LIB’s Lauren Thinks the Other Guy Just Wanted to Be on TV

Anyone else think Lauren O’Brien and David “Dave” Bettenburg kinda look like Pam and Roy from The Office? This season of Love Is Blind isn’t over yet, so we don’t know whether the engaged couple will go the same way as their ill-suited Dunder Mifflin look-alikes. But O’Brien and Bettenburg have not been strangers to strain in their relationship. Things started out okay in the pods; despite Bettenburg joking that O’Brien was no longer attractive because she was 30 years old, the pair hit it off, with Bettenburg eventually breaking up with Molly Mullaney and proposing to O’Brien, citing a stronger emotional connection with her. In Honduras, the couple said their relationship felt right, but back in Minneapolis, O’Brien’s past became a huge source of conflict, as Bettenburg, his friends, and his beloved sister bought into gossip that O’Brien had been dating someone right before the show. “We got back and Dave and I were sitting and mapping out our next couple of weeks. He’s going to meet my friends on this day, his friends on that day … I remember enjoying that part of the process,” she says. “I don’t think I realized all those conversations were happening behind my back.”

In the pods, you wondered whether you or Molly were being more delulu. How did it feel to watch Dave’s dates with her? 
It felt like Dave really wanted to put Molly and I in two boxes: I’m this nerdy teacher, and Molly is this fun dancer. And as he would learn about us, he would be surprised. Oh, you got a tattoo on a vacation? Nerdy teachers don’t do that. As if we aren’t very complex people who are meant to have a lot of layers. It was interesting to watch that back. But honestly, I’m so focused on my own relationship with Dave. I knew he was dating other people, and I was dating other people toward the end, too. I didn’t know what he and Molly’s connection looked like. I know now, even from the last year of having conversations with her about it. But seeing it back was a reminder of, like, I was so in my own shit that I wasn’t even thinking about conversations they were having.

How often did Molly come up once you were engaged? It felt abrupt when Dave said in Honduras that he was thinking about talking to her.
That was based on a conversation about my relationship status and history, and he was comparing it to a conversation he had with her. We really did not talk about Molly when we were in Honduras, or even coming back to Minneapolis. From engagement on, it really felt like it was Dave and I.

What made you fall in love with Dave?
A lot of things. I really did feel like our backgrounds were aligned in how we were brought up, the schools we went to, the love we got from our parents, and the closeness with our siblings. We talked about financial goals we had, and how to integrate our lives into our extended families’ lives. A lot of our core visions for our future looked really similar.

I know he’s getting a lot of flak for his sarcasm and sense of humor, but I laughed a lot with Dave. He was really funny a lot of the time, and I value banter in a romantic relationship. I know there’s a line to not cross, but I grew up in a house with three brothers where we were constantly shooting the shit. There was an element of Dave and I doing that together that kept things light. He was also very validating. In terms of our relationship, he did a really good job telling me where his head was at most of the time.

Dave said in a confessional in Honduras that he could tell you weren’t ready to have sex. Had the two of you talked about whether the relationship would be physical during the vacation? 
Yeah, we had. The first night we were there, I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around, this is the person I’ve been talking to. Your brain has to click and make the connection. In the first 24 hours, I was like, I’m attracted to this person, but I can’t make the connection that this is the person I just got engaged to. I do remember that first night being like, What is happening?

We know it was upsetting for Dave to get his phone back and see messages from people who already knew about the engagement and had opinions about it. What was that first day like for you? Were you aware that people were talking about you? 
I was so excited to call my parents and my friends. They were waiting on the edge of their seats. I hadn’t turned on my phone in three weeks, and based on the information I had given them, they could use some deductive reasoning skills and realize I was engaged. They had a lot of questions, and I was genuinely excited.

I could feel a shift from him pretty immediately when we got our phones back, but at that point, I did not realize how big of a story this other guy was. I just didn’t understand it.

You described your relationship with this other guy as a friends-with-benefits situation. Do you think he could’ve been genuinely confused about the status of that relationship, or do you think he was lying and wanted to be on TV? 
The latter.

What makes you think that? 
Me and him had never once talked about anything beyond a friends-with-benefits situation. We never had serious conversations about that — or much in general. When we got back and I was hearing his version of things, it felt like a 180 compared to any conversation we ever had. I was so confused where it came from.

He also reached out and asked to talk. I texted him back, and he was like, “But do you wanna talk in person?” And my first reaction was, Oh, do you want to get a camera op? Is that where this is coming from? [Laughs.] Those are the things that are jumping out to me.

What did he text you? 
It was pretty much, “Hey, you moved into the building.”

And did you end up meeting up with him? 
I didn’t, but he lived in the same building, so within 24 hours, I saw him in the elevator.

What was that like? 
Not fun. It was just hard to … [Sighs, pauses.] I don’t know how to answer that one.

Did he know that you were going on Love Is Blind?
He did. He knew the entire two months we were talking.

What was his reaction when you told him about it? 
He had no problem with it. He was excited for me. He was like, “That’s a cool, once-in-a-lifetime thing to do.” It’s easy to look back and think that maybe I could have said things differently, but based on the information I had at the time, I didn’t think I needed to say anything else to him.

How many nights did Dave spend in your shared apartment?
There was only one night he didn’t stay in the apartment, and it was the night he went out with his friends. We would interact here and there throughout the day. We both had remote jobs, so we were kind of in and out of the apartment.

Before the day you were set to meet Dave’s friends, did any of them reach out to you? Or had you reached out to any of them?
Nope. No one reached out, and I didn’t reach out. I respected Dave’s approach at the time.

You were frustrated that people who didn’t know you were forming opinions about you. Love Is Blind viewers tend to do that. Has it been difficult to navigate the experience of people talking about you again but on an even larger scale? 
Yeah, it’s definitely been a roller coaster. The last week has had a lot of really high moments. I got to feel so much love from my friends and family that know me, and I get to share this experience with them. But it comes with some lows, too. I knew what I signed up for, obviously, but seeing comments about you from people that don’t know you is something no one can ever prepare you for. There are so many times where I want to run through the screen and clarify and be like, Well, I meant it in this context, and I was saying it based on this conversation! But we are in this experience for hundreds of hours, and they’re putting together a ten-hour TV show. They can’t include every single conversation, because that would be boring. [Laughs.] And it wouldn’t work with the storytelling. So I’m trusting the process.

Are there any conversations you wish had been shown, or things you wish that people knew about you?
One of the conversations that Dave and I had multiple times is how I haven’t had a lot of long-term relationships. I usually give up at the six- to nine-month mark. This was me fighting for probably the first time for a relationship I valued and saw myself pursuing. I was trying to do things differently. I just really wanted to have my person from this.