The Bachelor alum Rachael Kirkconnell has revealed why Matt James allegedly thought she wasn't marriage material.
Matt, who gave his final rose to Rachael on The Bachelor's Season 25 finale that aired in early 2021, broke up with Rachael during a recent trip to Tokyo and then publicly announced their split via Instagram on January 16 without giving Rachael any warning.
"I think that he felt the weight of marriage really heavily on him. I think that's for him to discuss why... I never knew if it was because something was wrong with me," Rachael said during the January 28 episode of the "Call Her Daddy" podcast.
"I keep trying to tell myself there's nothing wrong with me, even though it feels like it sometimes. But I ask myself, 'Is it me or is it him? Is it something he needs to figure out... [or] that scares him? Is there something he went through growing up and he has this trauma now?'"
Based on Rachael's side of the story, Matt dumped and blindsided Rachel because he doesn't view her as his perfect person.
While Rachael told Alex Cooper that she and Matt "didn't argue a lot," Matt allegedly saw flaws in Rachael and called them out at the end of their relationship.
"We were both pretty stubborn and so we both thought that they were in the right and we were in the wrong," Rachael shared.
"We just had a hard time seeing eye to eye sometimes. I was always trying to remind him that we are on the same side... and we are a team."
Rachael claimed that when Matt dumped her during their recent trip to Tokyo, he took a jab at her.
"He basically said that I have a hard time taking accountability and apologizing," Rachael alleged.
"And I'm sitting here going crazy because I feel like I do say sorry a lot -- for things I'm not even sure what I'm saying sorry for!... We had a hard time understanding where we were each coming from. And now, I still feel crazy."
Rachael said that when she'd sit down with Matt to tell him that she was annoyed about something, she would be the one "saying sorry" at the end of the conversation.
"It was one of those things where I went into the conversation irritated with him and then I leave the conversation hoping he's not irritated with me -- and I'm sorry and I don't want him to be mad at me," Rachael said.
Rachael explained that she often apologized to Matt because he was "so adamant" that she had a hard time admitting she was wrong or at fault.
"When your partner is telling you those things, you want to believe them and say, 'Okay, this is a problem I have.' If this is something you're really upset about, of course I want to try to do what I can to fix that," Rachael explained.
"It almost worried me that he was going to leave me or break up with me or that I wasn't good enough."
Matt did, in fact, choose to leave Rachael after she had a little bit of "a meltdown" at dinner in Tokyo the night before she was scheduled to leave and head back to Atlanta, GA, for a friend's baby shower.
Rachael said she had her period and got a little emotional about picking a bad spot for dinner, which Matt -- a food influencer on social media -- found "concerning" and confusing.
"He was trying to express to me, like, 'If you get emotional about things like this, what is going to happen in life when something really terrible happens? How are you going to react to things that are actually really scary, disappointing or sad?'" Rachael recalled.
Rachael said she felt like she was "being punished for crying" and Matt's reaction was "so weird."
The next morning, Rachael said she felt like she was bothering Matt by showing him things on her phone and so it sparked an argument about who was actually in the wrong.
"He let out everything I guess he had been feeling for a while, I don't know," Rachael said.
"He said that, at the end of the day, there were qualities about me that he worries about having in a wife, like, at the end of the day, there are things we are not compatible with."
Rachael continued, "The whole accountability and saying sorry and all of that was really the main thing."
Rachael said it seemed like Matt had "a realization" in that moment that they weren't right for each other.
"[He said], 'I should want to propose to you. At this point in our relationship... I should be ready for that, but I'm not still. I still don't feel like I'm ready. I don't know if I ever see myself proposing to you. I can't actually see myself married to you,'" Rachael claimed.
"He said that maybe one day he would get there but he doesn't feel ready now."
Rachael continued, "And I told him, 'Well, 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 if you don't feel like that after four years because you know me better than anyone, and I know you better than anyone.'"
Rachael then asked Matt if he was battling something internally or just thought his "perfect person" was still out there.
"He came to the conclusion that he didn't think it wasn't me," Rachael lamented.
"He said he didn't want me to end up resenting him by wasting more of my time if [an engagement] wouldn't happen. And yeah, he just said, 'You're beautiful, smart and funny and you'll find someone. You'll find a guy who will love you for you.' But, yeah, he didn't think it was him."
Rachael acknowledged how it was "a lot" to take in and she just said, "Okay," in her response to Matt and then left for her flight from Tokyo to Georgia.
But Rachael said she felt "pure shock" and "so much confusion" about Matt's decision considering he had been so vocal in the media about his desire to propose marriage to her and start a family in the near future.
"I think he does really love me and he wanted it to work out, and I think he wanted to picture it... and it would be easy and make sense, like, that was the next step naturally in our relationship," Rachael reasoned.
"I think he just wanted it to work... but he still doesn't think that I am the person for him. Maybe he was trying to see if he could get there or convince himself that it was the right thing."
Rachael, to this day, doesn't know if Matt had dumped her out of anger or spite.
And when looking back on her disputes with Matt, Rachael said she's not sure if she deserved how she was treated.
Rachael said she's been replaying comments Matt had made about an engagement and their future together over and over again in her mind because "the words were there... but the actions obviously weren't there."
Rachael, for example, admitted it was "probably a red flag" that Matt didn't want to live with her until they got married. She also struggled to trust the former The Bachelor star, even though she said he had never cheated on her.
Rachael, however, had convinced herself that their living arrangement was fine because Matt is a religious man and they spent so much time together traveling.
Now that Rachael is single again, she's hoping to find independence and a sense of confidence that she was apparently lacking for years while dating Matt and being in his shadow.
"When you picture your life, you have an idea of what it's going to look like. And now, I have no idea what life is going to look like from here on out. I was picturing these kids that are obviously no longer a thing," Rachael said in tears.
"That's probably one of the saddest things about it... Now, it's all taken away."
