‘The Bachelor’ Finale: Did Clayton Echard Find Love?
TelevisionMarch 15, 2022
ABCClayton Echard has made his choice on "The Bachelor" finale!
We know Clayton still had feelings for Susie Evans after she left the show, and he was hoping to win her back, even calling things off with Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia.
In the end, he got his second chance, but she turned him down… only for the pair to get back together after the show.
Here is how it unfolded!
During the finale, Clayton declares, “I want Susie back more than anything,” and he goes ring shopping with plans to propose. Echard insists he’s ready for a “lifelong commitment.”
Clayton sends Susie a letter to apologize for his past actions and she agrees to meet with him. He tells her, "I don't want anything else and I want you to know that I'm so fully committed to showing you how much I love you and how I will never stop fighting for you.”
He insists, "And I know that I can't take back what I've done and I take full accountability for it. I just want you to know if you ever question how serious that I am, this seriously like, I am this serious about it. I told you from the beginning that I was looking to get down on a knee, I want that and with you, I see that."
Susie confesses she isn’t there yet and turns him down. "There's no doubt about our connection, the love that I have for you in my heart, it's so real and I know that you have it too,” she explained, “But I don't feel like the kind of love I have for you right now is the kind of love you have for me right now. You have an unconditional love of somebody that you want to spend a lifetime with and that's not where I'm at. I have made the decision to leave Iceland alone."
Susie is devastated, but tells him, "I don't think that I'm your person, and I don't think that you're mine."
Clayton wonders, "Do you feel like there is a chance it could ever be something, or do you feel that it's over?"
She answers, "I feel like it's over.”
Not to fast!
During the “After the Final Rose” special, Clayton revealed, "I left Iceland, went back to what I thought was my normal life, going back into that environment and I was reached out to by someone. It was the last person that I ever expected to reach out. Just was shocked, absolutely shocked that there was maybe something that came from all of it."
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That’s when Evans appeared, revealing they were back together, calling Clayton, “My boyfriend.”
She explained, "We were able to reestablish a relationship because I think we took that time apart and I really just had to choose myself in that moment. I didn't have all the answers that I needed. We were no longer in a place that could facilitate the conversations that we needed to have to reestablish trust and everything that we needed to have a strong relationship.”
The day after the finale, “Extra’s” Jenn Lahmers caught up with the couple, who opened up about how they reconnected after Susie’s decision to leave Iceland, which led to Clayton breaking up with both Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia.
Clayton and Susie are taking their relationship to a new level… moving in together!
Clayton commented, “Before I came into this whole journey, I decided that I would step away from my job. I had plans of selling my condo. No matter who I ended up with at the end of it, I wanted to be able to move to where they were, same location, because to me that’s how you have the best chance of making a relationship work or it doesn’t. You find out very quickly once you move in under the same roof.”
He continued, “So that’s what we’re doing, and it’s exciting, and again, I’m like, we’re not afraid to tackle things head on. What better way to see if this will be long-lasting than to share the same bathroom with each other?”
When Jenn joked that he has to remember to put the toilet seat down, Susie chimed in, “Thank you for reminding him.”
Echard admitted, “A long time, I’ve been having the toilet seat up, so I have to figure that out quick.”
Susie discussed how they ended up back in communication after their breakup.
She revealed, “I reached out to Clayton after the show to check in on him, see how things were going, and I posed the idea of having just one more candid conversation, just the two of us. We talked a lot. We talked for several weeks with no intention, no pressure to start a relationship or anything, but we just kept reaching back out to each other and eventually we made the decision to meet up in person, still no pressure. No title or anything. We just took it day by day, and it’s led us here. We’re happy.”
Susie noted that it was “tough” to overcome Clayton’s admission that he fell in love with two women and was intimate with both of them. She elaborated, “I couldn’t imagine leaving that journey with Clayton in that moment because I didn’t wanna feel like I was sharing his love or his heart, and that was something I felt really strongly about.”
His confession led her to leave Iceland on her own. Of her decision, she said, “It was the best thing to do for myself, and when I was in Iceland, I was like, ‘This feels selfish,’ but sometimes you have to be a little selfish to have clarity and just detach from the situation and be able to look at it from a rational standpoint on the outside, and that’s what we’ve both done, and I think that’s why we are where we are today.”
Clayton shared his two cents, saying, “I think sometimes [it’s like] the phrase ‘you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.’ I think more than anything, it was a reality check that my actions had ramifications, and when she left is when I started to realize there’s an end to all this and right now before she left, you have three incredible women here, but now you have one leaving.”
He added, “I was doing my best to navigate through it all, but it was extremely challenging and I guess through losing her, I realized it let me try to move forward with these two other women because I really believe everything happens for a reason and I really gave that a fair shot.”
Following the finale, it was announced that Gabby and Rachel will both be stars of the next season of “The Bachelorette.”
Along with being “stoked” about the announcement, Susie said, “We were disappointed when they [first] said ‘It’s not Gabby and it’s not Rachel,’ and we were sitting there like, ‘Who’s it gonna be?’ I was sweating. I was like, ‘What a disappointment, what a loss.’ I was really like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then when they said it was both, we were ecstatic because we both care deeply for both of them and think the world of both of them... I’m just excited. This is gonna be wild. It’s gonna be so good.”
They were both “intrigued” by how the show will handle two stars next season!
