- “Love Is Blind” season eight featured singles from the Twin Cities area.
- Lauren and David were one couple who made it out of the pods, but they split before the weddings.
- Here’s what to know about their breakup and the aftermath, including what both have said about it.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead for “Love Is Blind” season eight.
“Love Is Blind” star Dave Bettenburg knows he screwed up when it comes to his breakup with Lauren O’Brien.
In season eight, Lauren, a 31-year-old working in educational sales, and Dave, a 33-year-old medical device salesman, were one of five Minneapolis couples we saw get engaged sight unseen after dating through a wall. Unfortunately, they weren’t destined to be one of the few successful “Love Is Blind” marriages, as they split in episode 11 before making it to the altar.
Since the breakup aired, both Lauren and Dave have addressed what happened between them. Dave, in particular, is facing backlash for his behavior, which has even extended to his family, and is struggling with feeling like he’s been misunderstood. Here’s a recap of their relationship and what they’ve each said about it since.
Dave and Lauren got engaged in the pods after being in a love triangle, but their relationship quickly deteriorated
Dave distinguished himself early on in the pods portion of the season when he opened all his first dates by asking the women what was wrong with them. Despite this — and the fact that he joked that Lauren was no longer attractive as a 30-year-old woman — the two built a relationship.
The first hint of what would become a major issue in their relationship happened on their second date in episode one, when they spoke about their families. He admitted that his sister wasn’t “thrilled” with him participating in the show, though he felt like it was the right decision.
The other major issue in the pods was that Dave also had a connection with another woman: Molly, a 30-year-old executive assistant. He continued to date both Molly and Lauren over the course of several episodes. Things finally came to a head in episode four, when Lauren confronted Dave and asked if he told Molly that she was his No. 1, as she’d heard Molly say in the women’s living quarters. In episode five, Dave said that he didn’t tell Molly that she was his No. 1, and that Lauren was the only person he had said he could see himself proposing to.
Later in that episode, Dave broke up with Molly. Afterward, Molly and Lauren had a heart-to-heart in the women’s quarters and agreed that David had put them in a poor position, ending their friendship on a good note.
Despite the drama, Lauren and Dave reconciled, and in episode five, he proposed to her. During the post-engagement group vacation in Honduras, the two enjoyed getting to know one another, though Dave seemed rather fixated on finding out whether the other couples had had sex yet (he and Lauren, he made very clear, had not).
And during a boat date in episode seven, Dave brought up what would ultimately be the downfall of their relationship: He had mutual friends with two guys Lauren had previously dated, and he didn’t know she’d been casually seeing someone right before going on the show. “It’s a little weird that I know them,” Dave said. “I don’t want that to affect our relationship when we go back.”
Spoiler alert: It did, in fact, affect their relationship.
Dave didn’t trust Lauren and his family didn’t want to meet her, which ultimately led to their breakup
Dave’s distrust of Lauren bled into the issues his family had with the whole process. He didn’t feel comfortable bringing Lauren to meet his family, who also didn’t seem eager to meet her, given their general dislike of the whole “Love Is Blind” process and what they’d heard from others about her.
In episode 10, Dave and Lauren once again argued over his friends and family’s refusal to meet her, saying he didn’t want to waste their time because he doesn’t have them meet just anyone. During a bowling date, Dave opined on how affected he was by everyone’s outside opinions on Lauren and their relationship.
“If you don’t see it with me, then I want to know,” Lauren told Dave. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.”
In episode 11, they went to an empty movie theater to continue the conversation, once again rehashing their different points of view over Lauren’s pre-“LIB” hookup: Dave believed Lauren wasn’t being truthful and hadn’t ended the relationship, while Lauren said that she and the guy she’d been seeing had “different interpretations” of their time together and that there was no “relationship” to end.
Ultimately, Dave broke up with Lauren after she said this was something he needed to work through himself. “You’re not ready to choose someone else and be a team member with them,” she said. Dave said he was still in love with Lauren and that it was hard for him to walk away, but Lauren didn’t believe that was true and said that he would have tried harder to work through their issues if he’d really loved her enough.
