Sara Carton initially rejected Ben Mezzanga at the altar in the Season 8 finale only to agree to move in with him to “grow” their relationship — before he disappeared a week or two later.
Do you take this rejection and promise to reject in turn? I do.
After getting rejected at the altar during the Love Is Blind Season 8 finale, Ben Mezzenga managed to turn the tables and reject Sara Carton by ghosting her just a week later — this according to Sara.
Talking with Entertainment Weekly after the finale aired on March 7, Sara admitted she was “hesitant” as she made her way to the altar, having already determined she “couldn’t say yes.”
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“But I still was very hopeful,” she added, referring to the possibility of her and Ben as a couple. “I was thinking, ‘Without the cameras and the chaos all around me and us, would we be able to work?’ And so I was excited to get back to just regular life, a routine, get structured, and see how that is with Ben.”
On-screen, fans saw Sara reject Ben at the altar, but still offer him a “We’ll see” when he asked if they could still continue to date. The premise of the show sees couples meet in pods and develop relationships sight-unseen. Then, they can propose and come face-to-face to start planning their weddings.
Rejection to Ghosted
Sara told EW that things seemed to be going smoothly with Ben after the cameras stopped rolling … until they didn’t. “We lived together for about a week or two, and then I got back to my home, and then he actually did drop me,” she said.
“He removed me from Find My Friends, and I didn’t hear much from him. I was very confused. It was out of nowhere. I was shocked,” she admitted. “That’s when I had the most clarity of who Ben was.”
It wasn’t total silence, though … at least not at first. Sara said she did reach out to him after he’d ghosted her to tell him she would have “appreciated you talking to me about this rather than me finding it by surprise,” hoping they could continue “on a good page” and supporting one another moving forward.
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“He just sent pretty scripted apologies back. There was no weight to these words. And yeah, didn’t hear from him after that. It was interesting,” she said.
She said that things are cordial between her and Ben now with no hard feelings, “but yeah, ultimately, just not my person. It’s no bad blood, but it’s just my understanding of just who he is. It is what it is, and we just move forward.”
She also admitted to People to wondering if he was even on the show to find love. “Ben told me he wanted to be an actor. He moved to California to do that and pursue his dreams,” she claimed.
“When he told me that in the pods, I was like, ‘I wanted to be Hannah Montana when I was young.’ I was giving him the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
TikTok Breaking Point
Sara credited a TikTok video from a woman claiming to be an ex that accused Ben of mistreating women in the past as a “huge” factor in her ultimate decision to reject him at the altar. It’s not that she was outright rejecting him, or believing the TikTok outright, but that it gave her pause before a marriage.
When she asked him about that particular woman and her claims, Ben initially said that he didn’t remember as it had been a few years prior. But when the woman posted a second video and said the man had blocked her, Ben admitted it was about him and yes, he’d blocked her.
“At that moment I was like, ‘I have so much more I need to learn just for this to be the safest and smartest decision for myself,'” she said, admitting that she struggled still to press pause after all they’d been through so far on the show.
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Ultimately, though, she told EW it was too many red flags. “I could feel my heart and my mind torn in so many directions,” she said. “I just knew with all those hesitations that there’s no way I could say yes to and have it feel right. I would’ve loved to and be married, have my person, and have a new chapter in life, but it did not sit right with me.”
Add to that the fact that Ben was giving very little when it came to weightier topics and she started to question the authenticity of him saying he loved her “constantly.”
On top of that, Sara said that other people began reaching out to her about him, claiming to have had experiences at college with him. “It was never anything like something he actually did that was bad that I’d hear, it was just more like his personality,” she explained.
“And then also, I was sent the YouTube subscription card at some point, so I was like, ‘Ooookay, this is interesting. I’m learning a lot about Ben.'” As reported by People, women started coming forward online claiming that Ben had left business cards promoting his YouTube page with women after he’d slept with them.
Disconnected Red Flag
That alter decision was the culmination of a season of Sara poking and prodding at Ben’s belief system to see where he stands on many issues — including the Black Lives Matter movement — only to discover that he just doesn’t feel that strongly about any of it.
“I’ve always wanted a partner to be on the same wavelength,” she told Ben at the altar, adding that she felt there was “no curiosity from his side.”
“I asked him about Black Lives Matter,” Sara told her family on the show after she’d rejected him, as covered by Fox News. “And I’m no expert, but when I asked him about it, he’s like, ‘I guess I never really thought too much about it.’ That affected me.”
“Especially in our own city, like how could it not? How could it not make you think about something?,” she added. Season 8 of Love Is Blind was filmed in Minneapolis, where Gorge Floyd died under the knee of former police officer Derek Chauvin.
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She explained to her family that she asked him about his church and its views after learning more about it herself, and particularly its thoughts on traditional sexual identity, i.e. not LGBTQIA+ friendly.
“I told that to Ben, and he didn’t really have much to say about it,” she told her family. “I want someone to think about that stuff.” When she’d earlier told him her sister is gay, he told her he had “no discomfort around that community at all.”
She and Ben did talk about some of those topics, though, with Sara sharing that she didn’t really become politically involved herself until President Trump’s first term and George Floyd’s 2020 death.
As for Ben, he told her, “I’m kind of ignorant towards that stuff. Like, I didn’t vote in the last election. As long as I don’t know, it’s not gonna, you know, do much. I’ve kind of just been staying out of it.”
That’s exactly what she decided to do about marrying him … stay away.
Still, Sara has no regrets about her Love Is Blind experience, saying she’s proud of how she navigated coming to this understanding of who Ben is enough to know that he is not her person.
“I wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said. “It’s such a unique experience and it’s vulnerable, and you’re putting yourself out there, so of course you’re going to change and realize things about yourself and the people around you and who you want to be surrounded by.”