Jessica Barrett checked out of her Love Is Blind engagement the moment her then-fiancé, Chris Fusco, body-shamed her.
“I essentially just took in the information, had a mental funeral for him, and went on about my day,” Jessica, 39, told Glamour in an interview published Saturday, February 21. “I basically said, ‘I’m going to do my exit interview and I realized that I haven’t told you that I want nothing to do with you going forward.’ He actually acted kind of shocked, which was mind-blowing.”
Jessica and Chris, 33, got engaged sight unseen in the Love Is Blind season 10 pods, only meeting face-to-face after she accepted his proposal. Their pod bond, however, faltered in the real world as Chris admittedly struggled with his physical attraction to the physician. He even boldly told her that he usually dates women who work “every day” and have a different body type than her.
“I was very much trying to remain calm, because obviously this was completely blindsiding,” Jessica recalled to Glamour. “There was no conversation about anything like this prior to that conversation. So I kind of went into this, like, lock in zone.”
She continued, “I have done a lot in my life. I work really hard. I do very well under pressure. I have to deal with very tough conversations frequently at work, and my gears were definitely turning. I was definitely listening, taking in everything that he said, and it was absolutely a switch that flipped for me. In that moment, I knew that there was no way that this man was going to be in my life, and I knew that it was up to me to handle that in such a way that I would be proud of when I had to watch it a year later.”
After watching their breakup on the hit Netflix dating series, Jessica is still proud with how she handled the situation.
“I am extremely happy with how I handled myself,” Jessica said of the reality TV moment. “Of course, I’m human. I wanted to freak out and do all the things that we would want to do, but also, I didn’t think that he deserved any of that energy of mine.”
Chris, meanwhile, has since apologized for bringing up Jessica’s body type in their candid chat about attraction.
“I really just wanted to be completely honest with her about how I was feeling,” he recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I respect Jessica so much, still, and she [is] such an amazing person, where I felt like I didn’t want to make anything up. I felt like maybe just being super direct and honest about how I felt was the best route at the time, and just explaining what I’m normally attracted to physically without … because I mean, on the show, we’re meeting someone based on emotional connection, so we’re doing it pretty much backwards than the normal dating life.”
After Chris and Jessica went their separate ways, he attempted to win back his other strong Love Is Blind connection, Brianna “Bri” McNees. (Chris ended his pod dates with Brianna, 34, in pursuit of Jessica. Bri ultimately got engaged to Connor Spies.)
“That ship had sailed at the pods,” Bri exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month. “When we called it off, it became friendly. And then, at [during the cast party at] Pins, it was one of those things that we were all taken aback by, like, ‘Who is this person?’ That just goes to show anyone could show up as anybody in this experiment. It was not only disrespectful toward Jess, but also Connor. They were best friends in the pods, and to see him flip a switch like that … it was crazy.”
As for Connor, 32, he told Us that he’s no longer in touch with Chris after his flirtatious chat with Bri.
“I was surprised at the way he tried to do it,” Connor noted. “But it is what it is. We don’t really talk anymore, as you can imagine.”
Love Is Blind season 10 is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop Wednesdays.
