Paige DeSorbo broke down her split from Craig Conover during the season 9 Summer House finale, revealing that her feelings toward him changed after he allegedly refused to publicly clear her name.
“I made the right decision,” Paige, 32, told pals Amanda Batula and Lindsay Hubbard on the Wednesday, May 21, finale, referring to her choice to break up with Craig, 36, after Thanksgiving in November 2024.
Paige told the girls that after rumors surfaced in January that she cheated on Craig before their split, he didn’t have her back. She claimed that instead of shutting down the rumors, Craig told her, “I don’t feel comfortable saying anything at this time.”
That alleged response changed everything for Paige. “After that I was like, ‘And, now you’re dead to me,’” she confessed.
Three months after the Bravo cameras stopped rolling in summer 2024, Paige announced that she and Craig called it quits after three years together. In January, the cameras picked back up and documented her side of the story.
“What made me feel like I made the right decision was two days later, my dad called me and said I just want to let you know, ‘I feel like your personality is back,’” Paige recounted on the finale. “[He said], ‘I didn’t realize how different you kinda were. Now I call you and you’re so happy. I just feel like I got my daughter back a little.’”
Amanda, 33, confessed that she felt that there was “something different” about Paige over the summer but she didn’t want to push it. “I could really sense something was up. … You were different,” Amanda said.
Paige completely agreed, noting she didn’t realize “how different” she was until she was on her “Giggly Squad” podcast tour the past fall and she had a “panic attack.”
Paige explained that once November 2024 rolled around, she and Craig spent Thanksgiving together and she later had a lightbulb moment about their future. “He’s like, ‘Do you ever fantasize about us hosting holidays with our kids?’” Paige recalled, noting that she initially said yes but later realized that wasn’t true.
She remembered saying, “I don’t think I do” and pointing out it wasn’t “fair” to Craig that she felt that way. Paige said she told Craig at the time, “You deserve to have the love of your life, and I feel like I do too. I can’t pretend that we don’t have these issues.”
After the conversation, Craig told Paige he’d be in New York in December and asked to speak in person, to which she agreed.
“He says to me, ‘I really wish you didn’t do this before you saw the ring,’” Paige claimed Craig said when he was in town, but she didn’t believe him. “Right when he says that to me in my head, I was like, ‘This is why we’re breaking up because I don’t know if you’re lying right now.’”
While Craig alleged that he’d had the ring for “a year,” Paige told the girls she wasn’t buying it. “It doesn’t exist, Lindsay. We’ll never see it,” she quipped. (Craig claimed on the season 10 Southern Charm finale and reunion that he did buy a ring and planned to propose before Paige broke things off.)
Looking back, Paige said she thought she was “very respectful” with her breakup announcement. However, when rumors started to surface that Paige cheated on Craig and he didn’t shut them down, she realized how one-sided their dynamic was.
“As a girlfriend I defended the f*** out of you in public,” Paige said of her ride-or-die style support for Craig. “I have fought people for you. I have lied through my f***ing teeth for you.”
Despite being upset with the ending, Paige said she’s learned you “have to come to terms” with the fact that life is “not what you imagined” and that doesn’t mean it’s “better or worse.” She concluded, “I think [our lives are] actually way better.”
Summer House season 9 reunion begins on Bravo Wednesday, May 28, at 9 p.m. ET.
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