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Season 19 of The Bachelorette aired on Monday, July 11, with two leading ladies, Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia. They were last seen in The Bachelor Season 26 which featured Clayton Echard. However, things didn't end well between the three and the show concluded on a rather disastrous note.
After Clayton Echard admitted to sleeping with both Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia on The Bachelor, third finalist Susie Evans left the show. However, Echard realized that he still had feelings for Susie, so he broke up with the other two finalists at the same time.
Addressing the controversial season of The Bachelor, Echard later told The Virginian-Pilot:
“It was a train wreck, honestly, of a season.”
The Clayton Echard-Gabby Windey-Rachel Recchia saga on The Bachelor Season 26
The infamous Fantasy Suite episode of The Bachelor Season 26 saw Echard admitting that he was in love with all three finalists – Susie Evans, Gabby Windey, and Rachel Recchia. He revealed to Susie that he had slept with the other two women, which led to her leaving the show.
Clayton then came face-to-face with Rachel and Gabby at what host Jesse Palmer called "the rose ceremony from hell." He informed the two that Susie had left and also revealed that he had slept with both of them. Shocked, Gabby and Rachel cried their hearts out. Gabby wanted to leave the show, but Clayton convinced her to give them a second chance. Finally, both of them accepted his roses and met his family.
It was then that Clayton realized he was still in love with Susie and wanted to patch things up with her. He went to the hotel and broke up with Rachel and Gabby at the same time, leaving them furious and devastated. In regards to his decision, Echard told Off the Vine podcast:
“I can’t shut down what my heart’s telling me. I love both Gabby and Rachel, but when Susie left, my whole life just got flipped outside down. How am I supposed to just let that go? I’m questioning everything. I realized that, like, through meeting my family, it didn’t stop me from thinking about Susie.”
Clayton Echard realizes his mistake
During the season finale, Rachel and Gabby opened up about the incident, with the former stating that Clayton showed "complete disrespect" by not breaking up with them separately.
Speaking about his controversial decision on the dating show in an interview on the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast, Clayton stated that, even though Rachel and Gabby were "distraught," “them being together in that moment seemed to be beneficial and kind of helped take some of the blow out all of the severity of that." The show ended on a bitter note for the three.
Looking back at the episodes now, Clayton does realize that he made a mistake. He told Us Weekly:
“[Now] I only think you can be in love with one person. You can fall for many, but you can only be in love with one. And that’s where I made a mistake. I was confused on the show, and I believed that I was in love with multiple women, but I’ve since realized that I don’t think I was.”
At the Final Rose reunion in March 2022, Clayton admitted that Evans and he are now living together, and falling in love more and more every day.
