Rachael Kirkconnell says 'everything was fine' the night before her breakup with Bachelor star Matt James

The Bachelor season 25 winner Rachael Kirkconnell is opening up about her breakup with star Matt James.

"That's probably one of the saddest things about just picturing your life with someone and thinking that is how your life's gonna look, and now it's just all taken away," she told Alex Cooper on a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast. "We talked about rings. He told me a few months ago to start saving some things, picking things out that we should go look at."

"That's when I was like, 'Wow, okay. He really is on board with this,'" Kirkconnell said. But things quickly changed.

Kirkconnell and James met on season 25 of The Bachelor, where Kirkconnell was a contestant and James starred as the franchise's first Black leads. Their season was mired in controversy, with Kirkconnell apologizing for past photos of her wearing a culturally insensitive costume and attending an antebellum plantation-themed college event. James said producers "missed the mark" on his season, and some of those producers admitted that they "did not protect" James from both fan and contestant racism as they should have.

James ended up choosing Kirkconnell at the finale, and the two remained together, though unmarried, until this month, when James shared an image of the couple with a caption that read in part, "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."

Kirkconnell says the post "surprised her," coming just a few hours after the breakup, which itself was surprising. "Everything was fine the night before, we didn't have an argument, but I was feeling very overwhelmed," Kirkconnell says of the trip to Tokyo that would be the pair's last as a couple.

"I was trying so hard to find a good dinner spot for us because the spot we ended up wanting to go to was closed or something. So we were scrambling, and I was putting so much pressure on finding a good spot because he cares," she explained. James frequently posted videos of himself and Kirkconnell dining out and sampling different dishes on his Instagram while the couple was together.

"Anywhere we'd go, literally every single meal that we would have, we were filming," Kirkconnell said.

James being unusually stony and Kirkconnell feeling "tired, cranky, emotional" and "overwhelmed" laid the groundwork for the following day's climactic conversation. But still, Kirkconnell says, "I didn't think anything serious. I really didn't. I just was annoyed with him, that's all."

Kirkconnell asking James the following day why he was being so quiet is what prompted James to "let out everything that I guess he had been feeling for a while," she reasoned.

"He said that at the end of the day, there were just qualities about me that he worries about having in a wife," Kirkconnell shared, citing "the whole accountability and saying sorry and all that" as "really the main thing." When James told her that he "can't actually see myself married to you," Kirkconnell said, she responded, "I feel like after four years you should know or you should feel ready. And if you don't, then that's not a good thing. We probably shouldn't be together."

Until the interview with Cooper, Kirkconnell hadn't made a public statement about the breakup since James's Jan. 16 post. "I'm still in total shock," she said. "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."