the program where I lost my cool — which I still am humiliated by to this day — when I lost my cool, it ended up being Susie vs. Clayton. Not in between her and I, however in between the audience. Camp Susie vs. camp Clayton,” he discussed, referring to their breakup scene in which Clayton briefly wondered whether Susie was trying to be the next Bachelorette. “I was getting all the Camp Clayton individuals in my DMs informing me that she was incorrect to do this, and after that she was getting all the Camp Susie DMs. And so what it did was simply confirm our internal ideas and beliefs. Now we’re butting heads since now we’re both like, ‘I got this many individuals stating this. You have this many individuals stating this. Who’s right? Who’s incorrect?’ The reality of the matter was all that sound on the exterior had no concept what was going on internally. And we must have cut all that off. And she did a much better task than I did. I enabled that outdoors sound since of my insecurities to have an influence on me and my choices. I enabled my ego to be validated by this external noise.”

Clayton added that “you can’t heal when you are pitted against each other,” explaining: “It became, ‘I’m trying to heal. You are trying to heal. When I wake up and I’m happy [and] fine for one day, you are struggling. So now I’m sharing your pain.’ So it was this constant struggle and depression and it just wore us down.”

Their individual mental health struggles “absolutely just destroyed” their relationship, he explained. The twosome announced their split in September 2022.

“I didn’t want to get out of bed certain days. My days would start at 11:00 a.m. because I just didn’t want to get out and do stuff because I had no drive to live life. I remember just kind of looking at each other and thinking like, ‘We have to heal separately because we can’t take this any longer. I’m so destroyed. There’s nothing left. I have zero energy to fight this battle any longer.’ It was just a really sad place to be.”

Clayton — who explores his battle with depression and how he’s learned to cope with mental health struggles in his book, 180 Degrees: On Mental Health, Mindfulness, and Unlocking Self-Belief — got visibly upset as he continued.

“I get a little emotional. It just sucked because, like, our last day together, we already knew that we were ending things, but I stayed in a couple extra days after we broke up. We just turned on a movie — she had a projector sent to her and we fired up the projector, turned on a movie, ordered a bunch of food to the house and just cracked up and laughed and cried and every single emotion on that last day,” he explained. “Then, I got up at 5:00 a.m. and drove away and that was it. It was just so odd because we had so much fun that last day and I think we both realized that, like, there’s so much pain attached to all of this, and after all the damage that was already done, like, I don’t know if we can repair this and the best thing we can do right now is separate and do this separately.”

While the pair briefly lost touch, they are now friends.

“Is there a chance down the road that this could happen [again]? We don’t know,” Clayton concluded about a possible reconciliation. “But, like, we can’t stay together any longer because we have nothing left to give. It was tough. It’s a really hard place to be when you feel like it’s outta your control. And you make the decision, but ultimately you feel like the decision was almost made for you by the outdoors.”