Susie Evans is moving on from Clayton Echard — but don’t expect to see her looking for love on the beaches of Mexico.
“I really don’t think so, unfortunately. … It actually sounds like my nightmare if I’m being honest,” the 29-year-old Susie Was Like blogger said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast about appearing on Bachelor in Paradise. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, so many Paradise couples make it, like, it’s a great way [to meet someone] because you’re getting a ton of different options. You can feel things out, that’s great.’ But then watching it back this season, having been on a show, I was like, ‘This is actually my nightmare.’ You’re on a beach, you’re in a swimsuit, like, ‘No thank you [to being] on camera in a swimsuit ever.’”
She continued: “But anyways, besides that, you’re literally down there and they’re bringing down, like, literal temptation. … They bring down somebody who’s, like, beautiful, funny, smart and all this stuff and it’s like, ‘What?’ … I have a lot of great coping mechanisms. I have a lot of confidence, but I don’t know that I would willingly sign up for that.”
Bachelor Nation met Evans on season 26 of The Bachelor, which aired earlier this year. After their relationship ended on the series, they got back together before calling it quits for good in September.
“I’m definitely focusing in on myself right now,” she told Us about dating again. “I did put a lot of energy and time into my relationship and I really cared about Clayton, and I think that he was going through a lot of tough stuff as well. So, I’m really excited to be able to focus on me right now. I’m definitely open to dating. Somebody asked me on a date yesterday and I immediately started sweating and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ Not because I’m not ready, but just because dating is scary.”
According to Evans, who wrote about their split on her new blog, she and Echard broke up over compatibility issues.
“I see comments still, like, ‘Well, what happened?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, nothing happened!’ He didn’t do anything; I didn’t do anything. We just weren’t really compatible,” she said. “I think it was ultimately, like, expectations of what do you want in a partner? What do you want from yourself? And all of those kinds of things. And we just weren’t really aligned on those things.”
Still, Evans told Us that she wouldn’t “change anything” if she had the chance to talk to herself before she embarked on her Bachelor journey.
“Obviously our relationship didn’t work out and so much could have been different this past year if we had figured that out sooner. But in all honesty, I wouldn’t change anything. So I wouldn’t tell myself to change anything. I would honestly just be there for myself and be like, ‘You’re gonna get through this. This is gonna be really hard at times, but, you know, everything that’s gonna happen to you is gonna help you grow as a person. It’s gonna help you understand yourself better,’” she said. “Whenever we leave relationships, we have that realization of like, ‘Oh, this is what I want in a partner, this is what I don’t want.’ And that’s a given. But I also learned so much about myself through all of this that, which is kind of what led me to the blog. I’ve gone on this, like, major journey in this past year where I’ve really had to look at myself and [ask] like, ‘What? How did I get through all this?’”
Scroll through for more revelations from Evans:
Susie Evans is moving on from Clayton Echard — but don’t expect to see her looking for love on the beaches of Mexico. “I really don’t think so, unfortunately. … It actually sounds like my nightmare if I’m being honest,” the 29-year-old Susie Was Like blogger said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast about appearing on Bachelor in Paradise. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, so many Paradise couples make it, like, it’s a great way [to meet someone] because you’re getting a ton of different options. You can feel things out, that’s great.’ But then watching it back this season, having been on a show, I was like, ‘This is actually my nightmare.’ You’re on a beach, you’re in a swimsuit, like, ‘No thank you [to being] on camera in a swimsuit ever.’” She continued: “But anyways, besides that, you’re literally down there and they’re bringing down, like, literal temptation. … They bring down somebody who’s, like, beautiful, funny, smart and all this stuff and it’s like, ‘What?’ … I have a lot of great coping mechanisms. I have a lot of confidence, but I don’t know that I would willingly sign up for that.” Bachelor Nation met Evans on season 26 of The Bachelor, which aired earlier this year. After their relationship ended on the series, they got back together before calling it quits for good in September. “I’m definitely focusing in on myself right now,” she told Us about dating again. “I did put a lot of energy and time into my relationship and I really cared about Clayton, and I think that he was going through a lot of tough stuff as well. So, I’m really excited to be able to focus on me right now. I’m definitely open to dating. Somebody asked me on a date yesterday and I immediately started sweating and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ Not because I’m not ready, but just because dating is scary.” [jwplayer 1gFR1udo-l3ahXupL] According to Evans, who wrote about their split on her new blog, she and Echard broke up over compatibility issues. “I see comments still, like, ‘Well, what happened?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, nothing happened!’ He didn’t do anything; I didn’t do anything. We just weren’t really compatible,” she said. “I think it was ultimately, like, expectations of what do you want in a partner? What do you want from yourself? And all of those kinds of things. And we just weren’t really aligned on those things.” Still, Evans told Us that she wouldn’t “change anything” if she had the chance to talk to herself before she embarked on her Bachelor journey. “Obviously our relationship didn’t work out and so much could have been different this past year if we had figured that out sooner. But in all honesty, I wouldn’t change anything. So I wouldn’t tell myself to change anything. I would honestly just be there for myself and be like, ‘You’re gonna get through this. This is gonna be really hard at times, but, you know, everything that’s gonna happen to you is gonna help you grow as a person. It’s gonna help you understand yourself better,’” she said. “Whenever we leave relationships, we have that realization of like, ‘Oh, this is what I want in a partner, this is what I don’t want.’ And that’s a given. But I also learned so much about myself through all of this that, which is kind of what led me to the blog. I’ve gone on this, like, major journey in this past year where I’ve really had to look at myself and [ask] like, ‘What? How did I get through all this?’” Scroll through for more revelations from Evans:
Credit: Courtesy Susie Evans/Instagram
Would Susie Date Within Bachelor Nation?
