Rachel Recchia Is Trusting Her Intuition & Nobody Else’s

After her first breakup with Clayton Echard three years ago, Rachel Recchia and her friends visited a psychic for advice — something that has become a tradition for them. “The psychic said, ‘There was another woman he thought he had stronger feelings for, but one day, he’ll come back,’” Recchia tells me, sipping a cold brew with oat milk at a cafe in the Toluca Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. “It turns out she was right.” The 29-year-old pilot from Clermont, Florida, has reflected on that reading recently, after briefly reuniting with Echard on Season 3 of Perfect Match.

Since 2022, Recchia has been a part of four different dating shows — The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and now Perfect Match, her first foray into the Netflix reality universe. But she joined the series with no plans of rehashing her past. “I’ve been on dating shows before with my exes, and we were cordial and did our own thing, so I went in originally just hoping [Clayton and I] could catch up,” she says. But after a conversation with Echard, where he confessed he wanted to give it another go, Recchia went against her better judgment to match with him.

“He definitely got me back into a mindset of wanting to give it a chance,” she says. “I had been waiting for a really long time to hear those words that he was saying to me. He said more that wasn’t aired, which really convinced me.”

The match came as a surprise to fans familiar with Recchia and Echard’s history. During Season 26 of The Bachelor, the two were nearly engaged, but their relationship ended after it was revealed Echard had also slept with fellow contestant Gabby Windey, and following a group breakup, he ultimately chose Susie Evans. Looking back, Recchia says she felt like “collateral damage” in Echard’s quest to find love.

I was embarrassed, and I remember running to my room and trying not to let anyone see how upset I was.

Despite the red flags going off in the back of her mind (“I definitely was thinking about how my mom and my friends were going to kill me”), Recchia took Echard back on Perfect Match for what she says is the third time, after breaking up twice on The Bachelor. It didn’t last long, though. Within a few hours, Echard’s “intuition” was telling him to move on, which left Recchia mortified.

“I was embarrassed, and I remember running to my room and trying not to let anyone see how upset I was,” she says. “Once the girls saw how emotional I was, I think that furthered my embarrassment because they don’t know me, they don’t know the context, and they’re not going to want me in the house because of this huge reaction." Recchia even thought about leaving the show, but her fellow contestants, AD Smith, Lucy Syed, and Madison Errichiello convinced her to stay. “They are the most incredible group of girls. They were so supportive.”

But there’s still one person she hasn’t talked to about what happened on Perfect Match yet: Windey. “I didn’t say anything to Gabby because I was so embarrassed. I didn’t even know how to begin telling her how that happened, and I thought she would be really disappointed,” she says. Still, the two remain good friends — and Recchia admits she couldn’t have starred in Season 19 of The Bachelorette without Windey by her side. “I literally am her biggest fan.”

As for Echard, Recchia says she spoke with him at a Netflix event before the Perfect Match premiere, but they haven’t talked since the show aired in early August, and she saw a remark he made in his confessionals. When given the power to set up contestants on dates, Echard gave Recchia a date with Scott van-der-Sluis, but only because there were only male daters available — if a woman appeared on the board, Echard indicated he would’ve put himself on a date instead.

“It felt a little poetic, because the idea was him giving me the season, he’s stepping away, and maybe he does actually care,” she says. “But he was ready to let me go home that night if there were girls on the board he wanted to date.”

He could have said it differently, but he said it in the terms that he knows how to use now.

Still, she doesn’t have any bad blood with Echard and his “intuition” today. “He genuinely has been through so much, and he’s really had to use spirituality as a tool to overcome all these obstacles,” she says. “He could have said it differently, but he said it in the terms that he knows how to use now. So we’re just going to let him have it.”

Recchia tries to keep a positive outlook on her experience. Even her fans have made light of her Perfect Match breakup by adopting Echard’s favorite word. “Everyone’s commenting on my Instagram, and they’re like, ‘My intuition tells me this is a really good post.’ And it’s so funny; I love seeing it,” she says. She knows she could have been “meaner” toward her ex for hurting her again, but having been through this before, she knew it wasn’t the best move. “The first time around, the audience went so hard on him, and they’re doing it again,” she says. “I never want him to experience that again.”

She may cringe at some things she’s done while trying to find love in front of an audience, but Recchia is starting to embrace it all. “I’ve learned to have a thick skin. Everyone says that, but watching myself back, there’s something admirable about wearing your emotion on your sleeve,” she says. “So now that’s a part of myself that I celebrate and like more.”

Post-Perfect Match, she’s ready to get back into flying full time as a pilot. (“I graduated flight school, and a month later, The Bachelor started.”) Though she’s done trying to find love through reality TV — “I’m retired now,” she jokes — she is still open to dating in the reality universe. She teases that she’s been quietly seeing someone that “the audience will know.” “I am talking to someone. It’s nothing super serious, but I’m happy and excited seeing where things go,” she says.

If you’re holding out hope that that special someone is Blake Moynes, with whom she grew close on Bachelor in Paradise, you may be disappointed. “He’s had relationships with a lot of my closest girlfriends, so I just always feel like we’re going to be super close friends,” she says. “I know people are so sad, but that’s the way it stands.”

Recchia hints that her mystery person is actually someone from the Perfect Match cast but won’t say who. She confirms her new man is not Ray Gantt. The two, who were paired up in the Perfect Match finale, had more of a platonic relationship. “We both knew that it was more of a friendship,” she says. “And to this day, we are so close.”

I’m definitely looking for someone who can do their own thing.

What she will reveal about her new man is that her fans “will be excited to see” who it is — and that he checks all the boxes. “I’m definitely looking for someone who can do their own thing,” she says. “Someone who is supportive and has their own dreams and goals.” And when it comes to any icks she’s avoiding now, she laughs: “If they start talking about their ‘intuition,’ that might be a new one.”