Ok, I will admit it – I am obsessed with Love Is Blind. While I could have done without all the recapping/flashbacks in the wedding episode (hello, Netflix, this is a binge show and I just watched all that today), the end really kept me on the edge of my seat. It didn’t disappoint. I think it was safe to assume some of the couples, ahem, Jessica Batten and Mark Cuevas, weren’t going to leave with a happy ending, but some of them really threw me for a loop.
One couple that surprised fans was Kenny Barnes and Kelly Chase. They seemed into each other. Sure, Kelly did mention some lack of sexual excitement but she seemed full steam ahead for the majority of the show. It wasn’t until the finale that I realized something was amiss. Her whole demeanor changed and she seemed less than excited about what was going to happen. While getting ready for her “wedding”, she seemed uncomfortable and anxious. I knew it was over when she put zero effort into her makeup. That was a huge tell that this was not going to be her true wedding day as no bride would walk down the aisle like that. Just saying. But when Kelly said “I don’t”, it sunk in that this just wasn’t there time to get married. Still, there seemed to be a lot of love there and that doesn’t just go away.
For that reason, I kind of assumed that they might continue their connection after the show. According to People, the couple later said they were adamant about not getting married on the show but they weren’t on the same page about what would happen next. Kelly said, “I thought that we were going to continue dating, because that was communicated between us. And then it was our last filming day, and he had a conversation with me like, ‘Hey, I think I am not emotionally available right now. I need to take some time apart from you.’ I felt very rejected, like, ‘That wasn’t the plan. What the heck?’”
She continued, holding back tears, “A week or two later, we hadn’t talked. I’d just talked to him for six and a half weeks straight, and then I didn’t talk to him. So it was like I lost someone. It was hard.”
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From Kenny’s side, taking a break from the relationship was about his own feelings and not just about her. “I just needed to focus on myself,” he explains. “We’d been so adamant about we’re not getting married, we’re really not engaged. We’ll pursue, dating afterwards, but to be candid, it was in that moment, because of the stress that it caused my friends, my family, also hers, it was like, I was just being cognizant of this is all real, these emotions are real. What we went through was a real experience. But life is way more complex than this. And I need to get my framework right.”
A few weeks after they finished shooting and didn’t talk, Kelly decided to reach out to Kenny.“I actually wrote him a handwritten letter, not like saying like, ‘I’m in love with you,’ not crazy, but just like, ‘I really enjoyed getting to know you, and I do love you and I want to continue loving getting to know you even more,’” Kelly admits. “I never got a response from it, which maybe just freaked him out, but I was just releasing a lot of emotions.”
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Kenny still hasn’t responded. “Looking back, I think it’s reflective of how I had been and how I have evolved since then,” Kelly says. “I don’t like being rejected, for one. It’s happened, but also it’s me trying to have control of the situation, and I lost control. He let go, and I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And so it was me trying to, with writing the letter, I wanted to make it happen, and I just needed to take a step back. And I did.”
A few months later, Kelly tried again. “I don’t remember what I said verbatim, but I just apologized,” she explains. Kelly recalled, “I was like, ‘Maybe that was too much, that letter. I was just expressing how I felt in that time.’ I said, ‘But it’s water under the bridge at this point.’ And that was it. I didn’t bring it up again.”
Kelly concluded, “I felt like I lost someone. That’s why I’m emotional now. And that’s probably why I got emotional watching the show back myself. All these feelings started coming up again for me. … Maybe had I not written that letter and maybe had I just let him go and reset, who knows what would’ve happened? Maybe he would have been like, ‘You know what? I actually do miss you. And I’m going to come back.’ I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.”
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Poor Kelly! This is not the way I wanted things to end up for them, but it sounds like she didn’t either.
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TELL US- DO YOU THINK KELLY DESERVED TO BE GHOSTED BY KENNY?
[Photo Credit: Netflix]