On January 16, ex-Bachelor Matt James posted what was probably the most awkward breakup announcement in Instagram history, informing the world (okay, fine, his followers—and ex Rachael Kirkconnell’s, because yes, he tagged her) via a prayer caption that they’d split after four years of dating. To say it felt random is an understatement, considering they were actively on a trip to Tokyo together at the time, and neither of them really commented further on the matter until a week and a half later, when Rachael appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast.
In her interview with host Alex Cooper, she revealed not only the details of the breakup but also the many moments throughout her relationship with Matt that led to a dynamic in which he strung her along with promises of a future that she says she used to “just hold on” in the hopes he would eventually propose. And while the impact of their breakup feels amplified because their love story was so public (and, at the beginning, controversial), Rachael actually did what a lot of women who long for a lifetime of monogamous companionship do, unfortunately: make excuses for a man until he decides he’s ready to commit, if he ever does.
It’s not Rachael’s fault—many people do the same in an effort to protect themselves from hurt. (Just check the Call Her Daddy Instagram comments or scroll through TikTok.) It’s often a lot easier to stick around than walk away when you’re in love with someone. And just as much as there may have been a part of Rachael that was sure she and Matt would last forever, there may also have been a part of her that felt like something was off all along.
“It sounds like Rachael did have a ‘gut feeling’ that there was some sense of misalignment in their future,” says therapist and founder of Authentic Self Therapy Collective Emily Powell, LMHC, LPC, NCC, whose TikTok about the breakup has over 17K views. “At the same time, Rachael, like all humans, has her own series of complex, sometimes polarizing, parts that may have been trying to protect her—from rejection, from heartbreak, from the public eye, from reexperiencing any form of relational harm that she may have endured in the past. In this case, this system of protective parts may have been working in overdrive in attempts to avoid conflict, depression, and that ‘gut’ feeling that something was off.”
In other words, it’s normal for someone to “just hold on” to the parts of a relationship that feel good—and based on what the couple posted on social media, it looks like it felt pretty good for a while! They talked about their future children. He was vocal, both privately and publicly—on podcasts, during interviews, in IG comments—about their future. And according to Rachael, he even went as far as telling her to start picking out engagement rings.
Rachel said she could tell marriage seemed to make Matt nervous (he had an absent father, divorced parents, and he once said there’d been infidelity in his parents’ relationship), but since he verbally indicated they were aligned, she banked on forever only to get broken up with after a small disagreement that spiraled led to him suddenly questioning whether she had the qualities he needed in a wife…four years into their relationship. Confusing, yes, but also not uncommon when someone’s past negatively informs their present-day.
“It sounds like Matt did see a future with Rachael in many ways, and then there was a part of him that pulled away,” says Powell. Still, she says, that doesn’t take away from the fact that part of him actually did want to marry Rachael. “I believe that hesitations, overthinking, and apprehensions are a common relational experience, and may be rooted in intergenerational relationships (as in the case of Matt not wanting to repeat the way he experienced his father growing up).”
Ultimately, it was easy for Rachael to overlook the red flags. She told Alex they never officially moved in together because she and Matt wanted to have multiple homes in the future anyway. Plus, Matt’s religious, so he wanted to wait until marriage to cohabitate. (They were always together.) She said she’d be irritated at the beginning of arguments with him and found herself ending up hoping he wasn’t irritated with her. He said she would never apologize but she felt she actually always apologized first—a dynamic that made her feel like she was “crazy.” Whenever she was upset, she said he gave her space, when actually, she craved intentional comforting. Describing the fight that led to their breakup, she said she felt like she was being “punished for crying.”
Rachael’s comments made it pretty clear that Matt didn’t really know how to meet her emotional needs and that maybe Rachael herself could have been more clear about them. But according to sociologist, sexologist, and relationship expert Jenn Gunsaullus, PhD, emotional attunement is crucial in relationships because it’s how people feel valued, safe, and connected. If they wanted to make it work, those disconnects needed to be addressed—and it would’ve taken deep, intentional work, like therapy, to get there.
This lack of emotional attunement is also not uncommon, says Powell, because lots of people grow up fearing emotions. When they experience big ones, they’re conditioned to “figure it out” or “stop crying,” making anything other than joy feel like something to fear.
“A lot of times then, people learn to disconnect from others or isolate when they’re experiencing a big emotion, when in reality, humans often need to feel seen, heard, and witnessed in their pain,” says Powell. “This would mean that another person (i.e., Matt) would have to feel comfortable witnessing and sitting with Rachael in her painful emotions (which is what she named she needed), which would require him to do his own work around tolerating discomfort, and witnessing someone he loved struggling in that moment.”
And...look: No one knows what Matt was really thinking—or what he was conditioned to experience—except for Matt himself. At the end of the day, there’s nothing inherently wrong with realizing someone isn’t right for you and ending a relationship you don’t see a future in. But…talk about it before you find yourself four years into a relationship with someone who’s understandably expecting you to propose. As Powell says, it’s important to have open, clear, and honest dialogues about these hesitations so as not to blindside the other person in the relationship, as Matt seemed to do to Rachael. “Communicating one’s specific emotional needs is a skill to be learned and practiced,” says Gunsaullus.
Rachael deserves to be with someone who is excited about her, just as much as Matt deserves to feel sure about his relationship. But I think we can all agree that doubting how well your partner can handle the hard parts of life because she cried over a restaurant not meeting her expectations (and at the start of her period!) feels like…a stretch, no? If he had doubts, he could and should have voiced them under different circumstances. Definitely not before she got on a 12-hour flight and definitely not with an Instagram post to thousands of combined followers mere hours after said breaking, knowing she doesn’t have Wi-Fi access on planes. I mean…at the very least.
