Bachelor in Paradise’s Danielle Maltby is still reeling after Michael Allio allegedly dumped her shortly after her egg retrieval process.
“What’s hard in talking about this really isn’t the procedure itself, it’s what came after,” Maltby, 37, began the Friday, September 22, episode of her “The WoMed” podcast.
Maltby told listeners that the surgery went “great” and Allio, 39, was there “waiting with a Matcha latte for me” when she woke up. However, the high of retrieving 11 eggs and successfully freezing eight was short-lived.
“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,” Maltby claimed. “Obviously [I’m] still very emotional and hurt and confused. I still don’t really have any answers. I’m in it.”
She added that “to have to come down off of the hormones while being in complete shock” was tough to handle: “[I was in] complete physical shock. I was completely blindsided.”
The Bachelor alum noted that the split happened about two and a half months ago, but she is still processing the pain. Allio, for his part, went public with the breakup on Monday, September 18.
“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,” Maltby explained, referring to Allio’s son, James, whom he shared with his late wife, Laura. “And I’m grieving the loss of safety that I felt with him for the first time.”
Maltby — who met Allio on season 8 of Bachelor in Paradise in summer 2022 and later uprooted her life in Nashville to move to Akron, Ohio, for him — confessed that Allio was “the first person that ever made me feel safe in a relationship, that made me feel like I was enough.”
Now that her security with him has been “taken away,” her egg retrieval experience is “really hard” to look back on. “I was so proud of myself [in that moment]. Michael took great care of me. It was a very love-filled weekend,” Maltby recalled. “I was able to freeze eight eggs. Which now I am just incredibly grateful for as now I am alone.”
As Maltby tried not to cry, she added that the egg freeze “takes a lot of pressure off because the future is extremely uncertain right now.”
Moments prior to releasing her newest podcast episode, Maltby broke her silence about the split via an Instagram Story statement.
“This breakup was not a mutual decision arriving at some perception of incompatibilities,” she wrote, referring to Allio hinting that they were not compatible during his split announcement. “However, I do hope the best for Michael, and I will always have James in my heart as we move forward separately.”
Maltby added that she doesn’t “regret the love” she gave Allio “for a second” and asked her followers to “respect, time, and space to continue to heal and grieve what I believed was forever and hope you extend the same to Michael.”
Allio confirmed the couple’s breakup on Monday during an appearance on Jason Tartick’s “Trading Secrets” podcast, saying, “I guess I’ll just come out with it. We’re not together anymore. It’s not what we planned. We both threw a lot into this relationship and it’s really awful when it doesn’t work out.”
He concluded: “You mourn the loss not of just that person and that friend in your life, but also the future that you had envisioned. And it’s to no fault of hers. She poured everything into this. … We’re still, you know, working through some things and trying to stay close. But yeah, [the] last couple months have been really tough.”
