Temptation Island star Morgan Lolar has ended her engagement to Evan Smith, claiming he lived off her financially for over a year and then cheated on her earlier this year.
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Evan and Morgan left the show dating each other -- after Evan chose to dump his then-girlfriend of 10 years, Kaci Campbell -- and they moved in together in Washington, D.C., where Morgan lived.
Evan, who had previously lived in Los Angeles with Kaci, then proposed marriage about six months after filming ended.
When the Season 2 reunion special for Temptation Island was filmed in November 2019, an update was provided on Morgan and Evan and they were still happy at the time and looking forward to their wedding.
"It was a different time for me. I was super happy to be at the reunion, about to get married," Morgan, 28, told Us Weekly on the Thursday episode of its Watch With Us podcast. "I was giddy and excited for our future."
"[But] the world flipped upside down and that's not the case for me anymore," she added.
"I was realizing so many lies and realizing I was getting played the same way that Kaci got played. I didn't even realize Kaci got played until it happened to me."
For starters, Morgan accused Evan of being lazy and having no job the entire time the couple was living together in D.C..
"He didn't work the entire time that he lived with me for almost a year and a half. I supported him financially and his excuse for abruptly leaving two days before we were supposed to move to L.A. was that he needed to go 'work' to be able to pay me back," Morgan explained.
"[He said] he wanted to feel like a man, kind of blaming me for him not doing anything with his life. It didn't make any sense to me."
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Morgan said she and Evan were supposed to move to Los Angeles together in late December 2019, but Evan took off a few days before their scheduled trip on his own -- and she didn't understand his motive.
"He started a fight and walked out. I was thinking, 'He's just being dramatic as usual,' then he was actually gone. He left. It was over nothing, and so it was planned and I had no earthly idea about it. It just goes to show that he's very calculated," Morgan claimed.
"I started to feel guilty for it. Then I thought back on Temptation Island and how Kaci and he ended, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, he's saying the exact same things to me that he's saying to her.' It clicked to me and I'm like, 'I have to say something to her.'"
Morgan therefore said she reached out to Kaci on New Year's Eve, when she was "alone and crying." After texting for a while and exchanging horror stories about Evan, the girls became friends.
While Morgan and Kaci grew closer, however, Morgan was still talking to Evan.
"I only planned on getting engaged once in my life and I was still going to do anything I could to make it work, as long as he was willing to help himself and make changes and obviously that hasn't happened," Morgan told Us.
Morgan said she then moved to Los Angeles about a month later, and that's when she said her relationship with Evan totally fell apart.
"After I moved to L.A., he also cheated on me. So that was the end of that relationship," Morgan noted.
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Morgan thanked Kaci -- who joined her on the podcast -- for having her back in a very tough situation.
"This is the thing when it comes to Evan, I even said it on the show... 'This girl has no idea what she's getting herself into.' Because I genuinely meant it," Kaci shared.
"Evan is very much a man of patterns. What he wants is a comfortable situation. He wants his bills paid, he wants food taken care of, he wants to party. And he doesn't want to work, and he wants someone else to provide that for him."
"As soon as that new situation he has found gets a little uncomfortable and you start putting pressure on him, like, 'You need to get a job, get your own health insurance, and be an adult,' he bails. That's what happened," Kaci said.
Kaci told Us that Morgan was "seeing the same signs" she had experienced herself before going on Temptation Island with Evan as her longtime boyfriend.
"[Morgan] started putting on pressure like any normal woman would to the man she wants to have a family with and have as a husband, and he bounced," Kaci said on the podcast, adding that she unfortunately "always knew" something like this was going to happen to Morgan.
"I just knew it was a matter of time and I hoped and I prayed that it would happen before they got married and have kids. I'm definitely not surprised... Nothing this guy says is true, and it's just crazy."
Evan has yet to publicly share his side of the story, but he did tweet on April 2, "I'm so sorry Morgan."
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As viewers saw on the Season 1 finale Temptation Island's revival, Evan gave into temptation and crushed Kaci's heart in order to pursue a relationship in the real world with Morgan, who was one of 12 single women hoping to steal one of four men from their girlfriends.
(The four women in the committed relationships also got to know 12 single men).
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One of the major issues Kaci and Evan had in their relationship was that Kaci presented him with an ultimatum of getting married soon or splitting up, and Evan simply wasn't ready to take that next step.
Despite the fact Evan slept with Morgan in the middle of the season and said he wanted to leave Temptation Island with her, Kaci still basically begged Evan to stay with her instead and figure things out once they returned home.
Kaci had previously claimed to Us that she was just following through with a deal she and Evan had made prior to filming. Kaci alleged that Evan had agreed to break up at home and off-camera if their journeys on Temptation Island happened to lead them in different directions.
But Evan told People in October 2019 that he never even considered staying with Kaci just to break up with her later, once production wrapped.
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"You know, if I did that, I would have lost Morgan for sure. I knew that I was not going to let the love of my life slip away," Evan said.
"And I also thought that it would be kind of a cowardly thing to do, to make nice on television and then in the privacy of our own home end things. If I could go back, I would do the same thing."
Many fans backed Kaci during her time of grief, which prompted many haters and trolls to go after Morgan, Evan and their romance.
"We knew there would be haters. I think that there's a lot more than we expected, but we also know that we're going to be in it for the long haul," Morgan told People.
At that time, Morgan had no interest in reaching out to Kaci or befriending her.
"I never knew her, never met her. And then also, as the season was going on, I was kind of getting angry -- because, you know, I'm in love with this person and she was bad-mouthing him every single week," Morgan admitted.
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Morgan said at the time she and Evan were trying to launch a joint fitness website and planning a wedding wasn't one of her top priorities.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
