Love Is Blind star Dave Bettenburg has even more regrets about his relationship with Lauren O’Brien than fans saw at the season 8 reunion, calling her “the one that got away” in a new interview.
“Throughout this entire past year, I still thought what I initially thought was the truth, and now I just feel like an idiot,” Dave, 33, told People in a story published on Sunday, March 9.
Fans saw Dave and Lauren, 32, end their engagement ahead of the Love Is Blind weddings after arguing over her past fling — who happened to live in the same building as the then-couple. While Lauren repeatedly told Dave that her past relationship was nothing serious, Dave couldn’t handle getting texts from mutual friends about her alleged connection with this other guy.
“I’ve apologized to Lauren so many times. I believed the people that he was telling all this stuff to, and I didn’t know what else to do. There’s no real right answer to how to navigate that,” Dave continued. “I have this entirely different perspective and the way I’m seeing things. Because in that moment, when me and Lauren eventually don’t work out, and it’s mostly because of this guy, I’m just making the best judgment call I can in that time with the information that I have from people that I trust … There was no way I was going to spin that in her favor, unfortunately, at the time.”
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After watching the show and learning more, Dave believes that the other guy was “trying to manipulate his way into the show” and “fabricated” his story.
“Honestly, it’s embarrassing and it’s desperate for attention and it’s pathetic,” he said. “Watching what he’s doing right now is just pathetic. Me and Lauren have talked. We’re like, we don’t even want to talk about this guy and give him the attention that he wants. Because he’s been literally planning this for a year. Plotting and planning this behind the scenes, and flat-out lying to people that know me specifically so I would hear about it. That’s literally psychotic behavior. That’s not OK.”
When asked whether they could give things another shot, Dave replied that “it’s possible.”
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“We’ll see. I’m still kind of processing all this new information and just trying to understand why anybody would do that, and it’s just messed up. But maybe — I’m not going to say no, I’m not going to say yes,” he said. “I think once all this blows over the next few months or so, I’m sure me and Lauren, if we’re both single, talk about it and see if there’s some connection there. Because, I mean, I definitely still have feelings for her. I don’t know how she feels, but yeah.”
Lauren, for her part, spoke to Us Weekly last month about how blown out of proportion her relationship with “the other guy” was.
“I wouldn’t even consider it a situationship because if it were a situationship, it would be like, ‘Oh, do we wanna be together or not be together?’ And like, we weren’t having those conversations,” Lauren said. “He knew that I was having conversations with casting the entire time that we were talking. And I remember him saying, ‘We don’t need to take this very seriously.’ We were friends with benefits.”
At the time, Lauren “genuinely was so torn on who was in the right” when it came to fighting with Dave about the situation.
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“I knew my truth and I was trying to understand Dave’s perspective too. You see that a lot ’cause I give him a lot of grace,” she said. “But I was so in my head [that] I’m like, ‘Am I the one that’s morally wrong looking at this and I just am not seeing it?’ And it is very comforting to have the world be like, ‘No, you did nothing wrong.’ This is not a reflection of my inability to navigate a serious relationship. If anything, I think it gives me more credit that I can navigate relationships.”
Lauren didn’t seem to have any interest in reconnecting with Dave.
“There was definitely an element of sadness, but I do feel like you see the moment that I shift — when he starts to get mad at me and mad at my family,” she said of watching their breakup on the show. “The anger that came from him, I was done. I immediately knew we’re never getting past this. My husband would not speak to me like this. I hope that that comes across clear.”
