The Bachelorette winner Nayte Olukoya has revealed why he broke up with Michelle Young and ended their engagement.
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"We are genuinely two different people from completely different worlds," Nayte told The Bachelor alum Nick Viall on Thursday's episode of "The Viall Files" podcast.
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Nayte proposed marriage to Michelle on The Bachelorette's Season 18 finale, which aired in December 2021, and the couple appeared blissfully happy. They were even gifted a $200,000 check for a down payment on their first house.
However, Nayte never moved to Michelle's hometown in Minnesota like they had originally planned, and the pair announced their breakup on June 17 via separate statements on their Instagram accounts.
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Nayte previously insisted he never cheated on Michelle, and Michelle admitted she never saw the breakup coming. But neither person explained why exactly they called it quits -- until now.
"Our relationship... it wasn't as good [as it seemed]. Our relationship was tough," Nayte shared with Nick.
"There [were] lots of ups and downs, lots of arguments, lots of fights and just not really clicking, not really seeing eye-to-eye."
Nayte said he ended his engagement to Michelle right after they celebrated her June 3 birthday in Los Angeles with her friends.
"From the beginning of the weekend, things were kind of rocky. It got even more rocky when [the] Wango Tango [music festival in Los Angeles] happened, and her and I, we got into an argument right before we did all of those press interviews," Nayte explained.
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"It was such a buildup, but long story short, the weekend was not a good weekend. Her and I were up late having very deep conversations. And I think the day before, I was having very deep conversations with her friends too -- because her friends, they weren't having a good time either."
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Nayte said it was "just a bad weekend for everybody" and he received some advice from her friends about his relationship and his lack of compatibility with Michelle.
"So the last day in L.A., a conversation was kind of already heading towards a breakup," Nayte revealed.
Nayte said after Michelle's birthday, it was "already being said, without being said" that their relationship had run its course and so he turned to family and friends for advice and comfort. Nayte recalled feeling "frustrated" and "so lost" and "confused" at the time.
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Nayte -- who got choked up when telling his story on the podcast -- said he and Michelle were supposed to attend CMA Fest concert festival in Nashville the following weekend.
However, Nayte told Michelle that he didn't feel comfortable attending the festival with her, which ran from June 9 through June 12, and that he wanted to break up. The pair then publicly announced their breakup later that month.
But Nayte alleged he and Michelle nearly broke up multiple times, months before their official split.
Nayte said his first breakup conversation with Michelle occurred in early January, shortly after the public found out about their The Bachelorette engagement in December 2021.
"The relationship, it started off so great and then, like, somewhere, we just stopped clicking," Nayte reiterated. "The communication broke down."
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Nayte confirmed that he thinks "the world" of Michelle and she's "phenomenal," but somewhere down the road, he thought, "Wait, what's going on right now?!"
Nayte said he fell in love with this woman and then "it wasn't the same" between them in a "super quick" period of time after their engagement aired on ABC.
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Nayte said once he and Michelle were able to have "a real relationship" outside of The Bachelorette bubble, things started to "shift."
According to the bachelor, January 1 was the couple's first big fight, and then the next day, they had another big fight and Nayte said he was "so freaked out" and ended up staying up until 6AM crying on the phone to his The Bachelorette bestie Rodney Mathews.
"I was like, 'Dude, what's going on right now?' It was just so weird. I don't know what happened but our communication started breaking down, and something just shifted really quickly... And that's when I had the first [breakup] conversation with her."
Nayte told Michelle at the time he was "starting to doubt" their relationship -- but he wasn't about to give up and quit.
Nayte said the plan had always been for him to move to Minnesota in March, but those fights are the reason why he never moved. Nayte recalled explaining to Michelle how things had been "rocky" and their January arguments made him want to "figure things out before" they began living together.
"[I said], 'I think we should put the moving conversation on hold for now, while we figure out this relationship and this compatibility,'" Nayte said.
Nayte and Michelle had only known each other for a couple of months at that point, and so he thought they needed to focus on their issues -- including their different communication styles -- and try to resolve them.
"It wasn't like I just woke up one morning, like, 'You know what? I want to break up with Michelle.' There's a lot of thought and long nights and a lot of tears and a lot of reason behind when I broke up with her," Nayte explained.
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Nayte claimed he eventually realized his heart was "not in it" the same way it was when The Bachelorette filmed.
"We were just consistently and gradually going downhill. It wasn't sunshine and rainbows anymore," Nayte noted.
"I remember crying my heart out to [my mom and stepdad, saying], 'I'm so frustrated and I have no idea what's going on in this relationship.' How can you be so sure about something and then just have it fall apart?"
Nayte pointed out how "there was some insecurity" in the relationship as well as trust issues.
Although he refused to flat out call Michelle insecure, he said insecurity issues "played a big role" in their romance and "led to some arguments."
"I would never say, 'I don't trust Michelle,' but there was a moment when I started questioning things... [There were] some trust issues on my part too," Nayte teased. "So trust definitely played [a role]."
Nayte told Nick how his relationship with Michelle was "tainted from so many different things."
"There was a lot of pressure. She would tell me about the pressure. I can truly only imagine the pressure of being the Bachelorette. There's pressure to always be perfect. There's a lot. I can't pinpoint one," Nayte said.
"The pressures of being the Bachelorette, I think that truly did play a role. Michelle is the most put-together person I've ever met... [but] once we left that world, I kind of just wanted to be two normal people."
Nayte explained how there was "always" pressure "to be as perfect as possible."
"I was like, 'Let's just be ourselves,'" he said. "And I think that played a role into us not seeing eye-to-eye."
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He elaborated, "I'm just a regular dude from Austin with his dog who works in tech sales and she's just a teacher. And then all of a sudden, she's the Bachelorette and we're engaged and all this extra stuff."
Nayte apparently just wanted to be "Nayte and Michelle" and they simply couldn't do that.
Nayte revealed that it took about six days of late-night conversations, texting, and FaceTimes to be fully broken up with Michelle.
"It got messy. The post-breakup got messy, and so communication between Michelle and I ended maybe, like, mid-July," Nayte revealed.
He added somberly, "I miss the Michelle I fell in love with, for sure... I think we were both drained and apologizing just because it was like, 'I'm tired.'"
"We just stopped working... This sucks to talk about and this is hard, but at the end of the day, I think Michelle and I can go to bed knowing that... it was the right thing to do. We just weren't right for each other," Nayte concluded.
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As for what's next for the former couple, Michelle announced in late May that she planned to step out of the classroom in 2023 in order to take a breather from teaching and exit "survival mode."
She said she wanted to try new things and pursue different goals, such as being a social-media influencer.
A source told Us Weekly last month that Nayte reportedly moved to Los Angeles a couple of weeks after the split to pursue a career as a model.
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