Rachael Kirkconnell Responds To Her & Matt James’ Breakup

Nearly two weeks after The Bachelor star Matt James announced their breakup with a brief Instagram post, Rachael Kirkconnell shared what led to the split in a Call Her Daddy podcast interview.

For roughly the first half of Rachael’s Jan. 28 appearance, she reflected on her relationship with Matt since The Bachelor. Following a brief split after the show, the pair were together for nearly four years. As Rachael shared with host Alex Cooper, they often discussed a long-term future and having kids together.

“That’s probably one of the saddest things about it, is just picturing your life with someone and thinking that is how your life is going to look,” she said. “And now it’s just all taken away.”

She Acknowledged A “Red Flag”

Rachael said that while Matt didn’t want to live together until they were married, they traveled and spent most of their time with each other — to the point they had a “home base” at Rachael’s house in Georgia.

“It did feel like we were living together, but at the end of the day, it was my place ... so it was just one of those things where, looking back, that was probably a red flag,” Rachael said. “But I just tried to tell myself that it was OK.”

A Sudden Split

A few months before the breakup, Rachael said Matt asked her to start thinking about rings, which she took as a promising sign.

Though Rachael said Matt “felt the weight of marriage really heavily” throughout their relationship, they talked about the future on recent trips to London and Tokyo.

In Japan, Rachael felt “overwhelmed” trying to find the perfect dinner spot, nodding to Matt’s work as a food content creator. “On top of that, I’d just started my period. I felt terrible — just was having a rough few hours, I guess,” she said.

The place she’d selected was a “disappointment,” Rachael continued, and she briefly teared up at dinner. Later on, Matt asked why she was so upset. “He found it concerning that I got that emotional, I guess ... like if you get emotional about little things like this, what is going to happen in life when something really terrible happens?”

Though the couple went to bed and woke up “totally fine,” Rachael said Matt seemed annoyed with her the next day. She chalked it up to minor irritation with each other after traveling together for three weeks straight. However, a “can of worms” opened during an argument at the hotel.

“He really just kind of let out everything that, I guess, he had been feeling for a while,” Rachael said, adding that Matt noted “qualities about me that he worries about having in a wife.”

Rachael said Matt took issue with her not taking accountability in disagreements. Ultimately, he said he wasn’t sure if he ever saw himself proposing to Rachael. “He said that maybe one day he would get there. But he doesn’t feel ready now,” Rachael recalled. “And I told him, well, I feel like after four years, you should know. Or you should feel ready. And if you don’t, then that’s not a good thing. We probably shouldn’t be together if you don’t feel like that after four years.”

Matt’s Surprise Breakup Post

Matt told Rachael she’d “find someone” before she left early to fly home for a baby shower. She learned about his breakup post from a friend right before takeoff, and she had no service during the flight. It hurt that she didn’t get a heads up, she said, and wasn’t able to inform her loved ones on her own terms or “grieve privately” for even a day.

She revealed that Matt has been in touch and apologized for going about the breakup announcement the way he did. She also weighed in on whether a reconciliation might be possible.

“Of course, there’s a part of me that wishes we could just get back together and pretend that none of this ever happened, but that’s not the case,” Rachael said. “And as hard as it is, I think the right decision is to just stand up for myself and be on my own.”