Now that Love Is Blind is officially over, the couples who ended up saying “I do” can settle into married life. Only two couples out from the experiment made it down the aisle. Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McNeely and Danielle Ruhl and Nick Thompson. At the reunion, both couples seemed perfectly happy and in love. But it took work to get there.
In an interview with Us Weekly, the couple explained how they continue to work on their relationship after the show. Nick confessed, “I think the biggest challenge for us was losing the structure of the show. We quickly realized like, ‘Hey, two months ago, we weren’t married, we were single. Since then, we’ve met and married, we have friends, we have family, everybody — some people know, some people don’t.’”
He added, “And so, it’s like, ‘How do you navigate these waters and how do you go from doing whatever you want two months ago to, like, being part of a family?’”
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Once the show wrapped, the two went to couples therapy to build the “framework” of their marriage. They also wanted to work on their communication. Something that was seemingly a rough spot for them on the show. Said Nick, “[I’m] learning that I need to listen more and talk less in some of those situations.”
For her part, Danielle experienced a lot of anxiety during filming. She now explains that their love is “such a different relationship” than fans saw on the show. Said Danielle, “Him and I fell in love so quickly and because we both knew at the end of the day we wanted to stay together, we did feel so pressured to figure out what was the best route for us to take.”
Danielle continued, “That created this, like, pressure cooker environment that we felt like, ‘Oh, my God, like what do we do?’ And we both came to the conclusion, like, ‘It’s us, like, we’re spending the rest of our lives together.’ I just can’t wait for people to see the relationship that we have now.”
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Nick revealed that cooking and going to new restaurants together has been a high point of their new relationship. Noting that they were “all these things that we had always wanted to do and have someone to do with.” But he added that their communication is still something they are working on.
Danielle divulged, “The couple therapist literally was like, ‘Danielle, you speak French. He speaks German. And when you’re talking to each other, it doesn’t translate. And it takes months, years sometimes, to be able to actually communicate with each other.’ And so the harder we try, the more our therapist is a translator for us, the easier it becomes.”
She went on, “And like, even with my anxiety — and we both go through our stresses — one time, I might need to be alone. One time, I might need him to hug me. And I have to realize, I can’t assume that he is gonna know how to be there for me. I have to verbalize, ‘This is what I need from you right now,’ and be patient with him not completely, always understanding what to do in those situations.”
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Nick also mentioned that the couple established “rules” on how to handle their conflicts. He elaborated, “I don’t think there should be any stigma around getting therapy individually, getting therapy with a couple because, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. We’re all coming [from] a different place and you can’t fault someone for that.”
Remember Danielle’s Rock Band set? Which Nick immediately took issue with? She said that his friends are using it more than she does. Danielle joked, “The Rock Band set’s here, the costumes are here. He wears the costumes more than I do. We figured it all out. Compromise, compromise.”
TELL US – DID YOU THINK DANIELLE AND NICK WOULD GET MARRIED? DID YOU ENJOY WATCHING THEM AS A COUPLE? WILL THEY STAY TOGETHER?
[Photo Credit: Netflix]
