The Bachelor star Clayton Echard has revealed he firmly believes he was not gaslighting Susie Evans during their breakup conversation, although he admits he handled the situation poorly and harshly.

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As fans saw on Tuesday night's The Bachelor episode, Clayton had sex and confessed he was in love with both Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia during their overnight Fantasy Suite dates in Iceland, but then he told Susie Evans on his third date of the week that he was "the most in love" with her.

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Susie, wanting to be Clayton's one and only in order to feel good about possibly accepting a marriage proposal in one week, expressed how she couldn't see herself moving forward in the process due to Clayton's apparent willingness to jeopardize their strong relationship.

But just as it appeared Susie was going to quit the show, Clayton essentially beat her to the punch and determined he was "done" with her because he didn't think she viewed their relationship as something worth saving.

"I woke up with a pounding headache, just stressed out and I'm embarrassed," Clayton told Ashley Iaconetti and Ben Higgins during a March 9 appearance on their "The Ben & Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast," adding he's "not exactly shocked by the reactions online."

Clayton said of the reaction, "It's very heavily people are against me and favoring [Susie], but I totally understand now. I totally get what I'm seeing, and yeah, I'm embarrassed. I wish that I could have seen her side in that moment, and I just didn't."

"I didn't want to see her side," he added, "because I knew if I saw her side and accepted it, that was the end right then and there."

Clayton slammed Susie for not expressing her dealbreaker about sex and/or giving him an ultimatum about behavior in the Fantasy Suites earlier in the process. He was angry at the bachelorette for not forgiving him and trying to understand his perspective in a very unconventional dating process.

"I did not handle it well. I didn't," Clayton confessed.

"I mean, it was not handled maturely. I raised my voice to her. I was grasping at straws. I was trying to find anything that I could at that point to get her to stay. Like, I just wanted her to give me a chance. And so I went through this gauntlet of emotions."

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Clayton, however, said fans have been throwing around some pretty "heavy-hitting terms [he] couldn't disagree with more.

Clayton said he doesn't think he gaslighted Susie at all, even though the majority of home viewers and Bachelor Nation viewed Clayton in that light when he scolded Susie for having "invalidated" their relationship by not fighting for it.

Before Susie departed the show, Clayton also told her, "I don't even know who I'm looking at anymore... You just dropped a bombshell on me... I think it's B-S, and just, we're done. I'm done... Anything you say to me from this point doesn't matter anymore."

Although Ashley accused Clayton of flipping the script on Susie and playing the victim -- considering he was the one who had sex and told two other women that he loved them -- Clayton disagreed.

"I don't agree that I was gaslighting. I looked it up and it said the definition is trying to convince someone of a different reality than what is actually the true reality of the situation," Clayton said.

"I think gaslighting is when you have bad intentions and you're trying to manipulate somebody, and I was not at all trying to do that... What was in my head was in my head. I had no bad intentions, I was just voicing my concerns to her at that point, and my frustrations and my feelings."

In fact, Clayton went on, "I would not say that at all. No, I totally disagree on the gaslighting concept because I was not trying to manipulate her for my benefit at all. I had no intention of doing that. I am not that kind of person."

Clayton acknowledged "gaslighting" actually strikes a chord with him.

"Because that's not me. I was not trying to tell her that she was wrong," he claimed.

"I was trying to figure out why she couldn't give me another chance, but I wasn't sitting here saying, 'You're wrong, you have the wrong perspective on this and you need to believe my perspective.'"

"My whole hope was, 'Hey, we're in a disagreement right now, but can we work past this? Can we fight through this?' That's all I wanted to do," he added.

But Clayton said he still accepts "full accountability" for his actions and wishes he had done so many things differently.

When looking back on his conversation with Susie at dinner during their Fantasy Suite, he shared how things started off "very cordial at first."

But Clayton said when Susie dropped the news on him that she probably couldn't continue on in the process, "I was just crushed watching this person I thought I may get engaged to essentially say, 'Hey, it's done and it's over and there's nothing you can do.' My emotions overcame me."

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Ashley pointed out, however, that Clayton was essentially the one to tell Susie to leave.

It appeared Susie had been thinking things through and trying to justify a reason to stay because she believed what was in Clayton's heart before he told her that he was "done."

"I mean, yes and no," Clayton reasoned. "I know from what people saw, she said, 'Hey, I can't look past this.' And multiple times in that conversation, I asked, 'Can we work past this?' And she just said, 'No, I can't. I'm not able to.' And so at that point, I realized there's so more reason for us to talk."

"I tried and asked three or four times to work through this and if we could get past this and take some time off-camera to talk this through," he continued, "and she said, 'No, I don't think it's going to change anything.' So at that point, I felt there was no reason to keep it going."

Clayton said after the third or fourth time Susie insisted she couldn't work past Clayton's actions in the Fantasy Suites, she got up and walked out.

"And then I started to have these really dangerous thoughts. I thought, 'Why does it seem like she's not fighting for this? Why does it seem like she can't even give me a chance?'" Clayton said on the podcast.

Clayton said he didn't understand Susie's motive for dumping him in that moment and so he "made assumptions" that he wishes he "wouldn't have."

"I started to think, 'The way that she's acting, with everything else prior -- like [Sarah Hamrick] playing this game of trying to make the other women leave by making up lies... I thought, 'Some of these women came here for other reasons, to push their own agenda," Clayton said.

"So I started having these really dangerous thoughts, such as, "What if Susie right now is just trying to get out of [The Bachelor]? What if she's just saying whatever she needs to say to leave me so that she can be the next Bachelorette? That is a thought I had."

Clayton said his tone with Susie changed once he started looking at her as if she was "playing" him "the entire time, as other women had."

"I questioned her and that's why I said, 'I don't even know who I'm even looking at anymore,' because, in that moment, I really believed at that point that she was just feeding me whatever she needed to get out of there so she could be the next Bachelorette," he reiterated.

But Clayton insisted, "I don't believe that now. I didn't believe it the next day, but I believed it in that moment."

"And because of that, I allowed my emotions to take over. Nothing she said was going to get through to me at that point because I just convinced myself, 'You aren't here for me and you never were.'"

Clayton recalled losing his cool once he realized their relationship wasn't going forward and they had no future together.

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"I apologized for raising my voice and I knew it wasn't productive any longer. It was too emotional, and I had to step away," Clayton admitted.

"This is the type of conversation you step away from and revisit the next day, but because of the show, once she's gone, she's gone and that's it. I knew I was not in a good headspace and I had to just stop the conversation from continuing."

While Clayton was clearly disappointed Susie couldn't see past his intimate relationships with Gabby and Rachel, he ultimately commended Susie on staying true to herself and not bending to adapt to The Bachelor's strange format or expectations.

"The disconnect is that I adapted and she didn't and we were on these two different fields of understanding," Clayton noted.

Clayton confirmed that Susie's side makes "complete sense" to him now, but in that moment, he was totally "entrenched in the idea that things work differently there" in The Bachelor environment.

A preview for next week's two-night finale shows Clayton saying he's "broken" after Susie's departure.

Clayton also tells Rachel and Gabby that he was in love with the both of them and had also been intimate with the both of them in Fantasy Suites, which results in the women storming off and bawling their eyes out .

Even Clayton's own father, Brian, told the Bachelor that he had "screwed the pooch" in this situation.

"I wish I never would've fallen in love," Clayton tells his parents in tears.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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