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SPOILER: Since their wedding, viewers have had questions over why Bartise and Nancy broke up from Love Is Blind season 3 and where they are now after they didn’t say “I do” at the altar.
Bartise Bowden and Nancy Rodriguez are two of 30 contestants from Love Is Blind season 3, which premiered on Netflix on October 19, 2022 and followed 15 men and 15 women from the Dallas, Texas, as they speed-dated in “Pods” where they can talk but not see each other. During their 10 days in “The Pods”, the couples decide if they wanted to get engaged—still sight unseen—or end their relationships for a better connection with someone else. After the proposal, the couples meet face-to-face for the first time and go on a honeymoon, where they learn more about each other and meet the other couples. After the trip, the couples, who all live in the same city, return to the real world and move into an apartment together as they meet each other’s families and friends and prepare for their weddings. At the altar on their wedding days, the couples must decide whether to marry or breakup as they answer the age-old question of if love can be truly blind.
Since Love Is Blind premiered on Netlix in 2020, the show has become one of service’s highest-rated series, with more than 30 million views in its first two months. “Across the world, everybody feels the same way: Everyone wants to be loved for who they are on the inside. It doesn’t matter where you live, what you look like, how old you are, what your background is, which class you know, or social structure you feel like you’re a part of, everyone wants to be loved for who they are,” creator Chris Coelen told Variety in 2020. “In today’s society we’ve got all these ways to find love through dating apps and technology. Those things sort of counterintuitively have made people feel disposable. They’ve made people feel like it’s all surface level. It does the opposite thing it was supposed to do. So we thought, what if we took everybody’s devices away, how could we get them to focus on connecting with other people?”
Coelen also told Variety about how the connections on Love Is Blind were based on choice, which is why the relationships were that much stronger. “It was incredibly scary because nobody had to do anything, versus a show like we do Married at First Sight, you sign up and you know, you’re getting married to a stranger. Here, nobody had to do anything. It was if you find someone, if you choose. Which is so scary. They don’t have to go through with the wedding ceremony,” he said. “But assuming they found someone, could that love overcome any judgment in the real world? That’s an incredibly fascinating question. And that’s what we set out to try to examine.”
But back to Bartise and Nancy. So…why did Bartise and Nancy break up from Love Is Blind season 3 and are they back together after filming ended? Here’s what we know about why Bartise and Nancy broke up on Love Is Blind season 3 and where they are now since they ended their engagement on their wedding day.
SPOILER: Why did Bartise and Nancy break up from Love Is Blind season 3?
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
Why did Bartise and Nancy break up from Love Is Blind season 3? Bartise and Nancy broke up in episode 11 of Love Is Blind season 3 after Bartise told Nancy “I do not” at the altar of their wedding. The County of Dallas’ official public records system also confirmed Bartise and Nancy didn’t get married at the same time as the other married Love Is Blind season 3 couples, as the county’s search system didn’t have a record of their marriage license. “We’re absolutely best friends, yes, but what I’ve gone through in the real world with you, with your family, with everything we talked about, there’s no way for me in my head that it makes sense to get up there and say ‘yes,’” Bartise told Nancy after he broke up with her.
In an interview with Extra after the Love Is Blind season 3 finale, Bartise explained he broke up with Nancy because he never had a sure moment he wanted to marry her. “There were multiple points through our journey that I felt like I was going to say no. There were also multiple points where… I was like, damn, I could say yes here,” he said. “If I’m thinking this hard about it and struggled this hard, the answer cannot be yes.”
Nancy, for her part, accused Bartise of leading her on in the weeks before their wedding. “Bartise completely turned things around for us,” she said. “He made me believe up until the date of our wedding that he was going to say yes. Any of the doubts that he had, he clarified on one of our last dinners that he was going to set that aside because he was able to see the future with me.” She continued, “Literally minutes before the altar was when he sent me the [tequila] shot and on the note it said, ‘Let’s do the damn thing.’” She believed the note was “validation” Bartise would also say “I do.” Bartise, for his part, called the note his “only regret” from Love Is Blind. “That’s the one thing I actually regret about this whole experiment… I made mistakes along the whole way, but from those mistakes, like they aren’t really regrets because I wouldn’t be able to learn from them, but the shot I do regret. The shot was kind of the like the result of me going through a complete emotional breakdown,” he said. “She had sent me this beautiful gift and I kind of felt like I owed her something and so I wanted to send her a tequila shot with a little note attached and… I was not in the right mindset to decide.” He continued, “[The] shot by itself would have been fine, but the note that came attached was just over the top. I actually watched it last night with my mom and sister here at the house and I break down every time seeing that gift and then seeing me and my mom walk towards the aisle. It’s very hard.”
