Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Emma Chance | TV | February 26, 2025
There was a time when Paige DeSorbo, 32, and Craig Conover, 36, were the best couple on Bravo. She’s from Summer House; he’s from Southern Charm. She’s a self-made fashion maven who doesn’t suffer fools; he’s a reformed bad boy with a soft side. They lived in different states but seemed okay with that for a while and weren’t in a rush to get engaged or move in together before they were ready. Then, Craig started getting restless. He built his dream home in Charleston with Paige’s help, sobered up, and wanted to start a family sooner rather than later. Paige was the one with cold feet—she didn’t want to move away from her family in New York, wasn’t ready for kids, and was just starting to feel like she was finding her footing business-wise. She didn’t want to give that up.
The pressure of this was just starting to get to her on the last season of Summer House. Then, in December of last year, Paige announced on her podcast, Giggly Squad, that they’d broken up after three years of dating.
“I wasn’t expecting this, obviously, when we first started dating. You don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen? Will we get married, will we not?’ You just kind of are in this relationship, and as you get older—I mean, I started dating Craig when I was 29 and I’m 32 now—and your 30s, for women, really are very transformative. You change a lot and grow a lot, and him as well,” Paige said.
“I love him. I think he loves me. I think we will remain friends. No one did anything—it wasn’t like a bad thing. I think we were both being mature and just saying what we want and what we didn’t want. And I think that’s extremely powerful, to be able to voice how you’re feeling in real time and what you want for your future.”
Craig has responded very differently. He maintains that Paige made this decision and that he was blindsided and disappointed. While his friends are implying that Paige was unfaithful or has already moved on with someone else …
…he wants nothing to do with it. “I got broken up with… Paige lied on her podcast that the breakup was mutual,” he said. He claims she called him one day out of the blue and broke the news.
Seasons nine and ten of Summer House and Southern Charm are airing right now, on Wednesday and Thursday nights, respectively. Since they were filmed last year, Paige and Craig were still together. With each passing episode, though, the writing on the wall is coming more and more into focus.
I, too, feel bad for Craig. To Bravo viewers, Paige’s doubts were becoming clear—he just didn’t see them. It’s a tale as old as time, and one I know all too well—one person is ready to build the rest of their life around a partnership, and the other just isn’t. No disrespect to Paige, whose career is taking off in a big way, even outside of Bravo.
Craig said in that WWHL interview that he hates how everyone keeps telling him, “Love isn’t enough,” because he thinks it should be—and he’s right. But he also freely admits that Paige saw him through a transformational few years: he got sober, built a house, and grew his business. He’s a better man because of her influence. Either she didn’t like the new Craig as much as the rough-around-the-edges one she met three years ago, or who she became after her own evolution just didn’t match up with who he was. Both are valid reasons to break up with someone, but it sucks a whole lot more to be the Craig in this scenario.
He was changing for her, and she was changing for herself. When that kind of scenario comes to an end, she gets to walk away a better version of herself, and he’s left with a life markedly different from when he started—in ways he intended to share with someone.
