Why ‘Love Is Blind’s Hannah Believes Nick Manipulated Her

Hannah Jiles is still getting a ton of backlash for the way she treated her former fiance, Nick Dorka. The two became engaged sight unseen on the reality dating experiment in Season 7 of the Netflix series. Viewers have called her a bully, hypocritical, overly critical, and overall mean in the way she spoke to Nick. But she says there’s a lot viewers didn’t see throughout their love journey and eventual breakup. Following her calling off their engagement, Hannah told producers that she felt manipulated by Nick, which perplexed viewers.

In an exclusive with Us Weekly, Hannah claimed that there were things Nick misled her with from their pod dates that he didn’t follow through on during their engagement. “I felt manipulated in the way, like — let’s go to the forbidden topic of sex, for instance. One of the reasons that Nick and I developed such a close relationship and it was almost lustful in a way [is] we talked about sex a lot and we were very open about it. And when he first told me [he didn’t want to talk about it on camera] I just thought, ‘OK, I get it. Friends, family [will see it], his parents are Catholic,’” she said.

Hannah said Nick’s behavior off-camera was different on camera and she believed he tried to save his image. “I don’t understand why you don’t wanna share this on camera. This is a huge problem that we’re having in our relationship. And I think this is stemming from my anger, which is not a good thing, but it was,” she said.

Either way, she realizes watching the show back that she mishandled many situations and treated him unfairly. “I felt like I needed to talk about it and him saying that he didn’t wanna talk about it, I felt like he just didn’t want anything to make him look not in a good light,” she explained. “I was cruel to Nick and I completely apologized. I should not have acted that way, but I think I was just so frustrated because when we were on camera, he didn’t say much and he was just very much, like, agreeable, but we’re not agreeing off camera.”

The Love Is Blind reunion will be available to stream on October 30 on Netlfix.