Love Is Blind Cast Members Opened Up About Their Unaired Season 4 Engagements

Each Love Is Blind season introduces several singles who viewers don’t see again after the pods. Though fans might assume the reason is that those cast members didn’t make a connection or get engaged to move on to the next phase of the social experiment, that’s not always the case. The Netflix reality series’ fourth season followed five couples to the second stage of their relationships in Mexico, but the streamer recently revealed that there were actually seven pod engagements — but two of the proposals were cut from the show completely.

In Love Is Blind Season 4, the two unaired engagements were between Jimmy Forde and Wendi Kong, and Josh “JP” Schultz and Ava Van Jenson. After bonding over common interests, Wendi accepted Jimmy’s proposal in the pods, but producers did not select them as one of the five couples to travel to Mexico. So they returned home to Seattle and continued to date for about three months before calling it quits due to their differing views on dating. Despite the split, Wendi and Jimmy remained on friendly terms.

“I gave it my best shot, but our relationship didn’t work out, and that’s okay!” Jimmy captioned an April 16 Instagram post, in part. “Wish Wendi nothing but the best in life, and future relationships.”

Ava and JP’s breakup wasn’t quite as amicable, however. After JP’s other connections, Chelsea Griffin and Micah Lussier, chose other men, he proposed to Ava, who had been interested in him from the beginning. As soon as they left the pods, their relationship shifted. “I saw him at the airport and he was a completely different person,” Ava told Netflix’s Tudum. “As we were boarding the plane, I felt my phone vibrate and it pinged a bit and I looked down and he sent me a text basically ending the engagement.” As JP put it, he felt “continuing to get married on this timeline” wasn’t realistic outside of the show.

On April 15, Ava accused JP of only joining the Netflix series for fame, sharing a TikTok he reposted about fans campaigning for him to join Perfect Match Season 2. “I went looking for real love on [Love Is Blind],” she captioned her Instagram post, adding that her ex “just wanted 58 seconds” of fame and to be on Perfect Match. In the comments section, she also wrote that, about a year after the show filmed, JP has still “never had a conversation with me in person after ending an engagement by text as we boarded the plane together.” Ava also hinted at “other damaging events happened off the text,” claiming that he told her he “couldn’t get past” her physical appearance.

“I came to this experiment with an open heart and open mind looking for true love. Unfortunately I was met with fraud. Deceit. Lies. Bullying. Many of which happened after the filming,” she captioned a separate April 15 Instagram post, promising to share more of the story when she is able to do so.

“In the meantime, I have been taking care of my mental health with professionals as I have been triggered and struggling to relive all of this when I’ve worked so hard to move on,” Ava, who also shared information about the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. “To be blindsided not only once from the show, but twice including my previous divorce, which was traumatizing. Now it’s all out there. The shock. The humiliation. The bullying. It was all so inhumane. This is not how I pictured my life.”

Meanwhile, Love Is Blind creator and executive producer Chris Coelen explained why some couples’ stories, such as these, didn’t play out on the show. “We may choose to follow some people for some part of the process and then not tell their story, or we may choose to follow certain people only through their reveal. It really just depends on the circumstances,” he told People. “We’re looking to tell the most genuine, most authentic stories that we can and that's really the criteria by which we judge what stories we’re going to follow, and the stories we’re going to then tell on the program.”