The Bachelor alum Clayton Echard has revealed that he and Susie Evans felt "constant trauma and constant stress" after the show and that negativity ultimately "destroyed" them.
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Clayton and Susie announced their breakup in September 2022, and they previously revealed in the media how backlash from Bachelor Nation -- including death threats sent to Clayton -- was a big factor in why they had issues and ultimately parted ways.
But according to Clayton in a new interview on the "She's All Bach" podcast, the post-show hate he and Susie were subjected to while they were dating had a much bigger impact on their mental health than they initially let on.
"It's really hard... when you have everybody rooting against you," Clayton explained on the February 23 episode of the podcast.
"And the thing that really frustrated me was the fans did more destruction than good -- many of them, in our DMs. They were ripping [Susie] to shreds in her DMs, ripping me to shreds in my DMs. Some people were siding with me and some people were siding with her."
Clayton recalled how there was "all this commotion and chaos and conversation" happening.
"It was tearing us down individually. You're trying to form a relationship and heal together, but you're both carrying your own individual trauma," Clayton said.
"Susie was getting comments like she was 'a scapegoat' for me, like, 'Oh, he didn't learn his lesson.' And people were attacking her character [for getting back with me] saying, 'You're not a real woman.' People were [saying], 'You have no strong morals, or else you wouldn't have gone back to him.'"
Clayton said these comments "infuriated" him and naturally upset Susie.
"Of course it's going to affect someone's mental [state]. And then on the flip side, I'm getting this, 'Kill yourself, you're not good enough to find love,' and, 'You're a terrible human being,'" Clayton admitted.
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Clayton said he and Susie unfortunately started listening to these narratives about themselves.
"It started to impact us. I think we ultimately got to a place where we couldn't heal together because one day I'd be okay and she'd be hurting. The next day, she'd be hurting and I'm okay," Clayton explained.
"And it was just constant trauma and constant stress and it was like, we are being destroyed."
Clayton confessed that there were days when neither of them wanted to get out of bed.
"We would lay there for hours, because the second we had to get up, we would have to answer [to people online] and look at our messages," Clayton said. "We didn't even want to get up and go about our days."
After Clayton and Susie filmed After the Final Rose, Clayton moved to Susie's hometown in Virginia Beach in order to make their relationship work.
But after they split, Clayton moved to Scottsdale, AZ, to be near his brother, and Susie relocated to Los Angeles, CA, earlier this year.
"I would hide in my room here in Scottsdale. I would go to the gym and then run back here and sit in my room because as long as I'm here, nobody can judge me. But if I go out in public, everyone looks at me... and so I had all of this social anxiety," Clayton shared on the podcast.
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Clayton recalled of his relationship with Susie, "When you have that in your head and you have somebody else going through the same thing, it's really hard to try to be supportive when, like, you can't even support yourself."
"And we ultimately got to a place where we were like, 'I think it's better if we just try to heal alone because it's too hard to try to heal together right now,'" he noted.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' COUPLES NOW: WHO DID 'THE BACHELOR' STARS AND THEIR BACHELORETTE PICKS ACTUALLY END UP MARRYING? (PHOTOS)
Clayton, however, acknowledged The Bachelor had set the pair up with therapy, which was helpful.
During a joint October 2022 appearance on the "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe" podcast, Susie and Clayton opened up about how their romance struggled after the show.
"I started questioning who I was because of all the negativity," Clayton said, explaining that he totally lost his identity throughout his time as the Bachelor.
"I started to believe some of what was being said about me. And I now look back at it and realize, like, I couldn't be that stable, secure man that I needed to be to really be able to give my all in a relationship."
Clayton said he felt the need to rehab his image and please others, all the while trying to get over death threats and handle problems in his relationship, such as wrongly being accused of cheating on Susie.
"I think a lot of the pain I was experiencing made it very challenging for me to just be myself, and in that, I think that's where a lot of strain was caused in our relationship," Clayton reasoned.
"I was telling Susie, 'Hey, once I get past these things, once I find my confidence again, once I love myself again, then I'll be able to love you. But just give me three more months, just give me three more months.'"
But Clayton confessed that three months wasn't enough time for him to fully heal and be his best self for Susie.
"[My healing timeframe] just kept stretching. And then there was more commentary and a new [The Bachelorette] season and more comments were being said and my name was constantly on Twitter," Clayton admitted.
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Clayton said he never could have imagined receiving "thousands of death threats" in his DMs or trying to convince his girlfriend that he just needed to heal in order to be a better partner.
Susie also called all the scrutiny and negativity "painful," especially when trolls bashed her character.
"I think that was a new kind of hate I hadn't experienced," Susie said, adding, "I think social media played into the struggle of our self-image and questioning how we view ourselves... It was hard not to go into our breakup post and just rip on people."
Susie and Clayton are both currently single, according to their social media accounts, and Clayton just released a book titled 180 Degrees.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELOR' FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
