Just a few days after Matt James announced their breakup on Instagram, Rachael Kirkconnell shared her side of the story while appearing on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast on Jan. 28. During the episode, Kirkconnell walked Cooper through her and James’s entire relationship, from when they met on The Bachelor to their headline-making breakup. According to Kirkconnell, there was tension between them leading up to the split, but James ending things with her came “out of nowhere.”
“He said that at the end of the day there were just qualities about me that he worries about having in a wife,” Kirkconnell told Cooper. “At the end of the day, there are things that we aren’t compatible with.”
To make matters worse, James announced their breakup to the world while Kirkconnell was on a flight back home — not giving her the chance to let her friends and family know first.
“Father God, give Rachael and I strength to mend our broken hearts. Give us a peace about this decision to end our relationship that transcends worldly understanding,” he captioned the breakup announcement. “Shower our friends and family with kindness and love to comfort us. And remind us that our Joy comes from you, Lord.”
Here’s everything else Kirkconnell revealed about her and James’s relationship on CHD.
she was immediately infatuated with matt when they met on ‘The bachelor’
The CHD episode began with Kirkconnell revealing she wasn’t interested in going on The Bachelor but that her friends nominated her. When she first met James on the show, it was “total infatuation” that soon developed into love. However, James decided not to propose to Kirkconnell in the end, which she said they had talked about during Fantasy Suites.
“It was one of those things where it felt like it was out of my control, because I wasn’t the one handing out roses at the end of the day. So it was one of those things where I told myself, like, ‘If we do make it to the end of this and he proposes to me, of course, I would say yes,’” she said. “The proposals on The Bachelor are just interesting because I think you’ve seen plenty of couples re-propose and say, like, ‘This is the actual engagement.’ And I’m not saying that the engagements aren’t real on the show, but I think now, having been through it all, it would be so crazy to get engaged with someone you barely knew and you’ve only known each other for a few weeks.”
they broke up and got back together because they loved each other
While The Bachelor was still airing, James and Kirkconnell broke up after photos of her attending an Antebellum-themed party in college surfaced online.
“I think that he felt so much pressure with the state that the world was in at the time with Black Lives Matter. And that was the year after George Floyd, and it was like just such a heavy, heavy topic in our country at the time, and then, of course, all of the controversy within the show did not help,” Kirkconnell told Cooper. “I think he felt so much pressure to just make the right decision and to stand by what was right for him at the time.”
Following a brief split (during which Kirkconnell said James talked to another woman), the twosome got back together after he realized he was staying at a hotel near where she was at the time.
“I met him downstairs and we sat in my car and talked for like six hours just sitting in the parking garage, and he explained everything,” Kirkconnell said. “I heard him out and it was just one of those things where he was like, ‘Just give me a chance. I’m sorry and I do love you and I do want to be with you and I’m done playing these games. Let’s give this a real shot. Let’s get back together,’ so I said, ‘OK.’ I gave him a chance ’cause I loved him.”
rachael & matt never lived together
One of the most shocking revelations from the episode was that Kirkconnell and James never lived together. According to Kirkconnell, the former Bachelor lead wanted to wait until marriage to live under the same roof, which she was OK with, out of respect for his religious beliefs.
“At the same time, I’m a little confused because we’re still, you know, traveling together, staying in the same hotel and it was like we were living together,” she said. “Half of his stuff is still at my place in Georgia right now, but he always had an apartment in Miami or New York, so we were either in New York, Miami, or Atlanta, and I think at the time I just didn’t worry about it too much because it was fun.”
She added, “I think that I was making excuses for it because it was one of those things where we were saying that that was gonna be our life anyway, so I guess I just didn’t think too much on it, but I also think it was me trying to justify it just because I didn’t want to worry like, ‘Well, is this like fear of, you know, taking the next steps?’ You know, of course, you don’t want to admit that to yourself, so now, yeah. Looking back on it, maybe that is what it was.”
they often talked about marriage
When Cooper brought up the topic of marriage and kids, Kirkconnell got a bit choked up while confirming that she and James did have these conversations and seemed to be on the same page when it came to their future together.
