The Bachelor alum Clayton Echard has revealed the real reason why he chose to end things with Rachel Recchia after 24 hours on Perfect Match's third season.
Despite some initial resistance and hesitation on Rachel's part, she accepted Clayton's request to match up for the night on Perfect Match's third season.
But after a single day of being matched, Clayton changed his mind and told Rachel that he was following his intuition and couldn't continue dating her, even though he really didn't want to hurt her.
"Through the conversations we had, my intuition, the things I'm looking for in life, prior experiences, the conversations that her and I had, there were things that were said where I said, 'This isn't going to work,'" Clayton shared on the Thursday, August 7 episode of "The Viall Files" podcast.
"I know what it is I'm looking for, and things have changed. We've changed. It's not going to work. So I woke up and said, 'Okay, I have this feeling in my stomach that this wasn't right,' I still waited for most of the day just to make sure that that feeling stuck, and it did."
Former The Bachelor star Nick Viall, who hosts "The Viall Files," asked Clayton to elaborate on what was said behind closed doors that made him realize he has no future with Rachel.
"There are certain things that privately I would say but I wouldn't say publicly," Clayton revealed.
"And there are things that, again, I maybe wouldn't even say to her, and so intuition is the safeguard to basically say, 'This is the truth. It's a feeling. I'm taken a pulse on our interaction. I've listened to what you have to say and the way you say things and your mindset and where you're currently at and your lifestyle.'"
Clayton continued, "Ultimately, I said, 'Look, my vibe and your vibe is not matched. A few years later, I wanted to see, 'I've changed and you've changed, so will our vibes match?' I'll say this: the lifestyles that we have wouldn't match."
Clayton told Nick that lifestyle "was part of it" but "there were other things as well" that turned him off.
"I don't feel comfortable saying more than that publicly," Clayton reiterated.
Clayton, however, admitted that he never told Rachel what those things were privately.
"And I don't think I can," Clayton admitted.
"Because I don't think that she would receive them well. I think she would feel like they are an attack, if I were to say it -- coming from me. So I feel like it'll be something that she'll understand maybe over time."
Nick summed it up by saying that it sounded like Clayton simply thinks he and Rachel aren't compatible.
"That's what it is, and the exact reasons, look, I don't feel like I can sit here and tell you because I don't think you'll receive it in a way that I would want it to be received, so therefore it's better off to just leave it be," Clayton explained.
Nick pointed out how if Rachel wants to know his reasoning for dumping her, she probably deserves to know.
"Do you think it's not your place to assume what she can't handle?" Nick asked the former pro athlete.
"If she wanted to know, I just feel like it's a really hard conversation to have. I almost feel like, 'Hey, could I talk to somebody close to you to see if they feel I should bring it up directly?'
Clayton acknowledged he was being cryptic and "mysterious" -- but not intentionally.
"I just don't know if it would come across in a way that wouldn't be perceived as an attack. I don't know if this is meant to come from me or it's something that she's just meant to find out over time," Clayton explained.
Clayton said it was a deep-rooted matter, and he added, "It's something that I clocked, and our energies just aren't aligned. And I could see that this would cause issues."
Clayton therefore stands by his decision to let Rachel go on Perfect Match.
"I had to do what I had to do. It wasn't going to work, and that's why I tried to cut it as quickly as possible," The Bachelorette alum noted.
Clayton apparently thought Rachel was going to handle the breakup better since he didn't drag things out.
"I was surprised by the intensity of her emotional response," Clayton said on "The Viall" Files, referencing how their love story had played out a whopping three years ago on The Bachelor's 26th season in 2022.
He added, "It felt like her intensity was the exact same [as it was on The Bachelor], and that was just a surprise to me... I was not expecting that reaction."
Clayton said if Rachel had handled their Perfect Match breakup dispassionately, people wouldn't be sending him such hate.
When looking back on his Perfect Match experience as a whole, Clayton admitted, "I'm not too happy with the edit, but I'm not going to sit here and dodge responsibility."
"I just thought it went differently and thought it could've been portrayed differently," he concluded.
Clayton appeared on "The Viall Files" after Rachel had a chance to share her truth.
When speaking with Nick, Rachel slammed Clayton, saying that what he had done to her was "humiliating."
After Clayton dumped Rachel on Perfect Match, he quit the show because he didn't feel a connection with any of the other women.
Clayton apparently got the closure he needed from his relationship with Rachel, who went on to match with Love Island USA alum Scott van-der-Sluis.
The first six episodes of Perfect Match's third season are now streaming on Netflix. The rest of the episodes will drop weekly through the finale on August 15.
