Trista Sutter talks 'Special Forces' exit, the toughest tests and fake marriage drama

In May 2024. "Bachelorette" star Ryan Sutter accidentally triggered a media maelstrom with cryptic Instagram posts lamenting his apparently missing wife, Trista, including one wistful missive that read, "I'd really like to hear your voice ― just for a minute."

Bachelor Nation freaked out, fearing this paragon of reality show love — married for two decades — was splitting. Trista, 52, eventually broke through the noise to dispel the concern with a different reality drama. The OG Bachelorette had been in Wales, slogging through Fox's reality competition series "Special Forces: World's Toughest Test" with 15 other celebrities, including Cam Newton, Stephen Baldwin and Denise Richards.

"Everyone wants the juicy stuff. It's shocking that all this gained that much traction. It's like, 'Why do you all care so much?'" Sutter tells USA TODAY of the outcry. "I wasn't getting a divorce or having a nervous breakdown, curled up in the corner of my house. I was having a nervous breakdown on top of a 300-foot bridge in Wales."

Sutter, whose "Special Forces" experience ended when she quit in Wednesday's episode, breaks down her journey's joy, pain, cold truths and entirely false narratives.

Denise Richards 'Ruptured' her breast implants after jumping off bridge on 'Special Forces' reality show

Ryan Sutter's Instagram posts were 'shouting from the rooftops that he loves me'

Sutter was unaware of her husband's posts and the furor they sparked because "Special Forces" instructors, like former U.S. Marine Rodolfo “Rudy” Reyes and former Royal Marine Commando Jason "Foxy" Fox, had confiscated the celebrities' phones.

The last words from her triathlete and Colorado firefighter spouse were filled with inspirational advice, like, "Don't quit until you get hurt."

"But I couldn't think about my family too much because then I'd want to go home," says Sutter, who has two children, Maxwell, 16, and Blakesley, 15, with Ryan. "Instagram was his way of shouting from the rooftops that he loves me. Cryptic to the world, but to me, that's everything."

The water-filled physical tests, the in-your-face screaming instructors, sleeping on cots in wet clothes and even the plywood toilets were more immediate problems. "Special Forces" begins on a speeding boat, with former SAS host Billy Billingham pushing each celebrity into the chilly water and ordering them to swim to shore. Sutter already has a deep fear of open water. "But I wasn't worried about sharks or whatever, which I'm normally really fearful of," says Sutter. "All I was worried about was getting to the shore. I didn't want to drown."

Why did Trista Sutter leave 'Special Forces: World's Toughest Test'?

Sutter says she excelled at tasks like jumping off a 30-story aqueduct wearing a harness. She gamely attempted (but failed) to jump onto a hovering helicopter from a speeding boat. Her breaking point came during a task that repeatedly pulled the interlocked participants under frigid water: The soggy Sutter faltered when running from the beach with a 30-pound rucksack.

"I'm out of shape. I have asthma. But no excuses, it was just really hard," says Sutter, whose condition worsened. "My body was going through hypothermia, telling me, 'You should go home.'"

In the van back to the base camp, Sutter says that she was shivering so uncontrollably that other contestants (Newton and actress Christy Carlson Romano) threw jackets and blankets over her. "Even the producers, which they're not supposed to, got involved," says Sutter. "Thank God I had all these angels around me. I knew I had to see a medic."

Sutter seemed disoriented at 5:14 a.m. on her still-dark third day in Wales following a fake-attack wakeup call. “I think it’s time," she said on the show before handing over her armband, the fourth recruit to leave. She's had second thoughts about withdrawing, but they were tempered after seeing that the tasks for the remaining celebrities only got progressively more perilous. "I'm thankful I did leave," says Sutter, "because I didn't get any broken bones or anything."

She rates her short tenure on the rigorous reality show as the hardest thing she's ever done. "I had a really hard labor. I suffered a seizure some years back. Those experiences were all hard," says Sutter. "But this was all-encompassing hard — emotionally, physically and spiritually. It pushed me to a place I didn't think I could go."

Sutter, who celebrated her 21st wedding anniversary on Dec. 6, doesn't mind that viewers have seen her in rare and raw moments of distress. "I'm not as self-conscious as I was back in the day. I still have insecurities. I don't want to see myself defeated and pathetic, all the things I probably look like on the show. But this is what I signed up for. It's not my first reality-show rodeo."

After exiting, Sutter was taken to a warm hotel room for a shower and was given her phone to see her husband's loving Instagram messages (and the social media outcry). She called Ryan and her kids "first thing. Just being able to reconnect with them meant everything. I told them that I survived, even though I didn't make it as long as I wanted. But I did it. I was proud and at peace with why I left.

"But the best thing — after talking to my family — was that shower," she adds. "That was the best shower of my life."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Special Forces' Trista Sutter on real tough exit, fake marriage drama