Clayton Echard went on his fantasy suite dates with his final three women — Gabby Windey, Rachel Recchia and Susie Evans — on the March 8 episode of The Bachelor. At the beginning of the episode, Clayton admitted he was “falling in love” with Gabby and Rachel, and said that he might already be “in love” with Susie. Clayton spent the night with both Gabby and Rachel on their dates. By the morning after his date with Rachel, he told her he was in love with her. With Gabby, he told her he was falling in love.
Even before her date, this was something Susie feared, and she got emotional about it before her one-on-one. “I’m hoping that he takes physical intimacy as serious as I do,” she said. “Sex is incredibly important in a relationship but it’s something I only do with people I have some form of commitment with. If I find out he’s falling in love with other women or he has become physically intimate with another woman, that would be devastating.”
Susie flat-out said she’d have a “hard time moving forward” with Clayton if he told her he could see her at the end…but also slept with another woman. Meanwhile, after his first two dates, Clayton started getting anxious, too. “All of a sudden everything came crashing back in,” he said. “A thousand percent, I’m absolutely going to shatter somebody. I just don’t want to hurt anybody, but I’m going do I wanted to fall in love, I just didn’t want to fall in love with multiple people.”
During the dinner portion of their date, Clayton told Susie he was was in love with her, which led her to question where he stood with Gabby and Rachel and whether he slept with them. “There are things I feel like I can’t compromise,” Susie told Clayton. “If I’m sharing your love with somebody else, I don’t think that I would be comfortable.”
Clayton was noticeably caught off-guard. “The big thing I’m shocked at is you did say to explore the relationships,” Clayton said. “I thought when we talked, it was you saying, ‘I want you to explore and I don’t want to be the default a the end of it, I want you to pick me for me.’ To answer your question, yes. I have slept with someone here. And yes, I have expressed feelings toward someone else of falling in love.”
Susie told Clayton that she didn’t want to give him an ultimatum not to sleep with other women. However, she admitted that she thought he would respect her enough not to be intimate with anyone else if he thought she could be his fiancee at the end. Clayton told Susie he was “more in love” with her than anyone else, and begged her not to talk through it and not walk away.
Hearing that made things worse for Susie. “You’ve reassured my ability to know that there’s good men out there,” Susie said, through tears. “I’ve had some bad experiences, but this is something very big to me and I don’t think I can get past those things. I just don’t thing I can.”