Susie reconnected with Clayton post-show after initially turning him down.
Susie Evans is not ready to be Mrs. Echard. After Tuesday night's dramatic season finale of The Bachelor, the wedding videographer appeared on The Viall Files podcast to reveal what would make her say no to a proposal from Clayton Echard, whom she reconnected with post-show after initially turning down his ask for a relationship.
"We have a lot to learn about each other, and we have a lot to learn about ourselves still. I think we both are still growing and learning from this," Susie said. "... I'm like, 'Let's get through this together, and let's do a three month post-show check in on each other... Let's see where we're at. My lease is up in September, let's do another pulse check on this.' Those are kind of our points right now."
"Neither of us is just dating for fun, to have a chill relationship for a couple of years. We're like, 'Let's see if this could work. Let's talk realistically about this.' I don't plan to get engaged in September, if that's what you mean," she continued. "Clayton knows that. Tonight when they joked about the ring, we've talked about this, I've told Clayton, 'If you surprise me, I will say no. This is not a fun surprise.' We can obviously laugh about it now, but that is not something that we're talking about."
Though viewers may have loved to see Clayton down on one knee when host Jesse Palmer prompted him to do just that during Tuesday's episode, Susie said that she and her beau "have realized, if we would've gotten engaged, it wouldn't have been for us."
"We're like, 'Let's not do it. It's not for us,'" she said. "... We want to give this a shot outside of this overwhelming environment."
While an engagement isn't in the forefront of Clayton or Susie's mind, she's confident in the next steps they've chosen to take, including the former Bachelor's move to her home state of Virginia. It wasn't easy getting to that point, though, as the pair had "several weeks" of phone calls after Susie slid into Clayton's DMs.
"We didn't talk about becoming boyfriend and girlfriend on those phone calls. We talked about a lot of things, though, that would let us know where our compatibility lies as far as what we're looking for in the future, what we're looking for in a partner," she said. "We had these really deep conversations. We stayed on the phone for like five hours every night for weeks, just talking with no expectations."
Eventually, those conversations led them to major relationship milestone -- officially becoming boyfriend and girlfriend.
"After a certain point, we were like, 'OK, what are we doing? Are we going to pursue something?'" Susie recalled. "We had this really great conversation where I opened up to Clayton about something I've never really shared publicly about one of my biggest insecurities in a relationship and something I'm fearful of... His response was just so genuine, and in that moment, I was like, 'Wow. This man loves me. He really does.'"
"It was just a really big moment for us," she added. "... That conversation was a point for me where I was like, 'OK, I think I want Clayton to be my boyfriend.'"
When ET's Denny Directo spoke to the happy couple on Wednesday, Clayton opened up about what he and Susie have to look forward to.
"I sold [my condo] before I went on the show. I wanted to... uproot myself and give whoever I end up with a chance for this to actually work," he told ET. "I do believe it's important to be living under the same roof if you really wanna give it the best chance of starting that forever with somebody. I'm moving in."
"We're flying back tomorrow and then about a month from now we'll actually go back to Scottsdale, grab all the rest of my stuff out of my apartment, and then we're taking a road trip across the U.S," Clayton added. "... We're gonna start planning all of that now. It's gonna be a lot of fun."
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