Love Is Blind stars Sara Carton and Ben Mezzenga seemed to have an amicable split during the season 8 finale, but their relationship wasn’t without its own bumps in the road. Soon after returning home from the pods, Sara was sent a TikTok video a woman had made about Ben.
“In hindsight, when I think back to the time when I saw it for the first time, I had feelings involved. I was hearing Ben’s side of the story, I was seeing all of online’s side of the story. It wasn’t small,” Sara, 29, told Love Is Blind hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey in the episode that premiered on Sunday, March 9. “There were thousands of comments on that, and that concerned me, but I chose to trust Ben.”
She continued, “Knowing what I know now about Ben, a TikTok like that makes sense. I’m not surprised.”
Sara revealed that despite saying no at the altar, she and Ben, 28, had decided to continue their relationship and actually lived together for two weeks until she had to head to Nashville to finish out a travel nursing contract she had there. They had spoken about the situation before the wedding and had initially planned for Ben to come with her and live out there between two weeks and two months. However, the day she drove to Nashville, she said she didn’t hear from Ben “that much,” but she “didn’t think much about it” because she knew “he was out with friends.”
“When I get to Nashville, that’s when I noticed that he had removed me from Find My Friends [a location sharing app], which I was shocked to see. I was really confused because I thought we left on good terms, and I honestly thought Ben was going to be in Nashville that week with me,” Sara shared. “So I was confused. That was out of left field.”
Sara said that she then texted Ben only to receive “three very scripted apologies” in reply. After that, she said that she didn’t hear from him for “a month-and-a-half.” When the former couple did finally speak, Ben admitted that he had “talked to a past cast member,” Sara claimed. The cast member allegedly told Ben to “be on good terms” with Sara and advised them to “practice reunion questions together.”
“That was the day I had the most clarity of who Ben was,” Sara confessed.
While Ben refused to reveal who the cast member was, Sara announced that it was Jimmy Presnell from season 6.
Nick, 51, gave Ben a chance to tell his side of the story and he claimed that he was under the impression that he and Sara were “broken up” when she left for Nashville. Ben also said that he made sure Sara got to Nashville safely, but after that he removed her from the location app.
Ultimately, the two did not agree on the events that transpired, and Sara “fell” for Ben’s act.
Fans saw Sara seemingly receive the TikTok video from one of her friends while she and Ben were sitting on the couch in their apartment. In the video, a woman discussed an ex-boyfriend who had treated her poorly, and while she never mentioned Ben by name, fans quickly figured out that she was referring to him.
“I think she’s referencing me. I had seen it. Literally when we were at the brewery,” Ben told the oncology nurse when she asked about it. “I saw this come out, and I’m like, ‘Screw this.’ I don’t want to give her any ability to do anything with me if she decides to release my name or anything. I don’t want to give her control over that, so I blocked her. And because she had blocked me from seeing her TikTok feed.”
The former college baseball player told Sara that he thought that he and the woman, Andra Berghoff, had met on Tinder but had “never hooked up.” He also said that Andra was “overreacting.”
Ultimately, Ben and Sara decided to go their separate ways at the altar, and she has since spoken about her feelings when it came to learning about the viral TikTok.
“The TikTok was hard. The TikTok is when I was like, ‘I have a lot more I need to get to know about Ben.’ I don’t want that to make it seem like that was my decision-maker because I continued moving forward thinking, ‘We can get past this.’ But that was big for me,” Sara admitted to Us Weekly in an interview published on March 7. “And that was big for my family, for trust and making sure this is a safe person to be with and to get married.”
Plus, that wasn’t the only social media post Sara received about Ben from people. One person claimed that, in the past, he’d left a business card advertising his YouTube channel with his flings.
“I received that YouTube card [or a picture of it] five days before the wedding. It was actually sent to me from a friend in Nashville. I was a travel nurse at the time in Nashville and his friend sent it to him. I was like, ‘This is crazy,’” Sara told the outlet.
She continued, “I kept it very close to my heart. I was like, ‘I can’t handle anything more. I cannot bring this up.’ So I just didn’t. That was just one more thing [that] made me feel like, ‘OK, he may not be as genuine as he is saying or seems to be.’ And it all made sense after the wedding.”
In the end, Sara felt like she and Ben “never progressed” in their relationship, which was a big part of why she decided to say no.
“I was constantly asking and talking to him about these values way more than I ever would. Like, they’re important to me, but I wasn’t asking [about these topics] just to ask him — I wasn’t getting anything in return,” she concluded.
