Paige DeSorbo and Craig Conover have broken up.

The Garden house And Southern charm Stars who met on Bravo’s first season Winter housetogether for three years before breaking up.

Their breakup appears to be a mutual decision, as DeSorbo said in the latest episode of hers Giggly Squad In a podcast released on Monday, December 30, she and Conover “have decided not to be together anymore.”

“It’s strange, it’s very strange. I didn’t expect that,” she told podcast co-host Hannah Berner. “Of course, when we started dating, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen? Are we going to get married, aren’t we?’ That’s just how you are in this relationship.”

DeSorbo didn’t reveal what caused the breakup, but indicated there was no argument. “Not to sound traditional and old-fashioned, this isn’t a situation where I’m going to do a 50-part series of ‘Who the hell was I dating?’ have,” the reality personality joked. “The opposite of this couldn’t be true.”

DeSorbo said: “I have so much love and respect for Craig. I think he is one of the best people I have ever met in my life. I will remain his biggest fan and want the best for him, and he really will. Get the best because he is the best. But still, I think it was exactly the right decision for both of us to move forward in our lives and the direction in our lives that we didn’t force.

“I love him, I think he loves me,” she added. “I think we will remain friends. Nobody did anything. It wasn’t a bad thing. I think we’ve both just been very mature and said what we want and what we don’t want, and I think it’s extremely powerful to be able to express how you feel and what you want for the future in real time. ”

“He’s definitely the best friend I’ve ever had, I can honestly say that,” DeSorbo said. “He was a great friend, and he did everything right, and he never made me feel insecure or anything like that.” It’s almost harder when no one has done anything to be angry about, and that’s hard.

Conover, 35, has yet to comment on the split. But in the podcast, DeSorbo hinted at the changes they’ve both experienced over their time together.

“I mean, as you get older, I started dating Craig when I was 29 and now I’m 32,” she said. “And your 30s are, I think, very transformative for women. And you change a lot and you grow a lot. He too.”

“It’s a very sad thing,” an emotional DeSorbo said. “I know I said online I would never cry, but it’s okay if I cry on the pod. I feel like that’s okay.”

She also didn’t say when they broke up, but stressed that it had nothing to do with the premieres of their respective Bravo hits.

“In terms of people saying rumors like, ‘Oh, Paige was told to wait until…’ Southern charm came out’ or like’Garden house came out’ – no one can tell me what to do,” DeSorbo said. “The network does have power, but they don’t have that much power.” So that wasn’t a real thing. Even rumors that we broke up months ago are not real.”

The Bravo stars have long questioned whether they would get engaged during their three-year relationship, but have frequently said they were in no rush to take the next step.

“It’s funny how things evolve and change,” Conover told PEOPLE at BravoCon in 2023, reflecting on how the long-distance relationship — he lives in Charleston while Desorbo lives in New York — affected their relationship has had an impact.

“I think there was so much pressure from outside. I love what we have now. My home base is Charleston and theirs is New York, but if it were a Venn diagram, we go over there. We are always together, we are just in one place and the other.”

He continued: “I think I’ve settled into a more sustainable process. This is what works for us and let’s just enjoy it instead of rushing to the next step.”

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In July the Giggle Squad The co-host also shared her thoughts on the couple’s future in an episode LadyGang podcast, as she admitted that they “rarely talk about when we’re going to get engaged, when we’re going to have a baby.”

“Of course we have had these conversations, but they are not as many as everyone else is having. So we’re not really stressed about it.”

However, DeSorbo said she “never” gets “offended” when fans ask about next steps because she knows that comes with being reality TV stars. Still, she admitted that her time on shows like Summer house, southern charm And Winter house made it feel like they had “been together a lot longer than we have.”

“So we did this to each other so it looked like they had been together for years, oh my God. In reality, we’ve only been together for two and a half years.”