- David Bettenburg made waves in the pods on season 8 of “Love Is Blind” with his opening line.
- The 33-year-old started some of his conversations by asking his dates, “What’s wrong with you?”
- He doesn’t regret the line. “Using a little humor helped me figure out who I connected with,” he said.
Dating through a wall on “Love Is Blind” requires a good icebreaker. So season eight cast member David Bettenburg settled on a provocative one: “What’s wrong with you?”
Not every woman took his remarks in stride — at least one retorted with “What’s wrong with you?” — but Bettenberg told Business Insider he wasn’t surprised the line didn’t land with everyone. In fact, using the question as a litmus test to find people who got his sense of humor was the point.
“A lot of them knew I was just playing around because we would laugh right away,” Bettenburg said. “Using a little humor helped me figure out who I connected with the most because we only had limited time in the very beginning.”
While the response to his opener has drawn some ire on social media, with some calling the line akin to negging, Bettenburg stands by it.
“I’m not sure if I’d use that exact line if I had to do it over, but I would stick with the same strategy because it helped me figure out who was a better connection than others, which is the whole goal of the experiment,” he said.
Bettenburg formed strong connections in the pods with two women: Lauren O’Brien and Molly Mullaney, and he proposed to O’Brien after making the difficult decision to break up with Mullaney in the pods.
Though Bettenburg can’t reveal what the future held for him and O’Brien until the rest of the “Love Is Blind” episodes are released on the streamer in the ensuing weeks, he said his experience on the reality dating show was transformative.
“I learned a lot about myself both inside the pods and out since the experiment started,” he said. “It was verification to me that I am absolutely ready for marriage.”
New episodes of “Love Is Blind” are released Fridays on Netflix.
