Nayte Opened Up About Breaking Up With Michelle Over! The! Phone!

Welp, Nayte Olukoya and Michelle Young’s once-romance is looking pretty roseless these days, and it sounds like there are even more thorns than anyone realized. On a Sept. 8 episode of The Viall Files podcast (hosted by former Bachelor Nick Viall), Olukoya spilled all the details about his June relationship with Michelle Young — specifically, why it fell apart. During the episode, The Bachelorette alum revealed why he broke up with Young, and why it was a “d*ck move.” (His words!)

“I broke up with her over the phone,” Olukoya admitted to Viall, per Entertainment Tonight. “You don’t want to break up with someone, especially your fiancée, over the phone.” Apparently, things got tense during Young’s birthday trip to Los Angeles. “Long story short, the weekend was not a good weekend,” Olukoya summed up. “The last day in L.A., the conversation was kind of heading already towards a breakup.” That’s not all. According to him, it was their “third time having a breakup conversation.”

OK, OK, but why did that conversation need to happen over a phone call? He explained, “I was frustrated as hell, crying on the phone with my mom, and Michelle calls me. I thought she had just got home, but she was still in the airport, unfortunately, because that makes this story even worse. She's like, 'Hey, if we're not doing CMAs next week we have to give them a reason why.' And I just blurted out, 'We're not doing CMAs because I can't be with you anymore.' So yeah, I broke up with her over the phone, which is a d*ck move.” Oof.

But, um, I’m confused. These two seemed super lovey-dovey when audiences last saw them on the Dec. 21, 2021 “After The Final Rose” special. At the time, they seemed more excited than ever to officially tie the knot. Young and Olukoya even revealed they were house-hunting. How did it all break down in, like, six months?

According to Olukoya, the end of their relationship was actually “such a build-up” over time. “It started off so great and then somewhere we just stopped clicking. The communication broke down,” he explained on the podcast. “Our relationship was tough. There were lots of ups and downs, lots of arguments, lots of fights, just not really clicking, not really seeing eye to eye.”

Apparently, things took a turn for the worse after the season finale “January 1st was our first really big fight,” The Bachelorette alum revealed. (Quick calendar check: That was just over a week after the “AFTR” special aired.) “And then the very next day was another really big fight. I was so freaked out. I was up until 6 a.m. crying on the phone with Rodney [Mathews], because I was like, 'Dude, what's going on right now?”

So, yeah, that’s why he didn’t move to Minnesota right away. “I was like, 'I want to figure this out before I move to Minnesota. Let's put the moving conversation on hold for now while we figure out this relationship and this compatibility,’” he recalled.

The overall message of his interview? This split was a long time coming. He continued, “If Michelle felt blindsided, I can't take that away from her, but I know the reality of it is, this wasn't our first time talking about a breakup.” (In July, Kaitlyn Bristowe said that Young was “definitely blindsided” by the breakup, per Us Weekly.)

Of course, it wasn’t all bad. As Olukoya put it, “We had so much fun. I miss the Michelle I fell in love with for sure...I'm not sure I miss the Michelle I broke up with.” (Ouch.)

If you need me, I’ll be crying over this for the foreseeable future.