Love Is Blind season 8 couple Lauren O’Brien and David “Dave” Bettenburg struggled through almost all of their time together after leaving the pods. One of their biggest issues was Dave’s sister not approving of his relationship with Lauren, and in episode 10, he revealed that he never even introduced Lauren to her.
A conversation between Lauren, 31, and Dave, 33, became tense after the educational sales professional revealed that she wasn’t all that excited about meeting up with her costars the following day. Lauren admitted that she was nervous because “people would have opinions” regarding the casual relationship she was in before arriving to film season 8. Dave somewhat dismissed her fears, but Lauren reminded him that he dealt with the same thing concerning his sister not being on board with his engagement to her.
“I did, but I wasn’t expecting what I got. I just feel bad because, like, my sister … She just didn’t expect me to get this far or keep it going. I kind of led her on to be like, ‘It’s not going to,” Dave explained. “She’s like, ‘Why are you lying to me? Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?’ She just has such high expectations of me because she thinks I’m capable of so much. It wasn’t really supportive from the start.”
Lauren tried to calm Dave’s worries about his sister and said that she felt like things would be much better when she met his sister in person, but the medical device salesman didn’t agree. He pointed out that meeting Lauren’s dad, which happened off-camera, was “a lot for him to handle,” and it was revealed that she had never met a single member of Dave’s family.
“Well, it’s a lot for me to handle that your sister doesn’t want to meet me,” Lauren snapped back.
Dave did little to make Lauren feel better and instead told her, “My family doesn’t meet just anyone,” and that he didn’t want to “waste” his sister’s time by introducing her to Lauren. However, she argued that she had wanted to meet his family ever since they returned to Minneapolis.
“My friends and family would have been here if I really wanted them here. They would have showed up for me,” Dave said, just to add salt to the wound.
At that point, it became clear that Lauren and Dave weren’t going to make it to the altar and they went their separate ways. While Dave said that was “very hard to walk away” from his relationship with Lauren, “his heart” told him it was “the right decision.”
“I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m frustrated. We have such a great connection. I feel like I let her down in a way, because I couldn’t get over my own ego, my own pride that she could’ve seen some other guy before me, which is very normal,” he told producers during a confessional after their split. “I’m mad at myself for that, but I love her and I probably always will. But at the end of the day, this felt like the right decision. Love is blind, but I don’t think marriage is.”
Lauren was understandably heartbroken, but she confessed that if Dave was “in love with her enough,” her past relationships wouldn’t have bothered him this much.
“You wanna marry me but you’re not going to let me explain to your sister and your friends a hookup that I had?” Lauren asked the cameras through tears. “When he went to go see his sister like a week ago, I wrote her a letter to explain who I am and the whole situation and how crazy it is but how much I want to be with Dave and how much I love him and how much I care about her support, and he just didn’t give it to her. I’ve never been this pissed at someone but also sad for them and with them at the same time. I’m really sad this didn’t work out.”