“We talked about rings. He told me a few months ago to start, you know, saving some things, picking things out, or that we should go look at some,” Kirkconnell said. “That was such a green flag to me and I felt like the longer we were together, the more he was able to talk about it. I think, at first, I could tell it was something that did scare him a lot or it was a really hard thing for him to talk about and it just seemed easier and easier as our relationship went on, so I felt like that was a good sign.”
matt announced their breakup while rachael was on a flight
Nearly an hour into the episode, Kirkconnell and Cooper *finally* talked about the breakup. Kirkconnell said James had ended things with her in early January when they were in Tokyo. According to Kirkconnell, James got frustrated with her when she couldn’t find a restaurant to eat at. Though she eventually found a place, Kirkconnell got emotional because she felt like she didn’t pick a good spot for James to do his food reviews.
“He was like, ‘I’m just so confused, like, why you were so upset. Like, what was that?’ And I explained to him, like, ‘I felt like I’d let you down.’ Like, ‘I felt like that was disappointing. And I hate going to a place that isn’t somewhere that you could post about [on social media]. I feel like it’s a waste.’ And he just was trying to tell me like, ‘It’s not that serious. Like, it’s not that big of a deal.’ But then he was concerned about me getting so upset. He was like, ‘That was like, there was no reason for you to get upset like that.’ And he found it concerning that I got that emotional, I guess,” she said. “He was trying to express to me, like, ‘If you get emotional about little things like this, what is going to happen in life when something really terrible happens? Like, how are you going to be able to react to things that are actually really scary or disappointing or sad?’ I felt like I was being punished for crying.”
The following day, Kirkconnell said things started out normal as both were in good moods. But, on their way to get food, she “annoyed” James by showing him some videos. This caused James to snap at her, and she snapped back at him. Once they arrived at the food market, they each went their separate ways to cool off. When they got back to their hotel later that day, that’s when James broke things off.
“It was just one of those things where he, I think, just had this realization that ‘I should want to propose to you by this time. Like, at this point in our relationship, I should be wanting those things and I should be ready for that. But I’m not still, I still don’t feel like we’re ready or I don’t feel like I’m ready. I don’t know if I ever see myself proposing to you. I can’t actually see myself married to you,'” she said. “He came to the conclusion that he didn’t think it was me and that he just didn’t want me to end up resenting him by wasting more of my time if it wouldn’t happen. And yeah, he just said, you know, ‘You’re beautiful, smart, and funny, and you’ll find someone, you’ll find a guy that will love you for you.’ But yeah, he just didn’t think that it was him. But it was just really a lot to hear at once because a few days before, you know, I’m hearing the opposite.”
Adding more salt to the wound, James broke up with Kirkconnell right before her flight back home. (Her flight was earlier than James’s because she had a baby shower to attend). Before the plane took off, Kirkconnell heard from her friend that James had posted a breakup announcement on IG. She then lost service for 12 hours while flying back home.
rachael can’t see herself getting back together with matt
Once Kirkconnell was back home, she didn’t reach out to James. She finally talked to him “four or five days” later when he called her at 1 a.m. to check on her. “I confronted him about the post. That’s when he was like, ‘I fully admit that I could have handled this a lot better,’ and he apologized,” she said. “I think he regrets it. I probably wouldn’t even be sitting here if [he] didn’t do that.”
Although she doesn’t think James is a “bad guy,” Kirkconnell doesn’t see herself getting back together with him after this. “I don’t think I can, which is sad. I don’t think I can ‘cause I think when someone says those things that he said, you know, ‘I don’t think you’re my person. I don’t see us getting married,’ I think that’s when you have to call it quits,” she told Cooper. “Just the way that he handled all of this and this post and everything, like I forgive him, but I felt like he disrespected me at the end of the day doing that. It’s just one of those things where you have to stand up for yourself even if you don’t want to. Of course there’s part of me that [wishes] we could just get back together and pretend that this never happened, but that’s not the case and I think, as hard as it is, I think the right decision is to stand up for myself and be on my own.”