Love Is Blind’s Lauren Felt a ‘Shift’ in Dave’s Attitude After Getting Their Phones Back

Love Is Blind star Lauren O’Brien opened up about her relationship with fiancé David “Dave” Bettenburg after they returned to Minneapolis. The couple were finally able to get their phones back after their time in the pods, and several people already knew about their engagement.

“I was so excited to call my parents and my friends. They were waiting on the edge of their seats,” Lauren, 31, said during an interview with Vulture published on Saturday, February 22. “I hadn’t turned on my phone in three weeks, and based on the information I had given them, they could use some deductive reasoning skills and realize I was engaged. They had a lot of questions, and I was genuinely excited.”

Along with news of their engagement, Dave, 33, learned that he had some mutual friends with a man who Lauren had previously been involved with in a casual relationship before coming on the show.

She continued, “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.”

However, Lauren felt that the unnamed man was lying about the type of relationship they had to have a chance of getting some airtime himself.

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“Me and him had never once talked about anything beyond a friends-with-benefits situation. We never had serious conversations about that — or much in general,” Lauren claimed. “When we got back and I was hearing his version of things, it felt like a 180 compared to any conversation we ever had. I was so confused where it came from.”

Lauren added that the man “reached out” and “asked to talk” to her, and when she replied to his text he asked if she “wanted to talk in person.” His request immediately raised some red flags for the educational sales professional.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh, do you want to get a camera op? Is that where this is coming from?’ Those are the things that are jumping out to me,” Lauren said.

During episodes 7 through 9 of Love Is Blind season 8, viewers saw Dave struggle with the news that Lauren had been in a situationship shortly before she arrived to participate in the series.

“So, Dave was like, ‘Did you date anyone before coming on here?’” Lauren said during a confessional while the two were vacationing with the other couples in Honduras. “I go, ‘I was, like, talking to someone a couple of months ago, but I wouldn’t have said that I dated them,’ but Dave has mutual friends with him. So I was giving him names and he’s like, ‘Oh I know him. I see him at the pool all the time.”

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The news unsettled Dave and he admitted that he was uncomfortable knowing that Lauren had been intimate with someone his friends actually knew.

“It is going to be weird for me that I know both of your exes,” Dave explained while he and Lauren lounged on a boat. “Not, like, well, but I know them. It’s a little weird that I know them. Again, I don’t know them well … And I don’t want that to affect our relationship when we go back. I asked you if you were seeing anyone right before this experiment started. Hearing that I was like, ‘OK…’”

Later, he told the cameras, “How do you go from seeing someone so recently to like, ‘I’m ready for marriage?’ That just seems like a huge step in between, where it’s like … how did you … I don’t know. That’s tough.”

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The situation eventually hit a boiling point when Dave couldn’t get past the news, and he told Lauren he wasn’t comfortable staying in their shared apartment in Minneapolis. However, fans will have to wait to see exactly how the rest of Lauren and Dave’s relationship plays out when the next batch of Love Is Blind season 8 episodes premiere on February 28.