Bartise Bowden is explaining the confusing timeline surrounding his appearances on Netflix’s Love Is Blind and Perfect Match and becoming a first-time father. The reality personality, 27, revealed the reason behind waiting to publicly announce the birth of his son Hayden on an episode of the Talk’R podcast that dropped Thursday.
“I did Love Is Blind, I did Perfect Match, I had a son, and the timeline of all that, how it plays out on camera doesn’t make any sense,” Bowden clarified. “What actually happened was, I filmed Love Is Blind, I had a whole relationship between Love is Blind and Perfect Match, filmed Perfect Match, came back, conceived a son.” He continued that Perfect Match had not aired at the time of his son’s birth, “so I knew if I would make the announcement that I had a son before Perfect Match airs, it’s gonna make no sense to anybody.”
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“That’s why I made the announcement at a time where I felt it was the safest for everybody involved and specifically, with my life, I had done these TV shows,” Bowden said. The importance of protecting his baby and Hayden’s mother was also on his mind. “There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy,” the Netflix personality explained. “I want to keep my private life as private as I can get it to be, or as private as I needed it to be for my son and my baby mama and for everybody involved in my close circle.”
Bowden does want to share his son’s life, however, “because I am so proud and I’m so proud of his mother. I’m so proud of the relationship that we all have, the three of us together.” When it comes to where he stands with the mother of his child, Bowden confirmed they are “friends” but not dating. “We are single parenting and co-parenting at the same time,” he said, adding, “I hang out with my son alone, I hang out with his mom alone, we’ll hang out with the three of us together, I’ll hang out with her family. We are very involved together and separately, which is beautiful, and I wouldn’t want it any other way given our circumstances.”
Bowden introduced his son to the Love Is Blind family during the Season 4 reunion in April. “This is my son Hayden,” Bowden said in a video with his son. “He’s also a massive fan of the Love Is Blind franchise.” He also added that his baby boy “has not watched daddy’s season, and he will not ever watch daddy’s season, hopefully.”
