LOVE Is Blind’s Sam Klein has opened up on his split from Nicole Stevens, telling his side of the story for the first time.
The 31-year-old has proven to be one of the Netflix show’s most divisive stars, but his efforts initially seemed to pay off when he got engaged to Nicole, beating love rival Benaiah Grunewald Brydie in the race to her heart.
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However, after they finally met face-to-face after nearly two weeks of talking through a wall in the pods, their awkward meeting (branded 'the most awkward on the show ever') seemed to predict their downfall.
Days later, the pair split off-camera, with Nicole asserting in the reunion episode that she requested to producers they spend time with each other away from filming.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Sam opened up about his relationship with Nicole, and what exactly happened that caused them to go their separate ways.
“We went home [after the pods] and we spent two days together,” he explained.
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“We had a cheeky Nando's, she spoke to my parents on the phone, and I was like, ‘Dad, look, you know, this is bizarre, but I guess I've got a fiancée’!
“I spoke to her sister on the phone, we were all FaceTiming. We went out for dinner with other cast members from the show, we had a great time… but there was no chemistry there. It was more like friends.”
Sam added that he felt returning to reality so quickly may have also hindered their relationship.
“We’d kind of been thrown back into the real world, which is very different to being on the experiment.
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"You're out of the bubble, and you've got a fiancé that you've known for two weeks, and you've not really got the structure of the actual experiment, because you're just like, left on your own by this point,” he said.
“Like, what do you do? Is she a girlfriend? Is she a fiance? Do you take the ring back and then just say, let's try dating?
Love is Blind stars reveal all
“We didn't know what to do, really. I guess no one would know what to do in that situation because it's so bizarre.
“So we decided to ease off. We're not going to call it an engagement, but we're just going to naturally spend two days together and just enjoy each other's company.
“It was just normal, like a friend staying, but there was no sexual chemistry, unfortunately.”
“By the end of the two days, we decided to go our separate ways, and she left,” he said.
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After splitting from Sam, Nicole opted to reconnect with Benaiah, and the pair re-entered the experiment as an engaged couple, and later married.
The news was later broken to Sam, who admits he was blindsided as Nicole had cut contact with him after their break-up.
“I kind of reached out to make sure she was okay over the next few days, but I didn't hear anything back.
"I wasn't getting any responses to the phone calls or the messages I was sending her, and I was a little bit worried, because obviously, you know, I care about her. I still care about her emotions and feelings,” he said.
“Eventually I got a call a few days later to say that her and Benaiah had been in contact, and they've now been flown off to Corfu to continue the experiment together.
“It was a hard pill to swallow, but at the same time, I was happy for them, because at the end of the day, it didn't work between us.
“We had a fair shot at it. You know, that's all it was. We’d had a fair crack and it didn't work.”
Love Is Blind is available now on Netflix.
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