Exclusive Interview

‘The Ultimatum’s Ashley Wilson Calls Killian Grondin Split the ‘Best Decision’

“I think through my trial marriage,” Ashley Wilson told Swooon, “I wish I would have just listened to those red flags a little bit more.”

After accepting Killian Grondin‘s proposal during the Season 4 finale of The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, Ashley walked onto the reunion stage as a single woman. Now, she’s sitting down with Swooon to reveal why she decided it was time to move on.

According to Ashley, if her trial marriage with Blake Robertson taught her one thing, it was how to stand up for herself. “Killian couldn’t really sincerely apologize,” she explained. “So, red flags are going off, but I also am like ‘Okay, gotta look at the good things. Are they outweighing the bad?’ And I generally felt like he was trying to show up towards the end.”

Looking for the light in the situation, Ashley confessed that she was not hesitant to say yes to Killian’s proposal. “I loved him,” she said. “I built this life with him for five years. Everything was entangled. We had business together, dogs, a lease and apartment together. We’ve come through this experience, and if we can get through this, we can get through anything.” She added, “I always believed love conquers all, and instead of protecting myself, I just believed in love so much. When in the end, that person is genuinely — now that I’m watching it back — not my biggest supporter. [He should have been] protecting me at all costs, and he wasn’t.”

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Ashley confirmed that she and Killian are no longer together, after she called things off in July or August of last year. “We wrapped in mid-May, and we did a little trip to celebrate our engagement, and I think it just went downhill from there, right back into those cycles of behavior, and lying, and excuses,” Ashley explained. “It just kept building up, and I was like, ‘It’s not gonna change.’ When you don’t see your children with that person anymore, I think it just — it’s not gonna work. It finally just hit me, and I decided to walk away. It was very hard for me because that’s my person for five years, and I thought that’s who I was going to end up with. It was the hardest decision I had to make, but probably the best decision.”

Since their split, she and Killian have remained “cordial.” Or at least, that’s what she thought before heading into the reunion. “My mom had just passed away about seven weeks ago today [July 14]. Me and Killian got to talk a little bit before [the reunion], and he was being very supportive. He was like, ‘If you need me at the reunion, if you need a break, you need to stand up, I’ll take you and walk you out.'”

She continued, “I thought we were going into this cordial, and they asked, ‘How’d y’all break up?’ And I was trying to say a timeline of start to finish of how it happened, and I wanted to end on a good note, but I didn’t get there because he was getting a little defensive and kept butting in. I don’t think I got to say what I wanted to say because he brought up my dad, and it’s a touchy subject for me right now. If he’s gonna bring up my family in a bad light right now with everything going on with my mom — I think after that, I was just like, ‘I can’t.’ I couldn’t speak anymore about what I wanted to because I wanted to bring up.”

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Following her split from Killian, Ashley has been embracing her single era. She revealed, “I moved back to Texas and got to be closer with my family. I think it was very good for me.” She explained, “I am very much single, but I am dating. I’m trying to get out there. I think I’ve dodged a couple of bullets already, but at least I’m figuring it out. I’ve never been single in my entire life. I’ve always been in a relationship, so this is the first time. I’m trial-and-erroring it right now.”

Of course, we had to ask Ashley whether she’d be open to showing up on the Netflix reality dating scene again. When asked if Perfect Match could be in her future, Ashley spilled, “I think it would be fun because I’m in my dating era… You never know. I could meet my husband on there. I’m very much still ready to get married.”

The Ultimatum, Season 4, Streaming Now, Netflix