Nancy told People after the Love Is Blind season 3 finale that she didn’t have any regrets over her experience and would do the show again, but she wouldn’t date another 25-year-old like Bartise. “I think for me, the person I did the experience with was the person that I was supposed to be with and I wouldn’t have changed that,” she said. “So would I do this all over again? Absolutely. Would I do it with a 25-year-old? No, thank you.” Bartise, for his part told People about what he’d learned from his time on Love Is Blind. “I love my journey with Nancy because, especially watching it back and watching myself, kind of feeling embarrassed to have watched myself say some of the stuff that I said and ashamed of myself,” he says. “I like that journey because I’m able to learn from it and grow from it.” He continued, “I learned that I need to be more sensitive to my partner’s emotions and not speak my mind to the fullest at all times, which I put my foot in my mouth.”
Are Bartise and Nancy back together after Love Is Blind season 3?
Image: Netflix.
Are Bartise and Nancy back together after Love Is Blind season 3? The answer is no. During the Love Is Blind season 3 reunion, Bartise and Nancy confirmed they weren’t back together and were still broken up. Nancy also accused Bartise of going on a date with a “tall blonde” the “next day” after their wedding. “He had a tall blonde by his side. I just saw some things on social media. It was posting a video of the scene, and you caught Bartise and this tall blonde next to him and then that same tall blonde over the weekend on his lap, all over him. To me, it goes back to, ‘The fuck?’” Nancy said. Bartise confirmed he was with a blonde in the video Nancy saw but didn’t hook up with her until a few days later. “Yes, there was a blonde girl with me, but that night, nothing happened. Something eventually happened on July 4th on a boat. There was a lot of drinking and a lot of coping I was doing. To be honest, I don’t think my sex life is anybody’s business,” Bartise said.
In an interview with People after the Love Is Blind season 3 reunion, Nancy explained that she and Bartise have a “respectful” relationship with one another but weren’t back together. “Right after the wedding, we took time apart,” she said. “I think for me, you saw me, I was like, ‘It’s black and white. You said no. I’m out.’ I had to do that to protect myself, because at that point I was so blindsided that I needed to process how did this happen?” She continued, “Rewatching it, it was like, ‘Oh, that’s how it happened.’ I would hope that Bartise and I could be friends at some point and later on in life, maybe in his 30s, we can be friends. But I don’t see the benefit of us being friends at this point.”
Bartise also told People that he would consider Nancy closer to an “acquaintance” than a friend. “Right now, we are, I would call [us] acquaintances,” he said. “Our depiction on Love Is Blind was very much a rollercoaster. It was up and down, and that’s continued to be what it has been — but not romantic. So we’ve gone from friends to acquaintances, to no communication to disliking each other, back to friends, and right now, I would say we’re acquaintances.”
Nancy also told Extra that she didn’t consider Bartise a “friend” at the time. “I’ve spoken to him. Honestly we’re on talking terms. I don’t think friendship is like a way to put it. I don’t think we’re friends,” she said. Bartise, for his part, told Extra that he still wanted Nancy to be a part of his life. “I want her to be a part of my life, you know, until I’m gone from this earth… Our journey through ‘Love Is Blind’ those six and a half, seven weeks was a roller coaster… Since then, it has continued to be a roller coaster…” he said. “We’ve kind of moved on and experienced other relationships and tried to manage a friendship or acquaintance… As of right now we’re friends, we’re cordial.” When asked if there’s a chance she and Bartise could get back together, Nancy responded, “Yeah, right! I’m totally single and honestly, I’m open to dating.” Bartise, for his part, told Extra that he wasn’t focused on dating at the time. “I’m interested in, like, self-growth right now, and I don’t think I would be growing as fast as I could by myself if I had somebody you know, next to me,” he said.
