Austen Kroll Reveals Reason He Broke up With Audrey Pratt

Southern Charm‘s Austen Kroll is sharing new details about his breakup with Audrey Pratt.

Austen and Audrey’s split reveal arrived during Season 11, Episode 10, but, at the time, he told his castmates that he didn’t “really want to talk about it much” during their trip to Whitner Slagsvol’s family estate, aka Itchy Grass Farm. That was not the case on the Southern Charm After Show, however.

“So let me tell you what happened,” Austen began his explanation in the above clip. “Prior to this trip, I broached the subject with Audrey that I’d been having, you know, some thoughts. And she’s like, ‘We’ve never had a convo like this before — ever.'”

Austen revealed that during that pivotal talk with Audrey, he asked what she wanted for the first time. By his account, Audrey told him that she deserved someone “who knows what they want” and whom she could “move in with,” after a year-and-a-half of dating.

RELATED: Madison Makes a Damning Statement on Austen and Audrey: “All of Us Behind the Scenes Know…”

“I was like, ‘That is so totally fair,'” Austen recalled. “That’s how she operates.”

Castmate Rodrigo Reyes, meanwhile, opined that Audrey would have been content with them “living the back and forth” of commuting the roughly 200 miles between Charleston and Charlotte for as long as it took Austen “to figure out it.” 

Conceding that Rod’s point was “maybe” correct, Austen underscored how Audrey relocating to South Carolina was a “huge decision.” As such, he worried that if, “like, four months down the line,” the move turned out to be a “mistake,” Audrey would be angry that he “couldn’t have figured that out” sooner.

Inside the aftermath of Austen Kroll and Audrey Pratt’s split

Ultimately, the physical distance between Austen and Audrey, coupled with his continued uncertainty about wanting her to move to Charleston, proved to be the primary factors in his ultimately initiating the split. Austen even compared his and Audrey’s breakup conversation to “Edward leaving Bella in Twilight.”

“It was such a weird and horrible feeling,” he described. “But it was like a, you know, cutoff. And I felt so bad because I was like, oh my god, she probably thinks I never cared about her or that, you know, that, that I tossed her aside.”

Upon further reflection post-split, Austen saw plenty of evidence that he’d made the right decision with Audrey, however.

RELATED: Austen Kroll Makes an Honest Confession About His Dating Past: “I Find Myself Easily Distracted”

“I think that she did lose herself a little bit while dating me,” he added, noting that he believed people would have viewed Audrey only as “Austen’s girlfriend,” rather than an individual, if she had moved to Charleston.

“And I started to see it happening a little bit,” Austen continued. “That’s why I was like, you need to man up and, like, speak to her and tell her exactly what’s going on.”

In a confessional from Southern Charm‘s Feb. 4 episode, he added, “This is the first time I think that I’ve initiated a breakup with someone that I really love. It’s heartbreaking because she didn’t do anything wrong. But, for me, there’s something there that is missing, at no fault of her own.”

How Audrey Pratt reacted to her and Austen Kroll’s breakup

When Austen brought his concerns to Audrey’s attention, “She was like, ‘I feel like I’ve been in the dark for the past, you know, couple weeks,'” he recounted on the After Show. “And I was like, ‘That is horrible, and I’m sorry that I made you feel that way, because you don’t deserve that.'”

Austen continued, “There are just so many things where I was trying my hardest to do the right thing in this crazy world that, you know, we live in. I just don’t want her to come out looking bad in any sort of way.”

When Rodrigo chimed in to say that he didn’t think Audrey would “look bad at all,” Austen agreed.

“She said it, like, 100 times, too. She was like, ‘Austen, if I could go back and do it again, I would do it again,'” he shared. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is the sweetest thing you’ve ever said.'”

Now that he’s officially single, get a sneak peek at how Austen’s dating life heated up during the back half of Southern Charm Season 11.