Love Is Blind season 7 contestants Ashley Adionser and Tyler Francis hit a roadblock in their engagement when Tyler revealed he is the sperm donor to three children.
Ashley, 32, and Tyler, 34, started off as one of the strongest season 7 couples in — and out of — the pods, but things took a shocking turn in the final minutes of episode 9, which revealed that Tyler had kept a major secret hidden throughout their courtship and engagement.
“I left, I needed to separate and get by myself and just, like, get my thoughts together,” Ashley said during the episode, which hit Netflix on Wednesday, October 9. “I just don’t understand how our superpower seems, like, it’s not our superpower anymore. I feel like we had, like, such great communication and I don’t understand how two weeks before our wedding you drop this kind of bomb.”
As Tyler remained quiet, Ashley said she was replaying “every conversation” the pair had about kids and family and couldn’t understand why he had failed to bring the topic up. “We’re talking about merging a union, and joining lives, this is something I should have known before agreeing to say yes [to marry you],” she explained.
Tyler responded by saying that losing her “trust” was the “last thing” he wanted to do. “Especially two weeks before marriage when I’ve been running around screaming how we’re getting married,” he added.
“You’ve been running around here talking about how we’re getting married but you’ve also been running around saying how you want to have kids now. And it’s like, whoa,” she said. “How did you, like, even talk about any of that? I just can’t wrap my mind around it without even considering your past at all?”
“Like, we’ve talked about kids every day. It’s not your kids, but they are your kids,” she continued, sharing that he had seemingly donated his sperm to someone that he knows.
While Tyler revealed that the babies were “two girls and a boy,” Ashley still was needing more from him.
“That’s, like, what? Three extra kids? That’s wild. Like, who are these people? I just feel like I should know that,” she said, adding that she should be given “a picture” of reference. “But I have nothing. You have shown me nothing. Like, ‘Here are the documents that show I’m not involved.’ I need to know, like, everything.”
Ashley clarified that the issue didn’t stem from Tyler trying to “help a couple have kids” — which she called “admirable in some ways” — but that he kept the “full picture” of himself from her.
“And once you’re not given the full picture of something, it’s hard not to question everything,” she continued. “Me being a single woman, to come into this scenario and fall in love with a guy who has three sperm donor babies, is a lot to absorb. And the wedding is in, like, two weeks.”
After profusely apologizing, Tyler told Ashley that her feelings are “valid” and that he’s “not asking for forgiveness, I’m just asking for a chance.”
The episode ended with Ashley wondering if after the deceit they could even move forward. “What do we have, love? Is love enough? For a relationship or marriage? I don’t know,” she confessed.
When season 7 premiered last month, viewers watched as Ashley and Tyler immediately fell for each other sight unseen. When other contestants were suffering through love triangles — and rectangles — doubts and drama, Tyler and Ashley knew what they wanted from the start.
“I was Tyler’s first date, he was like my fifth,” Ashley exclusively told Us Weekly last month about the duo “immediately hitting it off” during their first time meeting. “So I had been around for a second. He came in super shy and he was nervous and vulnerable right away and authentic and everyone else was kind of putting it on a facade and trying to be cool. And [he] was a little deer in the road and I just wanted to help him.”
Like Ashley appreciating Tyler’s “vulnerability,” Tyler told Us that Ashley made him feel “safe” in the overwhelming environment.
“A lot of men look for safety and at that point when I first met her, she made me feel extremely safe, comforting,” he recalled. “It was, like, a warm soul coming through the wall, and I just knew that that was my person.”
Tyler said that at the start, he questioned if he was falling too quickly or “moving too fast,” but ultimately he knew he had found someone special.
“A lot of things went through my mind, but at the moment of me knowing that that was my person, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m all in,’” he confessed.
The final episodes of Love Is Blind season 7 hit Netflix on Wednesday, October 16.
