The closer Kaitlyn Bristowe got to her wedding day with then-fiancé Jason Tartick, the more she worried the former corporate banker wasn’t in their relationship for the right reasons.
The onetime Bachelorette made the decision to call off their year-and-a-half-long engagement in August 2023 because “it felt icky to me,” she explained on the April 3 episode of her Off the Vine podcast. “It felt like everything was for Instagram and numbers. I did not wanna be in it.”
Acknowledging their romance—which they debuted on Instagram in 2019—had already started to wilt, the 39-year-old admitted she took issue with Tartick wanting to launch his own Trading Secrets podcast after losing his finance job, calling it “the nail in the coffin.”
Helming her show is “my favorite thing that I do,” Bristowe explained, which is why she had told him at the start of the relationship to stay in his own lane.
“That’s the one thing that I was like, ‘Please don’t do,'” she recounted in her chat with pal Kat Campbell. “He did it anyways. It was all just about his schedule, what would make him grow financially. He had always said financially, professionally and personally. And I was made to feel crazy because I was stunting his growth. But really I knew exactly what was going to happen, which happened.”
As Tartick, 36, pieced his passion project together, “He started taking email lists and these clients,” Bristowe explained, “and building up his from what I’ve already built. And then the resentment starts.”
Not to say that she wasn’t part of making theirs one of the most dramatic breakups ever.
“I don’t think I treated him very nicely towards the end because I was so angry because of feelings of betrayal,” Bristowe admitted. “It feels like he really lost the plot of the relationship.”
Ultimately, she summed up, they just were “not aligned. What I want out of life is not what he wants.”
But I guess that’s why they say every rose has it’s thorn. And the once-engaged pair aren’t the only members of Bachelor Nation to feel that prick.
See the reasons 73 other couples have given for slipping off their Neil Lane diamonds and ending their shared journeys.