Greg Gayne/Netflix
Love Is Blind’s Lauren Claims Ex ‘Applied’ to Be on the Show, But He Says Casting Contacted Him
Love Is Blind star Lauren O’Brien found herself in the middle of one of the most dramatic relationships of season 8, and it all centered around a casual relationship she was in before arriving to the pods. She recently revealed that the man, Daniel Nides, had actually applied to be on Love Is Blind.
“I found out about this like three days ago,” Lauren, 31, said during her Wednesday, March 12, appearance on former LIB star AD Smith’s “What’s the Reality?” podcast. “He full-on applied to be on the show. I don’t know if he did that before or after because he knew that I was talking to casting from the minute we started talking, and I don’t know if he applied before or after I gave him that information. I just found out about this.”
The educational sales professional continued, “He never f–king told me that. Why would he? It would have totally contradicted his whole narrative that he’s spinning right now.”
However, Daniel said that wasn’t the case when he spoke with Life & Style.
“Part of producing a show like Love is Blind entails reaching out to hundreds, if not thousands, of singles in the targeted market. I was solicited, like many of my single friends, to apply. No application was ever sent,” Daniel explained. “This is just another example of how the story keeps changing to fit whatever narrative suits her best at the moment. Relationships are hard and can be confusing. I think we all try to rationalize or remember what happened to paint ourselves in a better light.”
Daniel went on to add that he thinks Lauren and her ex-fiancé David “Dave” Bettenburg “are good people” and said that he understood that “how they remember things and what actually happened can be distorted by time and over analyzing.”
The main reason Lauren and Dave, 33, never made it to the altar was his inability to get past the fact that he had mutual friends with someone she had previously been in a casual relationship with. Neither Lauren nor Dave ever mentioned Daniel by name, and instead, he revealed his own identity by sharing a photo that looked identical to the ones Love Is Blind creates for their cast members’ promo pictures.
Despite Lauren’s constant reassurance that she and Daniel were never in a serious relationship, Dave was worried about committing to her knowing she was with someone else shortly before arriving to film season 8. Lauren said that while they tried to work through the issue after leaving the pods and vacationing in Honduras, she felt a shift in Dave after they returned to their lives in Minneapolis.
“I could feel a shift from [Dave] pretty immediately when we got our phones back, but at that point, I did not realize how big of a story this other guy was. I just didn’t understand it,” Lauren said while speaking to Vulture in an interview published on February 22.
Dave and Lauren parted ways and since then, the medical device salesman has opened up about their breakup.
“I am hearing all these things and I’m just like, there’s just no way I’m going to marry this person if that’s what she was doing coming into it,” Dave told People during an interview published on March 1. “I just can’t justify that.”
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