Lindsay Hubbard feels she dodged a “massive bullet” when her ex-fiancé, Carl Radke, broke off their engagement last August — two and a half months before their wedding.
“I really truly feel thankful that the universe, or God, or whatever higher being you believe in, stepped in and saved me from a really long, hard, rough life ahead,” Hubbard, 37, told Glamour in a profile published Thursday.
“And because of that, I learned a lot from a very traumatic experience, and I feel like I learned a lot about what I’m not going to do in my future, especially in my romantic life.”
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Radke, 39, dumped his best friend-turned-lover in their shared New York City apartment as cameras rolled for the “Summer House” Season 8 finale.
The scene in question aired on Bravo Thursday night, but Hubbard watched it ahead of time.
“I kept reminding myself when I would watch each episode that it was the past,” the former PR executive told the magazine.
“But what I did differently this season was I stacked the episodes so I wasn’t watching every week like the viewers do. I would wait a couple of weeks, and then watch a few at a time, then take a month off, and then watch a few more. That way I wasn’t creating consistent anxiety for myself.”
Not only did Hubbard maintain that she was blindsided by the split, but she also admitted that she didn’t see any red flags in the Loverboy salesman — with whom she had been constantly arguing — until he called it quits.
“I was so in it, and I’m such a fighter. I will never walk away until I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I have done everything humanly possible to make something work,” she explained, adding that her “Summer House” co-star Gabby Prescod was the one who helped her dissect the relationship after the fact.
“As we put everything on the table, I saw the red flags that I had been ignoring, out of love, and maybe out of the [desire for a] fairytale,” Hubbard acknowledged.
The former couple, who got engaged in August 2022, had their fair share of communication issues. Throughout the season, viewers watched as a then-unemployed Radke would pitch career ideas to Hubbard, who responded by asking logistical follow-up questions.
Radke kept insisting that what he needed was support, not interrogation, and in one of their final on-screen fights, he paused to ask Hubbard for a hug.
“Tighter,” he kept instructing his then-soon-to-be wife, who told Glamour her ” skin was crawling” at that moment.
Looking back, Hubbard thinks she might’ve “accidentally” made Radke look and feel “dumb” because he might not have known “the answers to [her] questions.”
As for the drawn-out argument over Hubbard questioning Radke’s sobriety, the blond beauty justified her vocalized doubts but admitted her “delivery was s–t.”
“It’s hard to understand what it’s like to be with an addict unless you experienced it for yourself,” she shared, elaborating that “you pay attention to certain behaviors and you worry.”
She added, “At the end of the day, Carl was the love of my life. This was the guy I’m about to marry and spend the rest of my life with. He was my partner. He was my future husband. So when I’m questioning certain behaviors of his, it came from the right place.”
