The Bachelor’s Matt James discusses controversial season and Rachael Kirkconnell split

Matt James discussed seeing Rachael Kirkconnell for the first time on the After the Final Rose episode while chatting with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America Tuesday.

The Bachelor admitted he was emotional and seeing Rachael ‘hit me like a ton of bricks’ as he addressed a number of topics on the ABC show which was hosted by Emmanuel Acho as Chris Harrison stepped aside after defending Rachael’s attendance at the 2018 college party on a plantation where she also dressed up in a heated debate with Rachel Lindsay.

‘I felt the weight of everything that I was carrying throughout the season, with what we were dealing with as a country and having to explain that why it was problematic to me and our relationship, which was extremely difficult,’ James told Strahan.

The Bachelor ended in heartbreak and controversy on Monday night after James, the show’s first black lead, gave Rachael his final rose, then revealed he broke up with her while their pre-taped episodes were still airing when ‘racist’ images of her attending a plantation-themed party were exposed online, along with evidence of past racially-insensitive social media posts. 

‘I think when you’re dating somebody, that’s what you’re hoping for,’ he told Strahan of their serious relationship and marriage talks. 

‘Anytime I’m in a relationship with somebody, marriage is the ultimate goal and when you find out things like I did that deters you from that ultimate goal because, like I stated during After The Final Rose — There’s just things that you just might not understand what it means to be with someone like me.’

Despite an incredibly challenging time and losing what he thought would be his future wife, he’s incredibly grateful for the experience. 

‘I would say that, the conversations that have come from everything that has taken place are more important than anything I could have left with and if that means I leave under the circumstances that I left with, then so be it,’ he said. 

Matt, who had been with Rachael since Thanksgiving last year when the show wrapped, said he initially dismissed reports of her social media activity as ‘dark and nasty’ rumors when they emerged in late January.  

But when an image of her attending a plantation-themed sorority ball photo emerged in early February, Matt — whose After The Final Rose special wasn’t taped until this month — said he decided to call it quits after feeling that Rachael ‘might not understand what it means to be Black in America.’ 

‘If you don’t understand that something like that is problematic in 2018, there’s a lot of me that you won’t understand. It’s as simple as that,’ he added. 

The After The Final Rose special marked the first time that the former couple had come face to face since their split, and saw Rachael apologizing to Matt in-person, while describing him as ‘the love of her life.’ 

She also insisted that she is taking the time to educate herself about racism.

Rachael made the apology in front of host Emmanuel Acho, a stand-in for long-time host Chris Harrison who agreed to step back from hosting duties for a time after initially leaping to Rachael’s defense, then backtracking with his own apology.

During the special, Matt said: ‘You wanna believe that you know your person better than anybody else knows your person. This controversy swirling around who Rachael is and events she might’ve attended, pictures that she liked and people that she’s associated with.

‘I’m trying to be there for her, and I dismissed them as rumors, because that’s what they were to me. You hear things that are heartbreaking and you just pray they’re not true. And then, when you find out that they are it just makes you question everything,’ he added.