In our continuing Love Is Blind coverage, we tell more of the story you didn't see as we return to our interview with Danielle Drouin. The hit reality show made the error of underestimating their engagement success rate. The producers and production team didn't believe that they would have nearly as many engagements as they actually produced. In addition to the couples shown, two more couples became engaged by the end of the season.
Unfortunately, not everyone can be a Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed-Hamilton and have a picture-perfect romance on Love is Blind. Danielle found her match with Rory Newbrough, but their romance ended soon after leaving the pods. The main factor at the end of Rory and Danielle's relationship was Matt Thomas. Matt and Danielle also had a connection while dating in the Love is Blind pods.
Ultimately, Matt and Danielle became friends after her breakup with Rory, and that friendship turned romantic. In a previous article, we shared that things were going good between Danielle and Matt once they began dating:
I had really strong feelings for him. At the time, I thought it was the real deal. I even met his family. We spent the holidays together.
But the honeymoon stage didn't last too long for Matt and Danielle. as they had different ideas about what their future should hold. Danielle mentioned that Matt felt uneasy about the boyfriend-girlfriend label. This made her nervous about their relationship. She thought them ending up together meant that they were committed to each other. Danielle further shared: "I told him that I wanted to be official and he said that he didn't want to."
At the time, Danielle said that she told him that that was understandable and thought that he wanted to take time with their relationship before committing to it. Then Matt dropped a bombshell on her. He told her that he was still talking to another woman. One he met in Europe.
I guess over the summer, when he found out Rory and I got engaged, he made plans with her to go to Paris. A couple weeks into Matt and I talking again, he told me about this. He said 'Hey, when I found out that Rory and you were together, I decided to jump the gun and go visit the girl in Paris that I'm romantically interested in. '
Danielle said that she initially was shocked by the development and proceeded to ask Matt what this meant for their future.
And I said, 'Okay, but what does this mean?' He responded like 'Well, I'm not changing my plans right now. We'll see what happens.'
Danielle said she was concerned with that response, and months later after they had been seeing each other for a while and gotten pretty serious, she brought up the Paris trip again.
I was like 'Hey, you never brought up the Paris thing again. Are you still going to Paris?' He couldn't even talk to me. He called me over to his house about two days after I asked about Paris. He then basically gave me an ultimatum. He told me that he wanted to continue a relationship with me, but he didn't want to have restrictions and he doesn't like labels, He still wanted to see other people.
This wasn't where Danielle believed their relationship was headed.
I told him that wasn't the relationship I was looking for, and that if he went to Paris, I wasn't going to be around anymore. Because as a woman, I know my worth. I don't want to wait around until you decide that it's time to commit. I care about you and want to have a relationship with you, but I'm not looking for that kind of relationship. I was looking for something long term and someone to start a life with. So he went to Paris. We didn't talk after that for months.
Matt and Danielle's romance ended on not the best terms. Danielle was heartbroken and it took a while to heal from how things turned out. We'll continue to share more of Danielle's untold Love Is Blind story soon.
Screenrant edited this interview for clarity.