Danielle Maltby wants to share her side of the breakup.
Earlier this week, Michael Allio confirmed on Jason Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast that he and Maltby, 37, split this summer after meeting on Bachelor in Paradise season 8. On her Instagram Story Friday, Maltby wrote that she “was shocked to find out my breakup would be announced in this fashion” and stated that “this breakup was not a mutual decision arriving at some perception of incompatibilities” as Allio, 39, claimed.
Maltby spoke more in-depth about the split on Friday’s episode of podcast, which she co-hosts with friend Jackie Camardo.
While recalling her journey to freeze her eggs, Maltby said Allio came with her for the retrieval and waited during the procedure to give her a matcha latte afterward.
“What’s hard in talking about this really isn’t the procedure itself, it’s what came after,” Maltby said. “And I just need to get it out there so that people can stop asking questions and I can just move forward. But the day after Michael and I got home from freezing my eggs, he … he broke up with me and I was very, very blindsided by it. Obviously still very emotional and hurt and confused. I still don’t really have any answers.”
Although the breakup took place two-and-a-half months ago, Maltby said she continues to mourn the relationship and what it meant to her.
“I’m grieving the loss of him. I’m grieving the loss of the future that I really believed in and I’m grieving the loss of James,” she said, referring to Allio’s 7-year-old son with his late wife. “And I’m grieving the loss of safety that I felt with him for the first time. He was the first person that ever made me feel safe in a relationship, that made me feel like I was enough. And then that was taken away.”
The breakup unfortunately tainted Maltby’s memory of the experience of freezing her eggs, but she feels extra happy to have gone through the process since “the future is extremely uncertain right now.”
“It’s really hard thinking back on the whole experience because it was a really beautiful trip,” the reality star continued. “I was so proud of myself. Michael took great care of me and it was a very, very love-filled weekend and I ended up being able to freeze eight eggs, which now I am just incredibly, incredibly grateful for, as I am now alone.”
Coming down from the hormones Maltby took during the egg-freezing process made processing the breakup extra challenging. “It was really difficult to come down off of this experience that I was so excited for and then to have to come down off the hormones while being in complete shock, like complete physical shock, I was just completely blindsided,” Maltby said.
Although Maltby called that period “very traumatizing,” she also admitted to not remembering much of it because of the shock.
“I wish I could actually articulate how that all felt or if I could separate what felt like the emotion or what felt like the hormones and stuff wearing off versus the, I don’t know,” she said. “There was just so much physical pain, I can’t really remember.”
Now, “I’m definitely starting to find myself again,” Maltby said. “It’s one of those things, it’s day by day, right? I was not expecting to still be so emotional even talking about this and how I’m doing right now. My therapist has been putting in work but I am, I honestly am doing so much better.”
Maltby moved from Nashville to Cleveland earlier this year to be with Allio and his son. She’s since been leaning on her new community to move past the split.
“I’m just a person that has to feel everything,” the nurse said. “I love boldly and I’ll never be ashamed of that, but I’m very thankful for the girls that I work with. They have really just like rallied around me. And I’ve, you know, been making new friends in Cleveland and it’s really shown me that just how much good there is in my life because of people like you [Camardo] and friends and new friends. And thank God for work, having something to keep yourself busy.”
Aside from work, Maltby said: “I’ve just been taking a lot of time with my feelings and processing them and figuring out my life. You think it’s going to go one way and you know, you just never know what’s going to happen. So starting fresh again has been very, very difficult. Very painful, to say the least. But I’m doing it, and every day does get a little bit better, so I’m very grateful for that.”
Back on her Instagram Story, Maltby thanked her followers for their support.
“I don’t regret the love I gave for a second,” she wrote. “While these last couple months have been extremely difficult and painful for me, I am succeeding in finding moments of joy in building a new life in this city, regardless of how I came to it. I have been extremely invested in my job, which I love and I feel hopeful again to discover what the future holds for me.”
Allio told Tartick he, too, has been processing the breakup. “You mourn the loss, not of just that person and that friend in your life, but also the future that you had envisioned,” the single dad said. “And it’s to no fault of hers.”
Allio recognized that Maltby “poured everything into this” and said of its ending, “It’s not what we planned.”
“We both threw a lot into this relationship,” he added, “and it’s really awful when it doesn’t work out.”
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