What Matt said about his breakup with Rachael
Matt showed up with a breakup beard, and that pretty much said enough for the audience to know how he was feeling. He explained that he wanted to dismiss the controversial photos as just rumors. He even tried to support her as the hate came rolling in. But as more stories and more photos emerged, he couldn’t deny it any longer and ended things with Rachael. He was upset the entire time—a solid mixture of frustrated, angry, devastated and over it—but he summed it up simply when he said, “If you don’t understand that something like that is problematic in 2018, there’s a lot of me that you won’t understand. It’s as simple as that.” And the future is grim for these two, as he believes she needs to take this journey without him by her side. “You can still really care about somebody and want them to do better,” he said. “There’s a lot of processing I have to do and it’s just not a situation that I think I would help.” He made it clear that he didn’t want to be a part of Rachael’s racial reckoning. “That’s something you’ve got to do on your own and that’s why we can’t be in a relationship,” he said.
What Rachael said about the breakup with Matt
Rachael didn’t try to defend her attendance at the Antebellum ball, taking (some) accountability for her personal ignorance. She mostly spoke broadly about the party and the breakup. Rachael said she was “confused” and “blindsided” when Matt called to break up with her but realized that in order for him to feel OK ending things he must have been deeply hurting. “I lost the love of my life, but in the process, I hurt him, also,” she shared. (Sidenote: Sse also admitted she never worried about the photos from the event leaking, because she never once took them into consideration.) The pair sat down for an uncomfortable conversation, made even more awkward by the fact that this is the first After The Final Rose without a studio audience. When Matt came out to talk with Rachael, she apologized for hurting him—not for the photos. The two of them sat in uncomfortable, borderline angry silences. Rachael may have hope they would rekindle their romance during this conversation, constantly trying to console with by rubbing his shoulders or holding his hand. Whether we wanted the physical affection was iffy. Either way, they broke up, this nightmare of a season’s over, all hail Michelle. Next, find out what Chris Harrison’s net worth is.