“I think that I would really have to be interested in the person and I would wanna get to know them before ever, like, going out with them publicly. I would really wanna vet that call,” Evans told Us. “I would really wanna make sure that’s somebody that if there was a picture taken or something like that — not that it really matters, I kind of don’t care about stuff like that — but it would be another public relationship. … So I would just really have to make sure that I actually, really, really like that person before I even give a first date a chance just because I think it gets complicated when people wanna talk about it.”
Credit: ABC/Craig Sjodin
Susie Denies Dating Justin Glaze
Someone she isn’t dating is season 17 Bachelorette alum Justin Glaze. They are, however, teaming up for content together in the future.
“We’re hard launching a collaboration,” she said with a laugh when informed about the speculation. “I was there to help him film an ad, which had nothing to do with my blog. … His videographer wasn’t available and I live three hours from him and he was like, ‘Hey, is there any chance you’d be available on this date to do a videography thing?’ And I was like, ‘Can we exchange yes for a blog collaboration?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ We actually had so much fun. I haven’t even watched the footage back yet, but we were dying laughing going through the DMs [of dating questions I got] so I imagine it’ll be entertaining to watch back.”
Credit: ABC/Craig Sjodin
What Susie Is Looking for in a Partner
“I am a very ambitious person. I feel like I have really big dreams for myself and my video business and I want a lifestyle that will allow me to have beautiful experiences, meet incredible people. I have this dream to be a documentary filmmaker. And I need somebody that wants to see me succeed in that and, like, wants to 100 percent be my biggest fan and my biggest cheerleader and support me emotionally through that because that’s a big dream,” she told Us. “That’s a really big goal and that’s a unique lifestyle. It’s not gonna keep me in one place for too long, but I want somebody who is down, you know? I want somebody who’s like, ‘That’s amazing that you know what you want out of this life or what you wanna create and do.’ And so I just need somebody who’s along for the ride but also has their thing and has the ability to do that and be passionate about that, but equally support and love me through what I’m pursuing.”
Credit: ABC/Ricky Middlesworth
How Susie Feels About ‘The Bachelor’ Franchise
Evans tuned into season 19 of The Bachelorette and season 8 of Bachelor in Paradise — something not all alums opt to do.
“I look back and I’m like, ‘That was not kind, like, I was not treated well in this moment,’ or whatever my feelings were — and everybody feels that way, nobody’s gonna come off reality television and be like, ‘That was a wonderful experience, I exploited my emotional well-being for the purpose of entertainment’ — there’s just no way you’re gonna come off of something like that and be totally stoked about everything,” she explained. “It’s vulnerable, it’s tough, [but] it’s business, like, it’s literally business for people. There’s a part of me that was able to separate some of that. A big part of it is that I loved the girls from my season. I had so much respect for them. I had so much fun with them. I had so many wonderful moments with them when we were filming and I went back to Virginia, [I] went back to my normal life afterward, so, like, I don’t see any of them really. … It’s been fun to watch The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise [and] see these relationships [and] the story lines unravel or whatever. It was entertaining for me. And I did watch the show for the two or three years leading up to going on it. I started watching on Colton [Underwood]’s and then I would get on Twitter and Twitter’s just so funny.”
Credit: Courtesy of Susie Evans/Instagram
The Last Time Susie and Clayton Spoke
Evans told Us that she and Echard are no longer in touch. The last time he reached out, however, was to send a positive message.
“He did send me a really nice message, like, I don’t know, a month ago — and it brought me to tears,” she said. “It was just really nice for him to say like, ‘I’m so grateful for everything that you did for me in our relationship, and I’ve been able to reflect and I’m just truly grateful for the friendship that we had at the end of the day.’ And that meant a lot to me. It was really, really nice to hear from him, but we didn’t, like, catch up on the phone and we don’t text or anything like that. But that was really meaningful and definitely heartfelt, and I could tell that he had, like, thought about it and so that meant a lot.”
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