Exclusive Interview
‘Love Is Blind’: Kalybriah Haskin Breaks Down Why She Left Edmond Harvey at the Altar
What To Know
- Kalybriah Haskin and Edmond Harvey got engaged in the Love Is Blind Season 9 pods.
- Edmond said “I do” at the altar, but Kalybriah did not.
- Kalybriah claims Edmond wouldn’t tell her how much money he made until they were married.
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 9.]
Only two Love Is Blind couples made it to the altar in Season 9, including Kalybriah Haskin and Edmond Harvey, but when it came time to say “I do,” Kalybriah wasn’t able to utter those two words back to her fiancé.
Swooon spoke with Kalybriah the same day that her relationship’s outcome was revealed to the world. A week ahead of the reunion episode’s premiere, she reflected on her emotional wedding day, as well as the on-and-off-camera factors that led to her breakup with Edmond in the show’s final moments.
“For me, I didn’t make my decision until we got to the altar,” Kalybriah said. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t having doubts. I was having just as much positive affirmations about it as I was like, OK, let’s also be realistic. We’ve been fighting all the time. We just weren’t meshing, but I wanted it to work so well because I know this is the person I fell in love with, but it wasn’t like… I just had a reality check at the altar.”
She said that the aftermath of her saying “no” to Edmond really “showed who [she is] as an individual.” She continued, “I was just more so concerned about how he would feel, how he would take it, and I really just wanted to make sure that [he knew] my decision doesn’t mean that I didn’t love him, and my decision that I’m making at this moment did not mean that you are not worthy of love, and my decision to be impactful on him in a way that he felt like he would never find love again.”
Netflix
The moment was difficult for her emotionally, but she put her feelings aside and dried up her tears to make sure Edmond understood that he would find the right person one day. “You will find someone to accept all of your quirky ways… And it’s just like more so like, just really pouring into him and just making sure he understood that this is not a rejection, it’s sometimes redirection,” Kalybriah said, adding that she saved her “breakdown” for later.
After taking a moment to reflect on why she wasn’t 100% sure about Edmond, Kalybriah explained to us that she felt like she was giving more to him than she was getting back. “I felt like I was constantly giving, constantly nurturing, versus me trying to make him feel better and trying to be so understanding and see things from his point of view,” she said. “I’m a nurturer in general. Like, that’s just who I am as an individual. I will just feed into a person. And then one day, I realized, ‘Wait, my cup is empty and yours is full.'”
She noted that despite her best effort, she just couldn’t get their lifestyles to mesh, either. They had conversations about their finances, for one, but she claims her fiancé skirted around the topic. “He would say remarks like, ‘Oh, I’m not telling you how much I make until we get to the altar, or until I know your decision at the altar.’ And I’m like, ‘You know how much I make,'” she said, before adding that they had arguments all the way up until right before she walked down the aisle.
In Episode 11, Kalybriah told her partner that he switched up his act once the cameras were on, and she told Swooon that that argument wasn’t the only time it happened. There were a lot of “butthole” off-camera moments and remarks to consider when making her decision, Kalybriah said, including Edmond telling her that he didn’t want to invest in her. “He did a lot of comparing,” she added. “It was, ‘Oh, my exes didn’t do this. ‘Or it was, ‘Well, I don’t date women that look like you.’ It would be things like that, or like, ‘You come with too much because of how you look.'”
Kalybriah also recalled a conversation they had after she had returned home from brunch with her friends. “I was so careful, I was expressing to him that I just don’t feel like myself and that I’m just really having a moment,” she said. “Like, I need him to meet me more because I’m just giving, giving, giving, and he’s not giving back into me. And when I’m doing that, I don’t recognize it sometimes, until I’m empty. Like, I’m drained.”
In response, she said that Edmond looked at her with a straight face and responded, “‘Yeah, I just hate that you feel that way,'” before making a “whatever” gesture and walking off. “I don’t know, I just didn’t understand a lot of his actions. But then he’ll come on camera and act as if nothing happened, or when I bring it up, like, ‘Oh, you’re tripping,’ or, ‘I’m gonna act like the victim.’ And I just hated that because I’m just like, “No, just be honest, and let’s be direct, and let’s talk about it.'”
There was also the instance when Edmond’s mom didn’t show up to their first planned meeting, which also fell on the night after they had a fight. Kalybriah asked a “frustrated” Edmond how he was feeling before the cameras arrived, and he said, “‘I just feel like she’s never there for me, and she never shows up for me.'”
When the producers arrived and wanted them to repeat the conversation, she was thrown off when Edmond’s response changed, and he claimed Kalybriah wasn’t there for him instead. “So it would be things like that, and that happened a lot, and it would make me react or have to breathe and be like, ‘OK, wait, you’re not mad at me, you’re mad at her, and you’re connecting the two.’ But it was just, I always felt like I was always in therapy mode, but I’m not. That’s just who I am as an individual, whether I was a social worker, therapist, or not.”
Even though the experiment had its rocky moments, it helped Kalybriah realize there are certain things she won’t put up with anymore. Still, she’s glad that she went through it with Edmond. “Because no one else would have challenged me the way that he did, and no one else would have taught me the things that he taught me,” she revealed. “There was a lot that I learned about myself as an individual, and even more that I learned about myself watching it back. And so, yeah, I definitely would say I have no regrets.”
Love Is Blind, Season 9, Episodes 1-12, Streaming Now, Netflix
Love Is Blind, Season 9, Reunion, October 29 at 9/8c, Netflix
