Clayton Echard just got very candid about his recent reunion with Rachel Recchia. In case you missed it, the former Bachelorette and Bachelor stars were spotted hanging out in a February TikTok posted by Rachel, which caused fans to wonder what the heck was going on, as the pair hadn’t communicated in over a year. During his Feb. 27 guest appearance on the Here for the Right Reasons podcast, Clayton spilled the tea on everything that went down during the surprise get-together.
“There was so much healing there. That conversation was so powerful,” said the 29-year-old author of 180 Degrees: On Mental Health, Mindfulness, and Unlocking Self-Belief . “I walked away from that experience, and I just remember thinking like, ‘Man, this just felt so rewarding.’”
He added, “And I’m just so happy to know that even someone like her — after everything that happened — so for her to forgive me and tell me that, ‘Hey, I understand, and I don’t hold this against you any longer,’ that was probably one of the best things I could have heard.” He admitted he could “grow from this” and allow himself to “forgive” himself. “If they forgive me specifically, I should be able to forgive myself. And so I did,” he explained.
The “everything that happened” comment was most likely in reference to the drama on the Bachelor show. During fantasy suites, Clayton infamously told all three remaining women (Rachel, Gabby Windey and Susie Evans) that he loved them, and revealed he slept with two of them. Susie ended up leaving the show, but in the most dramatic rose ceremony ever, she came back and Clayton ditched Rachel and Gabby for Susie.
“I didn’t make the best decisions. I mean, there were weaknesses of mine that people were calling out and they were right,” Clayton went on to say of his time on the Bachelor during the podcast. “It was things that I was struggling with, I was defending all of my actions without accepting accountability for what I had done. And I wasn’t accepting accountability because my ego was under attack and my ego was telling me, ‘Defend, defend, defend.”
@pilot.rachel ♬ Explaining it would give us both a aneurysm – Ruthie.gomez
He continued: “At that point, I was so torn down that I thought, ‘OK, this isn’t working your way, so how about you try accepting accountability and see how that goes.’ And it was very rewarding. I started accepting accountability and I was able to heal and then relationships around me were healed.”
Clayton and Susie wound up going their separate ways in Sept. 2022. After Rachel had a moment of redemption by being cast as a co-lead in the The Bachelorette, she ended up breaking off her show proposal because it was revealed that her final rose pick, Tino Franco, had cheated on her.
As for Clayton and Rachel possibly dating again, the reality star said the ship had rightfully sailed. “Her and I both talked about it. We said we have very high thoughts of each other. But after what all happened, it’s like, ‘How would you ever go about dating again after all of what occurred?’” Clayton said during the podcast. “She doesn’t have any interest in doing so,” he continued. “And I got that. I also was on my end, like, ‘You know what, after everything we went through, being friends sounds very pleasant.’”