Less than two weeks after her split from Matt James rocked Bachelor Nation, Rachael Kirkconnell is ready to tell her side of the story, revealing that the breakup came “out of nowhere” during a fight.
“It’s different everyday. I’m doing OK,” Kirkconnell, 28, began to “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper on Tuesday, January 28. “I would say some days are better than others — one day I’m feeling kind of empowered, like, ‘I’m excited to be on my own.’ And the next day I can barely get out of bed and I just miss him and I’m sad about everything.”
James, 33, had revealed the breakup in a headline-making statement on January 16.
“Father God, give Rachael and I strength to mend our broken hearts,” he wrote alongside a photo of the pair at Nemacolin resort, where they filmed season 25 of The Bachelor. “Give us a peace about this decision to end our relationship that transcends worldly understanding. Shower our friends and family with kindness and love to comfort us. And remind us that our Joy comes from you, Lord 💔.”
James tagged Kirkconnell in the post, which she didn’t share. She told Cooper that he posted three hours after he broke up with her on their trip to Tokyo.
“We’re literally getting ready to take off and my phone blows up. It’s one of my best friends and it says, ‘Rach,’ with a bunch of question marks, and as soon as I saw that, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, how does she know,’ and then she texts me again and said, ‘I saw Matt’s post. Is this real life?’ And that’s how I found out that he posted,” she told Cooper. “So then, literally the plane is taking off and I see his post, and that’s it. I don’t have any service or anything for the next 12 hours, so I’m freaking out because, you know, just got broken up with and now, a few hours later, it’s for the whole world to see and I’m still trying to process it. I’m still in total shock, so then knowing like the whole world is seeing this. I’m like, ‘This is so crazy. I can’t even wrap my mind around this right now,’ and I think that’s why I didn’t say anything. Still haven’t made a statement or anything because I’m processing this just like everyone else is.”
Keep reading for more revelations from Kirkconnell’s appearance on “Call Her Daddy”:
The Bachelor Days
Kirkconnell noted it was “total infatuation” when she first met James on The Bachelor. “It felt very comfortable,” she said. “We were just talking to each other like there weren’t a million cameras and people around.”
When asked when she realized she was falling in love with James, Kirkconnell said things were “solidified” on their one-on-one date. Fans will recall that the twosome left the season without getting engaged, agreeing to date.
“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 of him opting not to propose. “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.”
While the show was airing, Kirkconnell came under fire for past photos of her at an Old South-themed party in college. James subsequently ended things, but the twosome stayed in touch.
“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 recalled. “And 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. And, you know, strangers and people that were really close to him in his life were saying, like, ‘I don’t think you should be with her.’ And so I think at the time, he thought that was the right decision, just to take a step back and not be together. … I was definitely shocked when [he] broke up with me, only because we were very happy together, even with all of the chaos around us when it was just me and him behind closed doors, it was amazing. It was so much fun. We were so happy when we decided to not let the outside noise get to us.”
Early Issues
When the twosome were broken up, James did end up talking to another girl. (During spring 2021, a woman named Grace went to Reality Steve to reveal she was spending time with James while he was still in touch with Kirkconnell.)
“I was very, very, very upset when I found everything out, and I just remember telling him that he lied to me. … I just remember storming out of his place, and I was like, ‘Don’t ever talk to me again, like, we’re done,’ because I just found out a lot of stuff all at once,” she recalled. “I just was definitely a little bamboozled.”
After briefly cutting off contact, the twosome got back together when James ended up in Georgia, nearby Kirkconnell.
“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. 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, you know, 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.”
The Post-Show Dynamic
“I just was really insecure the first year of our relationship. I think it was everything that happened, of course, but also that power dynamic — him being the lead of a dating show and then [me] just being a contestant … it definitely felt like he was like the star, and I was just, you know, his little, like, groupie or something,” she recalled. “And it’s not anything he did. I think that probably every couple that comes from the show might have a little bit of difficulty in that area of like, you know, you were this person that 40 women were fighting over and that everyone’s obsessed with, and then I’m just, you know, some girl. That’s how it felt. Going out publicly, it seemed like [or] I told myself that the world hated me, but everyone loved him.”
Kirkconnell later noted that when the twosome did have disagreements, James would tell her that she struggled to take accountability despite the fact that she felt like she was always the first to say sorry.