Who is Bartise from Love Is Blind season 3?
Image: Ser Baffo/Netflix.
Who is Bartise from Love Is Blind season 3? Bartise Bowden is a 27-year-old from Dallas, Texas. He listed his job on Love Is Blind season 3 as a “Senior Analyst.” His Instagram handle is @bartiseb. “Little bit of fitness, lots of fun,” his Instagram bio reads. According to his Linkedin, Bartise works as a Senior Analyst at VMG Health, where she’s worked since January 2021. Before that, she worked as a Senior Associate and Audit Associate at KPMG and an Accounting Tutor at Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, where he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He also graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2018 with a master of science in accounting.
Who is Nancy from Love Is Blind season 3?
Image: Ser Baffo/Netflix.
Who is Nancy from Love Is Blind season 3? Nancy Rodriguez is a 32-year-old from Dallas, Texas. She listed her job on Love Is Blind season 3 as a “Real Estate Investor.” Her Instagram handle is @thenancyrodriguez. She graduated from Temple High School in Temple, Texas in 2008, where she performed as the school mascot. “For her to tell me she’s going to get married in the next 30 days. It was like okay don’t pass out, don’t pass out,” her mother, Erendira Diaz told KWTX News 10 in October 2022. Her mother continued, “I couldn’t believe it because she told me she didn’t believe in marriage. So for her, doing it I was like okay baby I’m not going to say much, but I’m here to support you.”
Where was Love Is Blind season 3 filmed?
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
Love Is Blind season 3 was filmed in Dallas, Texas. Love Is Blind season 1 was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, while season 2 was filmed in Chicago, Illinois. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2020, Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen explained that each season casts contestants from the same city so long distance isn’t a factor in their relationships. “It was a really interesting and diverse cast in terms of the fact that they were all from many different places originally,” he said. “But they were all living around the Atlanta area [at the time of casting]. The reason that we did that was because we wanted to give these people a real shot at making their relationships work for the long term.”
He continued, “Whether you think [love] is going to happen or not, we wanted people that would be ready to be married. If you’re really in it—genuinely in it, which was the No. 1 casting criteria—it felt to us that it was too much of a bridge for someone living in Miami and someone living in Seattle to build. We thought let’s at least start with them in the same geographical area.”
Coelen also explained to Variety in 2020 about why he wanted each Love Is Blind season to cast contestants from the same city. “We wanted people to all be living, currently in the same place. It’s too difficult if you’re from Tampa and they’re from Portland, that just throws another wrench in. We wanted to give them a real shot at making their love and their marriage working,” he said. Coelen also told Variety at the time about the locations he was looking at for future Love Is Blind seasons. “Look, the idea is that ultimately we’re going to do this in other countries—it’s very global. There’s lots of places that that we could take it. Chicago is a great place to look at, so is New York, Boston, Houston. There’s so many different places that we could go. And like I said, outside of the country as well,” he said.
Coelen also told Oprah magazine in 2020 that The Pods lasted around 10 days, which started with a series of speed dates between contestants that lasted between eight to 12 minutes. We did a ranking system, from who you though was most compatible to least compatible after the first date. Every day, the list got shorter and shorter,” Love Is Blind season 1 contestant Mark Cuevas told Oprah magazine at the time. Coelen also told Oprah magazine made the cast smaller a few days into the The Pods stage to focus on the contestants forming “real connections.” “We ended up focusing on people who were really forming real connections,” he said.
Though the dates started short, Coelen told Variety that the producers allowed contestants to have longer dates once they saw how strong their connections were. “In the beginning nobody knew who anybody was. So we structured it so that they would have an opportunity to talk to everyone. They were never given any instruction on what to say or what not to say or what they could ask about or what they couldn’t ask about. And you see on the show, some people decided to [ask] ‘How tall are you, what do you look like?’” he said. “Other people were like, ‘Why would I ever do that? That’s not the point of this.’ We really wanted it to be their own story, their own journey. We would set it up so they had the opportunity to talk to everybody. Then from that point [it was monitored]. Let’s say somebody really wanted to talk to you and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I have no interest in that person.’”
