Kaitlyn Bristowe is feeling the thorns from her breakup with Jason Tartick.
The Bachelorette alum opened up about her "grief" two days after announcing that she and the banker had called it quits after four years. As someone who has always been open about her relationship on social media, Kaitlyn shared that she's been quietly struggling with how much of her heartbreak she should share with fans.
"I'm going through a breakup with someone I was engaged to," she explained to marriage and family therapist Jenny Wise Black on the Aug. 8 episode of her Off the Vine podcast. "Now, we both are public figures, we both came from the same show. We have all these followers who we've let in, and we've invited them into our lives and our relationship and our home and what we're doing—morning, afternoon, night. It's become part of, like, business."
While the 38-year-old loves "to entertain" her followers, she said it's "gotten to this point where something like going through a breakup—it's a loss, it's grief, you're going through the thought of losing somebody, all of these big emotions—and now these people are on the other end of this phone expecting you to share it with them."
"I'm holding so much responsibility because I see them as this community that I've built for myself," she continued. "It is affecting my mental health so much."
And though Kaitlyn acknowledges that "you have to give yourself time first before you give strangers on the internet time," she admittedly still worries that fans will "hate" her if she chooses not to share details about the breakup.
"Here's the logic of everything and then here's the emotion," Kaitlyn added, "and I am finding myself in the middle of that."
Kaitlyn and Jason, 34, started dating in 2019, months after she called off her engagement to Shawn Booth and he failed to win Becca Kufrin's heart on the 14th season of The Bachelorette. The pair got engaged two years later while recording an episode of her podcast.
However, speculation of trouble in paradise surfaced in recent months when fans noticed the couple had been spending time apart. Kaitlyn and Jason confirmed their breakup on Aug. 6, writing in a joint statement shared on Instagram, "After sharing the news with family and close friends first, and taking the time to properly process it ourselves, we are saddened with heavy hearts to share that we have decided to end our engagement."
"Continuing our friendship is incredibly important to both of us," they said. "We feel grateful to be ending our engagement with love and respect for each other. It's heartbreaking and sad to say goodbye, but our care and admiration for one another will never die."
In an episode of his Trading Secrets podcast released on Aug. 7, Jason said life has been "a bit of a challenge" since splitting with Kaitlyn.
"And when I'm prepared and feeling ready to talk through how these things also impact my life and what's next for me," he added, "I will share those as I always try to hold my standard to share specifically what I ask of my guests."