No Cheating
Kirkconnell admitted that James seeing another woman when they were apart affected her for a while, but maintained that she never thought he cheated on her during their four-year relationship.
“I felt like I had a hard time trusting him because of what was happening when we were apart, and that girl coming through, obviously, and everything, I was just asking myself, like, ‘Are you still doing this?’ But I know to this day … he’s not a cheater, you know?” she said. “I never actually had to worry about him cheating on me, because technically, if he was ever with other women, we were apart. So I can’t, you know, call him a cheater, or worry about him cheating on me.”
Living Separately
Kirkconnell explained that the twosome never officially lived together.
“He said that he didn’t want to live together until we were married and he’s a very religious man, so I was like, ‘That’s OK, I can do that,’ but 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 explained. “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. I feel like whenever we would talk about our life, we would say we want multiple homes anyways or a little space here and there — a home somewhere, but it’d be fun to keep the apartment in Miami or keep the apartment in New York. 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.”
Looking for Rings
“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 claimed. “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.”
The Tension Leading Up to the Split
Kirkconnell noted that they were in Tokyo after meeting in London in early January when James ended things. The twosome were butting heads over where to go for dinner and Kirkconnell got briefly emotional after a tense meal where she felt like she was “disappointing” him over her dinner choice.
“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 Instagram]. 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 recalled. “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 Breakup
James broke up with Kirkconnell the following day.
“We were in good moods. And I think it was one of those things where … little arguments open up a can of worms,” she said. “So we were on the way to get some food and I was scrolling through my phone, showing him a bunch of videos. I guess I was bothering him. I was annoying him. … [He] kind of snapped at me to where I got mad at him because I was like, ‘You know, even if I’m annoying you like, don’t treat me like that.’ And so then it seemed like we were both kind of mad at each other or annoyed with each other.”
Kirkconnell — who reiterated that the twosome were talking about rings and wedding days before this point in the trip — believed that the pair were a little irritated with each other after spending three weeks together. When they got back to the hotel, James “let out” all of his concerns.
“He said that at the end of the day there were just qualities about me that he worries about having in a wife,” Kirkconnell said. “At the end of the day, there are things that we aren’t compatible with and the whole accountability and saying sorry and all that was really the main thing. 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.’”
Kirkconnell got emotional as she recalled what James told her.
“He came to the conclusion that he didn’t think it was me and that he said, like, he just didn’t want me to end up resenting him by wasting more of my time if it wouldn’t happen,” she said. “And yeah, he just said, you know, ‘You’re beautiful, smart and funny and you’ll find, 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, it was just a lot to hear at once because a few days before, you know, I’m hearing the opposite.”
The Post
James shared the split with his breakup prayer when Kirkconnell was at the airport to go home.
“I was so freaked out about the breakup itself … I wasn’t even analyzing the post like everyone else was, so I guess it was kind of funny just to see what people had to say,” she said. “People thought it was weird that it was a Bachelor photo because we definitely tried to remove ourselves from the show. It was interesting to see the caption only because I feel like there was no — I don’t know how to explain it. I guess it almost seemed like saying it like a prayer was the easier way to say it than to say something real. Not that it wasn’t real, but just something authentic to our actual relationship, but it’s very him. I guess it didn’t surprise me that he said it like that. I guess I was just surprised that he said it at all, that he posted that.”
When asked why she thinks he posted when and how he did, Kirkconnell noted that the pair have spoken.
“I would love to know. I don’t know if it was out of just him being so worked up, if it was out of anger, or if it was one of those things where he felt like he needed to do it to really finally just put a nail in the coffin, but I have spoken with him since all of that and I do know that he definitely acknowledges that that was not the right decision … When I step back, I’m mad … he should not have done that to me after four years. He didn’t even text me to give me a warning, like, saying, ‘Hey, I’m posting this.’”
The Last Time They Talked
Kirkconnell said James called her at 1am “four or five days” after his breakup post and has tried to check in on her a few more times.
“I confronted him about the post. … And that’s when he was like yeah, ‘I fully admit that I could have handled this a lot better.’ And he apologized,” she said, adding that she doesn’t want the world to think James is a “bad” guy. “I think he regrets it. I probably wouldn’t even be sitting here if you didn’t do that.”
They Won’t Get Back Together
“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. Just the way that he handled all of this and this post and everything, like I forgive him, but I just don’t think I can be with someone that — I felt like he disrespected me at the end of the day doing that,” she said. “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 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.”