He continued, “You’re not going to talk to them. It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to arrange people to speak to one another where somebody’s like, ‘yeah, I don’t want to talk to that person.’ We just wouldn’t do that. Multiple points throughout the day we had to break and they had to eat, go to the bathroom, go do interviews, but generally we wanted to give them as much time in the pods as possible with the people that they genuinely wanted to talk to. These dates are obviously cut down but they were hours and hours and hours long.”
Who are the Love Is Blind season 3 hosts?
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
The Love Is Blind season 3 hosts are Nick Lachey and Vanessa Lachey, who have hosted the series since it premiered in February 2020. The couple also hosted season 1 of Netflix’s The Ultimatum. Nick was the lead singer of the boy band 98 Degrees from 1996 to 2012. The group reunited in 2012 and are still together. Nick has also released four solo alums: SoulO, What’s Left of Me, A Father’s Lullaby and Soundtrack of My Life. He was married to Jessica Simpson from 2002 to 2006, and the two also starred in their own reality show, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica on MTV, from 2003 to 2005. Nick is also the winner of season 5 of The Masked Singer during which he performed as the character “Piglet.” Vanessa was the 1998 Miss Teen USA and was a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and Total Request Live on MTV. She’s the current lead in CBS’ NCIS spinoff, NCIS: Hawai’i, which premiered in 2021.
In an interview with Distractify in March 2022, Nick explained that he and Vanessa wanted to host Love Is Blind because of how their own relationship was long distance when they first started dating. “When Netflix approached us with Love is Blind all those years ago, we jumped at the opportunity because the show really spoke to us personally,” Nick said. “When we first started dating, Vanessa was in New York and I was in Los Angeles. We didn’t get to see each other a lot so we had a lot of long phone conversations, learning everything we possibly could about each other.” He continued, “[Those conversations were] really important for building our relationship and knowing we wanted the same things before there were external pressures on the relationship.” Nick also told Distractify that he and Vanessa want contestants to “fall in love for the right reasons and then introduce everything else.”
Nick also told People in 2022 about how he thinks Love Is Blind would’ve worked for him and Vanessa if they had met in The Pods. “We’ve thought about that, often. And I really, I’m not just saying this for the benefit of this show, I think we would’ve,” he said. “We have the same birthday, we have the same passions, we have the same interests, we have the same drive. Things that motivated us.” Vanessa asked “You would’ve found me through a wall?” to which Nick responded, “I would find you anywhere.” He continued, “I really do think we would’ve found each other. I think we would’ve gravitated to each other. That’s what we did in life. Obviously, we knew each other.” Vanessa added, “We did. We had to find our journey to get to each other.”
Nick also claimed to Us Weekly in 2022 that he would’ve joined Love Is Blind if he was single. “I would. I mean, it’s fascinating,” he said. “Especially having seen the success of season 1 and seeing two loving couples still married to this day? If I watched that and I was looking for love, why wouldn’t you wanna be a part of that? You know, it’s proven to work!” He added, “This dating world is not one I ever was part of — this very superficial ‘swipe left.’ There’s so much judgment and you can Google everybody. I’m not from that era.”
Love Is Blind season 3 is available to stream on Netflix.
Image: Courtesy of Gallery Book.
For more about Love Is Blind, read Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed’s 2021 book, Leap of Faith: Finding Love the Modern Way. In the book, Cameron and Lauren, who were one of two couples to marry from Love Is Blind season 1, share their “engaging and accessible love advice for the modern world” and reveal exclusive behind-the-scenes details from the Netflix series and what went down in The Pods that viewers didn’t see. The book is told from Cameron and Lauren’s alternating points of view as the fan-favorite couple dishes on what it was really like to marry a “faceless stranger” on television and opens up about how their relationship shifted—”for better and for worse”—once cameras stopped rolling and Lauren and Cameron’s relationship continued in the real world. Leap of Faith: Finding Love the Modern Way is a must-read for any Love Is Blind fan.
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