Spoilers for Love Is Blind season 8 episodes 1 through 9 ahead. Each season of Love Is Blind has one couple who have a bumpy ride throughout the entire experience, from the pods, to the honeymoon, to the real world. In the Minneapolis-set installment of Netflix’s hit reality show, 33-year-old medical device salesman David Bettenburg and 31-year-old educational sales worker Lauren O’Brien have been one of the season 8 cast‘s most controversial pairings since the beginning, when they were just dealing with a pod love triangle. Once they got their phones back, Lauren and Dave had to deal with a first-time concern for the series: gossip among family and friends potentially sabotaging the relationship from offscreen.
In case you’re behind on season 8 or want to compare notes on the latest episodes before your next watch party, here’s a quick refresher on everything to know about Dave and Lauren’s relationship—and whether they may still be together after the show.
What happens between Lauren and Dave in ‘Love Is Blind’ season 8?
Despite his memorable introduction—in which Dave admits that he has “kind of been an ass to women” in his dating life—the medical device salesman finds himself in a love triangle with Lauren and 29-year-old executive assistant Molly Mullaney. Dave has a lot of baggage to work through; he admits that the medical aesthetics field has left him with a very looks-focused view of dating. He wants to test whether he’s really “that guy” (which seems like something he should’ve handled before coming onto a show where he may get engaged).
On their first date, Lauren threatens to walk out on Dave due to his response when she tells him that she’s 30, and he says, “Okay. So you’re no longer attractive.” (This won’t be the last time he makes this joke.) Once she shrugs off his quips, Dave decides to be “nicer” to her and lets down his guard. Lauren is a former teacher with a sweet voice, and Dave says that talking to her “feels like home.” Lauren is also very open and nonjudgmental towards Dave, which a cynic could also describe as her ignoring his red flags. (It’s me, I’m a cynic.)
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
Meanwhile, Dave and Molly connect over their Catholic upbringings and their bonds with their respective parents. They have easy flirty banter and agree that life should be light and fun; they both weren’t academically inclined in school and agree that differing political views shouldn’t affect relationships. They also both have histories of cheating; Dave cheated in a past relationship, while Molly had dated someone who was in a relationship with someone else. Molly even claims that she would get his past baggage to the point where she’d “maybe” be okay with it if he’d murdered someone if they deserved it. “Wow, that’s love,” Dave replies.
By the time Dave vocalizes it in episode 3, it’s clear to anyone watching that dancer Molly is his typical type and teacher Lauren has thrown him for a loop. Unfortunately, this isn’t an ideal Love Is Blind triangle, where each pairing can focus on their connections without things getting weird in the men’s or women’s quarters (as with this season’s Devin-Virginia-Brittany sitch.) Instead, Molly gushes about Dave out in the open, not knowing that Lauren is also dating him. Lauren has to sit in the women’s quarters hearing that Molly told Dave that she’s his number one (which he did) and questioning whether Molly is being manipulative, or Dave is telling each of the women what they want to hear.
Dave also hits it off with Molly, pictured above, in the pods.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
Ultimately, Dave says big things to both women. On one date, he tells Lauren he could see himself proposing to her. On the next, he asks Molly about her engagement ring preferences. That ring conversation leads Molly to believe that Dave’s about to break it off with the other girl he’s talking to (which Molly has finally realized is Lauren). Molly is an open book, so she discusses with the other women that she feels horrible because she had been flaunting her connection with Dave, and now Dave is assumedly about to dump Lauren.
While all of this has been happening, Lauren finally confronts Dave about his “other girlfriend Molly…very proudly talking about how [he] said told her that she was [his] number one connection here.” Dave denies this. In episode 4, after the ring conversation, his exact words to Molly were, “You were my number one after the first day,” and he assures that he only told Lauren that he could see himself proposing to her (but the wedding ring conversation implies a lot!). Dave presents the confusion as him “getting scared of his feelings” for Lauren, and he is visibly going through it. But when Lauren and Molly finally talk it out, they agree that he should not have put them both in such a shitty position.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
In the end, Dave decides after someone applies pressure. Throughout the process, Molly has been upfront about how she wants Dave but has also encouraged him to take his time in making his decision and not force anything. But after their episode 5 confrontation, Lauren tells Dave to choose her. Dave prioritizes their emotional connection and awkwardly breaks things off with Molly. (Molly and Lauren’s post-breakup chat is one of the sweetest moments of this season so far.)
On their second-to-last date, Lauren and Dave discuss the Molly of it all, and Dave continues to claim that Lauren has been his number one the whole time. Lauren and Dave both admit that they’re “scared” of the intensity of their feelings and what the future may have in store, but Lauren is all smiles when Dave finally says that he’s falling in love with her.
Did Lauren and Dave get engaged in ‘Love Is Blind’ season 8?
Yes. In episode 5, Dave thanks Lauren for her patience and for helping him reach the point where he’s “not afraid to go after the girl [he] wants to be with.” He tells her, “You are the most lovable, [nurturing] person I’ve ever met…You have so far exceeded everything that I’ve ever dreamt about someone that I am going to marry.”
Fighting off tears and saying, “This is nuts,” Dave gets down on one knee and proposes to Lauren, who accepts. They’re both shaky and nervous at the reveal, where they share affectionate kisses and hugs as they repeatedly say how “insane” this all is.
Dave and Lauren kiss during their reveal.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
Do Lauren and Dave make it to the altar on ‘Love is Blind’ season 8?
