The pair confirmed to New Idea they have gone their separate ways, saying they were “walking on egg shells around each other”.
Fighting back tears, Louise, 28, tells the magazine that it was Blake’s decision to call it quits.
“We sat down recently and Blake said: ‘It’s just not working – I feel like we’re treading water’. I knew deep down that he was right but I would never have been strong enough to say it,” admits Louise.
“It feels surreal and since then I have gone through so many emotions. I’ve been crying, numb and angry”.
She also confesses that she found it difficult to accept that she was not the 33-year-old’s first choice.
“The negativity has been draining, plus it took months to deal with the fact I was Blake’s third choice of partner,” she says.
“In the end, I had to build a bridge and get over it if I was serious about making a go of our relationship”.
Blake’s Bachelor botch-up is still the stuff of TV legend.
First, he proposes to Sam Frost on bended knee, sending Lisa Hyde home.
But even before the show airs on Channel Ten, he’s dumped Sam, and scampered off to Thailand with Louise, professing she’s really his true love.
A contrite Blake says he tried three months of relationship counselling to make things work with Louise, who moved from Brisbane to Blake’s home in Perth to let love blossom.
But he blamed their split on others’ disapproval of their partnership.
“We’ve both tried so hard to make it work, but the negativity that has surrounded us has changed us as individuals,” he says before adding: “We felt like we were walking on eggshells around each other, always trying to say the right thing. It was suffocating.”
The pair are supposedly still living under the same Perth roof while they figure things out and support each other through the split.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the 2Day FM radio show tells Fairfax Media that Sam won’t be commenting on the break-up news.
Sam, who went on to star in last year’s The Bachelorette, is now dating Sasha Mielczarek.
For more on Sam and Sasha’s love story, click here.