The two came face to face once again at the pod squad meetup in episode 11, where they each also spoke to Molly, Dave’s other pod connection. Molly first talked to Lauren privately, thanking Lauren again for being kind to her when she and Dave broke up. She revealed that she had heard another woman was “all over him” when they were at the same bar with other cast members on a night that Dave stayed out and slept at his apartment after arguing with Lauren.
Lauren was surprised to hear that but told Molly that she and Dave had already broken up the night before. They vented their mutual frustrations over Dave.
Molly and Dave then spoke privately, where Molly laid into Dave about his treatment of Lauren and getting so hung up on Lauren’s previous entanglement. She also criticized him for putting so much stock in his sister’s opinion, at the cost of his relationship with Lauren.
Dave told the cameras he wanted to text Lauren right after their breakup but didn’t. He then pulled Lauren aside, and they had an emotional conversation where Dave took responsibility for their breakup and acknowledged that he’d been closed off to her.
“It was my fault. It was my ego that got in the way of like seeing what we had. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m really sorry,” he told Lauren.
He confessed his love to Lauren again and said what they’d had was real, hinting he wanted to try again. Lauren told him she was sorry he was feeling bad and wanted to believe what he was saying, but it was too late.
“I think we’re past that,” she said.
Dave and Lauren getting back together after the show doesn’t seem likely, based on what they’ve said
In an interview with Glamour, Lauren reflected on the turning point in her relationship with Dave, saying she felt an immediate shift in him when they got their phones back while in the Honduras airport heading back to Minneapolis.
“I found out later that it was them basically telling him, ‘You just got engaged to someone with a boyfriend,'” Lauren said of Dave’s group chat with his friends.
She clarified that the man she’d been seeing knew all along that they weren’t in a serious relationship because she was in the casting process for “Love Is Blind,” and also criticized Dave for not trying to address the situation when the cameras weren’t rolling and only saving their discussions for filming. She said it was fair of Dave to question her, but not fair for him to exclude her from the conversations about her and not hear her side of the story.
Regarding Dave’s attempt to repair their relationship during the pod squad meet-up, Lauren said it felt “very disingenuous.”
“I didn’t understand how he could have made a complete 180 in the 24 hours since we’d seen each other,” she told Glamour. “And I was so emotionally exhausted trying to navigate this relationship by myself for a week and to now have him present in a way like he’s ready to tackle it, I just was so defeated. I didn’t believe that that was actually something that he was capable of doing.”
Lauren told People in a separate interview that she did feel like Dave obsessing over her sexual history may have just been an excuse for Dave to get out of their engagement, as fans have theorized.
Dave, for his part, told People that the reason their relationship failed was “mostly the timeline of everything” and him not knowing what really happened between Lauren and the man she was involved with before the show. He said that he’d only been hearing negative things about Lauren’s past: “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,” he said. “I just can’t justify that.”
He said that he would’ve been able to stay with Lauren and work past it if the end goal wasn’t marriage, and that was part of why he didn’t want to involve his family. “I got to the point where I was like, I’m not going to force my best friends and family members to come watch me say no at the altar when I knew that was going to be my answer based off of the information I had at that time,” he said.
Dave also told People that he and Lauren had spoken after filming and he’d expressed that he hoped she’d understand his point of view when the show came out. He said he was “absolutely” ready for marriage, despite Lauren’s criticism of him during their breakup conversation, and that “Love Is Blind” had helped him see that he could be vulnerable and meet his person.
He also told Vulture that it was tough for him and his family to be on the receiving end of so much hate as people watched him struggle on the show. “I’m being very misunderstood by a lot of people right now, and it’s very tough to deal with,” he said.
So, all in all, it seems like these two are extremely done. But never fear: If there’s any drama left to be wrung out of Lauren and Dave’s relationship, it’s sure to come up at the “Love Is Blind” reunion on Sunday.
The “Love Is Blind” season eight reunion will stream Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on Netflix.
