‘Bachelor’ Clayton Echard Admits He ‘Did Not Handle It Well’ In Confrontation With Susie

Clayton Echard is looking back at the way he treated one of the women during this week’s edition of “The Bachelor” with some regrets.

As viewers will recall, during Tuesday’s episode Echard got into a rather fraught discussion with Susie Evans after she discovered he had been intimate with two of the other women, Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey. When she told him she couldn’t “get past” him sleeping with those women, Echard responded by claiming she dropped a “bombshell” on him, and even chastised her for not telling him earlier what a “huge dealbreaker” that was for her.

At the episode’s end, Evans did not receive a rose, with Echard sending her home while declaring that whatever else she had to say to him “doesn’t matter anymore.”

In an appearance on “The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast”, Echard admitted he could have dealt with the whole thing a lot better.

“I did not handle it well. I didn’t. I mean, it was not handled maturely,” he said.

“I raised my voice to her. I was grasping at straws. I was trying to find anything that I could at that point to get her to stay. Like, I just wanted her to give me a chance,” he continued. “I went through this gauntlet of emotions.”

It was her response to learning he’d slept with the other women, he said, that led to his own behavioural shift.

“She got up and she walked out, and then I started to have these really dangerous thoughts,” Echard said.

“I thought, ‘Why does it seem like she’s not fighting for this? Why does it seem like she can’t even give me a chance?’ Like, I didn’t know she felt this way and I’m wondering why she won’t just try to give me a second chance because I wasn’t aware of how she felt,” he added. “I made assumptions and I wish I wouldn’t have.”

Those “assumptions,” he explained, were that “she was just feeding me whatever she needed to to get out of there so she could be the next Bachelorette,” he said, admitting he’s since had a change of heart. “I don’t believe that now. I didn’t believe it the next day, but I believed it in that moment.”

Echard has also come to see why telling all three women he was in love with them wasn’t “a good idea.”

He added: “You don’t want to tell multiple women that you’re in love with them. I mean, just look at it from the standpoint of, I told a woman that I love that I’m the most in love with you, implying I was in [love] with other women. I mean, in what sense would, again, would you move forward with when getting engaged with somebody three days later, if you’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in love with you, but I’m also in love with other women.’ It doesn’t make sense. Now I see it. I’m like, it does not make sense, but I made it make sense in that moment. I had to let it make sense because if Susie and I didn’t have any physical intimacy, no compatibility, then I will say, ‘Okay, well that’s no longer. We’re not gonna work out, so now I need to focus on these other two relationships and who I feel most compatible with.'”