Lauren and Dave do not have a breezy time together in episodes 7-9. They still seem nervous and awkward when they arrive in Honduras, though they slowly get more comfortable with each other. Lauren isn’t ready to have sex yet, and Dave says he’s okay with it. He also tells her that he accepts her sleeping habits. However, he keeps bringing up sex and sleeping habits with the other cast members, so both of those issues are clearly on his mind.
The big issue that will come to define Lauren and Dave in the LIB canon hits the pair smack in the face as soon as they return to Minneapolis. It turns out that Dave is loosely connected to two of Lauren’s exes, in a mutual friends sort of way that makes the Twin Cities seem much smaller than they actually are. One of those two is the person Lauren dated most recently, which she describes as more of a situationship. When this comes up in Honduras, Lauren explains that she saw a man during the nebulous casting period when she wasn’t even sure if she would end up on the show. She adds that she knew she wouldn’t end up with the guy and that if the relationship were serious, she wouldn’t have gone on Love Is Blind.
Lauren and Dave in Honduras.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
Dave’s reaction to all this is to question whether Lauren is really ready for marriage if she dating someone so soon before the pods. But, Dave mentions that he was also skeptical when Molly said she’d hooked up with someone six months before the pods. He argues that he was single for four years before filming. (That seems more like a him problem). if any of these relationships were serious, it’d be worth a conversation, but that scrutiny around hookups reeks of sex-shaming and lack of trust.
Still, once they get their phones back, Lauren’s recent dating history becomes a topic of conversation among Dave’s entire family and friend group(!). It seems as soon as the news of Dave and Lauren’s engagement broke, the phone tree was activated, and several of Dave’s loved ones were informed through conversations that happened without him. In episode 8, Dave says that all of his friends think Lauren’s “dating a guy that we know,” and that she was allegedly with the dude just days before entering the pods. In addition to the friend speculation, Unnamed Dude keeps texting Lauren and trying to see her, and he even lives in the same apartment building as her and Dave’s temporary place, apparently. All of this amplifies an already stressful situation that had driven Dave to tears in the pods.
Dave chats with Lauren at his apartment.
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I got through the pod section without mentioning Dave’s older sister, but we need to talk about it. Dave makes it very clear from day one that his sister is one of the most important people in her life and he makes a lot of life considerations with her in mind. She was not a fan of Dave going on Love Is Blind, and when she eventually accepted that he was, she still didn’t want him to get engaged. Dave says he’s a grown man and his sister doesn’t run his life, but even on his second-to-last date with Lauren, he admits that he’s “freaking out” about how his sister will react. In Honduras, when asked who he’ll call first when he gets his phone back, Dave says he plans to talk to his sister, and Lauren shouldn’t be on the call.
We never hear any of the conversations Dave has with his sister (and she hasn’t shown up on camera), but he tells Lauren that he’s convincing his sis that Lauren’s a good person. Dave’s side of the family isn’t the only one with reservations. We learn that Lauren’s father likely isn’t thrilled that she’s living with Dave before marriage, but her dad hasn’t brought it up to her yet. But Dave’s sister comes up so much that it’s a specter hanging over the whole relationship, especially because she’s heard the same allegation about Lauren dating someone going into the pods.
But back to the situationship. Dave is torn over whether to believe Lauren, or her not-even-an-ex/his friends. It isn’t great that he isn’t taking his fiancée’s word on this, and he even mentions that Unnamed Dude might just be exaggerating to get on TV. When Dave meets Lauren’s friends, they all assure him that Lauren and Unnamed Dude weren’t serious. Her friends never hung out with him, ’cause she never brought him around, ’cause they weren’t capital-D Dating. Unnamed Dude even DMed Lauren’s friend Delaney and wrote, “So should we blow this wedding up or what?” This sounds like very “He just wants to be on TV” behavior, but even when Lauren’s friends tell Dave that Lauren was at Delaney’s engagement party at the time his friends claim she was with Unnamed Dude, he’s still on the fence! Meanwhile, Lauren breaks out into tears again, and says that she feels “helpless in this.”
Lauren and Dave discuss the situationship with her friends.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
The last scene we get of Dave and Lauren in episode 9 is of the couple fighting the same fight. At this point, Lauren points out that this Unnamed Dude situation reeks of double standards. Dave had flirted with someone at a bar the week before the pods, but he says that’s different because he’s single. (They were both single). Dave says again that Lauren was allegedly hooking up with someone a day before the pods, and when she assures him that she didn’t hook up with Dude a day or even the week before the pods, he says the friends are relaying it to him as fact. Apparently Dave doesn’t even “think super highly” of Unnamed Dude! But Dave won’t write him off as a two-month situationship and trust his fiancée!!!
In tears, again, Lauren says that she wants the chance to talk to all of Dave’s people and defend herself. Dave claims that he’s still in love with Lauren, and that he doesn’t want to give up, but he also decides to go out with his friends and leave Lauren home alone. He only has episodes 10 and 11 to decide whether to trust Lauren, and it really doesn’t look like that’s going to be enough time.
Lauren and Dave argue at their apartment.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Netflix)
Are Lauren and Dave still together after ‘Love Is Blind’ season 8?
We won’t know whether Lauren and Dave make it out of season 8 together for two more weeks, but fans aren’t feeling optimistic. The promo at the end of season 6 shows the couple on a bowling date, but nothing close to the opulent final dates before the wedding days.
Instead, we see Dave and Lauren fighting again over Unnamed Dude trying to contact her. Plus Molly’s set to come back into the fray at the cast reunion party, where she asks Dave when’s the last time he had sex. We also see that Lauren has trouble contacting Dave the morning after he stays the night at his own apartment. A voiceover Lauren does say, “And, like, we are getting married today,” but is that just editing magic? I’ll believe it when I see it.
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