Love Is Blind star Ben Mezzenga is sharing his side of his breakup drama with ex-fiancée Sara Carton — with “receipts.”
“Sara had just told me a few days before [we had dinner] that she was gonna be in Nashville for the whole summer,” Ben, 28, said in a Wednesday, March 12, TikTok video. “I was pretty much figuring out if I wanted to do long distance with the fragile state our relationship was in after filming.”
Sara, 29, and Ben got engaged sight unseen during Love Is Blind season 8, which was filmed in Minneapolis in spring 2024 and aired on Netflix last month. Sara ultimately called off the engagement at the altar, citing fundamental political and religious differences.
After accepting Sara’s decision, Ben asked whether she wanted to continue dating. The nurse merely said, “We’ll see,” later claiming at the tell-all reunion that they did briefly date. According to Sara, Ben made plans to join her in Nashville for the remainder of her travel nursing contract before allegedly backing out at the last minute.
In his candid TikTok video, Ben addressed Sara “ripping into” his alleged behavior during the Sunday, March 9, reunion and denied her claims.
“I had thought coming into the reunion that Sara and I were on good terms. The reason I thought that was because we had very little to no contact for the entire time she was in Nashville,” Ben said on Wednesday. “She did text me in October for my birthday and then she moved back in December. We’d run into each other a few times at bars with just pleasant conversations. I wasn’t prepared for her to address this situation at the reunion.”
According to Ben, he “thought [they] were broken up” at a time when Sara believed they were still dating.
“The issue is the fact that I reached out to [Sara and she] ghosted me,” he claimed. “I reached out the Saturday that she moved to Nashville when I took her off ‘Find My Friends’ [and] apologizing for doing that, as well as the next day because I knew she was still upset.”
To further illustrate his point — Ben captioned his upload “Inside info, timeline and receipts from the final episode, reunion and everything over the last year” — the developer shared screenshots of the former couple’s alleged text messages.
“‘Made me sad, but it’s OK. I feel really good now being back. I’m just telling you, so you know where I’m at,’” Ben read aloud. “In this case, she still thinks we’re together, but the responses don’t seem like we’re together. Then it goes on [and I say], ‘I’m sorry, I know I should’ve handled that better.’”
After Ben’s text pointed out that he was “trying to figure out” how to heal his broken heart, Ben revealed how Sara allegedly responded.
“And it goes on, ‘As a team effort to keep out respect for one another and continue to be on good terms,’” Ben read her alleged message. “Do you say to ‘be on good terms’ if you’re still dating someone? I don’t think so.”
Ben then sent two more follow-up apologies to Sara in April 2024 and May 2024, respectively.
“She thumbed up [my message], which I guess was enough of a reply for her and I felt bad and I was thinking about it the whole day, so I texted her another apology,” he said. “This was the text that she had ‘no weight to the words.”
Ben’s April 7, 2024, message said, “I want to apologize for just removing location stuff out of the blue, and not calling you on your drive to Nash. I do care about you a lot and I guess I am just wanting to protect my heart. I cried a lot yesterday morning and today, and I know there are things I should’ve done better yesterday. I am just trying to do my best with respecting you and stay on good terms and still care for my own feelings.”
Sara apparently didn’t respond, but Ben wrote back on May 28, 2024.
“Hey Sara, you have been on my mind and since we kinda stopped talking in a weird situation, I wanted to see if you had time for a FaceTime this week,” he wrote. “It would be good to see how you are doing.”
According to Ben, he was “so confused” that Sara thought during this entire period that they were still a couple.
Sara, meanwhile, addressed the Nashville of it all during her Thursday, March 13, appearance on the “Viall Files” podcast.
“I was just hopeful that we would progress just us two,” Sara explained. “We did decide a week after the weekend that he was going to come with me to Nashville. … The day that I left for Nashville, I just felt kind of dropped. I was confused because we had such detailed agreements, but ultimately, when he removed me from ‘Find My Friends,’ that’s when I had the most clarity of, ‘OK, this is actually who Ben is and what the situation is.’ Like I felt pretty duped.”
Love Is Blind is currently streaming on Netflix.
