Spoilers below.
From their time in the Love Is Blind pods, Ramses Prashad and Marissa George seemed to have a strong relationship. Though they had their ups and downs as the weeks progressed, including some tense disagreements about military service and birth control, they continued to move forward. However, as their wedding day drew closer, the couple found themselves having a tough conversation about the future. So why exactly did Ramses break up with Marissa before their wedding day? Here’s what you need to know about what went down in the Love Is Blind season 7 finale, and then what happened next.
Ramses expressed doubts about getting married again.
Ramses was upfront with Marissa about the fact he’d been married before. While he claimed to be ready to tie the knot for a second time, something shifted in the days before their wedding. At the end of episode 11, Ramses expressed concern about the future of their relationship, while sitting with a blanket over his head. “I just learned that my ex was hurting much more than I realized after the divorce,” Ramses explained after speaking with several family members. “And I’m just scared that something may happen where I’d end up hurting you.”
When pressed for further explanation of his worries, Ramses told Marissa, “This connection is amazing but there are certain things that you can’t get around, especially when it comes to living together and spending the day to day together that’s crazy important.” He suggested that their “energies” might not be meshing in the real world, saying, “It was great and fine in Cabo, but here everyday when you bring in work and day to day stresses, there’s so much going on, I didn’t feel like I had a moment to myself.”
Marissa revealed that previous partners had also referenced her “energy” in breakups, and she was visibly distressed by her partner’s comments. Regardless, Marissa was vocal about the fact she didn’t want to break up, even when Ramses confirmed he couldn’t marry her. “This is not right,” she told him. “This is the worst heartbreak I’ve ever experienced.”
As she tried to understand Ramses’ decision, Marissa called her mom and said, “I feel like I’m dying.” She explained, “Two days ago he told me he’s so excited to get married. We picked out our first dance song and he got emotional because he envisioned us getting married. So it’s really hard for me to come to the conclusion that we’re done.”
Marissa still doesn’t know why Ramses called off their wedding.
In an interview with Glamour, which was published after the season 7 finale aired, Marissa revealed that she was still unclear about the reasons Ramses broke up with her.
“Throughout the whole breakup—which made it worse—he couldn’t really give me a reason,” she told the outlet. “To this day, I don’t know if he really has a good reason. I think he has tried to pinpoint certain things, like that I listened to podcasts in the morning and I sing in the shower type of stuff… But at the time of the breakup, he was just like, ‘I don’t feel at peace anymore, and I feel like our energies off and I’m gonna hurt you in five years, but I love you and want to be with you, but this is moving too fast.’”
While trying to understand why Ramses would end their relationship so quickly, Marissa even started (wrongfully) blaming herself. “Then I’m thinking, it’s me, because he’s saying it’s my energy,” she explained.
Having told Ramses about her ADHD diagnosis in the pods, Marissa thought he understood that some situations, such as filming a TV show, could make her more hyperactive and overstimulated than usual. She’d hoped they’d settle into a new normal once the cameras shut off, but that didn’t happen. “I didn’t feel like we ever had the time to get there, because he was just like, ‘No, you’re too much,’” she told Glamour.
Looking back, Marissa thinks she made too many concessions.
Viewers witnessed some of the more difficult aspects of Marissa and Ramses’s relationship throughout the season. For instance, Ramses told Marissa’s friends that he’d divorce her if she reenlisted in military service, and he also questioned whether his fiancé would give him the physical attention he required.
During her interview with Glamour, Marissa reflected on her romance with Ramses. In particular, she questioned why she overlooked so many red flags, such as their differing views on her military service and his aversion to using condoms.
“Looking back a year later, where I’m in a different headspace, I was trying to make a lot of concessions,” she told the outlet. “I wanted to be with him, and I wanted it to work so bad that I was willing to be like, ‘Okay, you’re making me feel bad about my career but we can get past that.’ And now I’m like, Dude, no.”
The couple’s birth control conversation also seems to have haunted Marissa the more she’s thought about it. “I literally said, ‘Either wear a condom or accept the consequences,’ and he didn’t want to do either,” she told Vulture. “Looking back, I’m like, Okay, if I ended up pregnant, would it be ‘my fault’? Would he have said, ‘Well, I told you that I don’t want to have kids’? I don’t know.”
Marissa says Ramses wasn’t understanding about her health issues.
In episode 10, the couple had a tense conversation in which Ramses appeared to question whether Marissa would give him all of the physical attention he required. “Ramses and I, obviously, were a very physical couple,” she told Glamour. “And not just in a sexual manner, but also affection and touching.” Having not cuddled in bed the previous night, Marissa asked Ramses if he was having anxiety about anything. “And he had mentioned, well, ‘I just feel like I’m just nervous about our physical intimacy,’” Marissa told the outlet. “And I was like, Okay, what the hell?”
Viewers weren’t privy to the start of the couple’s conversation, in which Marissa explained why she sometimes doesn’t like to be touched. “I have an autoimmune disease,” she revealed to Glamour. “I have rheumatoid arthritis, so I tend to get sick and my body hurts and I don’t want to be touched. And there’s been a few times before that where he’s petting me and I’m overstimulated. I have ADHD. I get overstimulated physically and I’m like, ‘You can touch me, just don’t rub me in that moment.’”
Marissa also told the outlet that she questioned whether Ramses would leave in the future her due to her chronic illness, saying, “How’s he going to deal with the fact that I’m gonna flare up… How’s he gonna deal with when I can’t have sex, or I’m PMSing, or I have a child and I’m postpartum?”
Ramses reportedly refused to continue dating Marissa after Love Is Blind.
Despite being heartbroken about Ramses’s decision to call off the wedding, Marissa wanted to continue their relationship. “I offered to not get married,” she told Glamour. “We can stay engaged, or we can do everything on our own timeline. We don’t have to move in immediately. That was never the plan anyway. We don’t have to be engaged to date.” However, Ramses had seemingly made up his mind and wanted to break up there and then. “It was a hard no,” she explained.
In an interview with Vulture, Marissa shared that her mom even spoke to Ramses off-camera after the breakup, saying, “Please don’t do this to my daughter. You guys clearly do love each other. What is going on?” Her input didn’t sway his decision, though. Marissa’s friends were heartbroken for her, but they don’t miss Ramses one bit: “They hated how much it broke me, so they hate that man,” she told the outlet.
While speaking to Glamour, Marissa revealed that she met up with Ramses on several occasions in the months after filming ended. Following a phone call that lasted almost nine hours, Marissa thought Ramses might give their relationship a second chance. “I did ask him if he wanted to get back together,” she explained. “I’m not really ashamed to say that, because I’m someone who’s like, if you feel it, you feel it, like, what’s the worst that can happen? And he’s like, ‘Nah.’ So after that, we just stopped communication.”
Amy Mackelden is a freelance writer, editor, and disability activist. Her bylines include Harper’s BAZAAR, Nicki Swift, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Independent, Bustle, Healthline, and HelloGiggles. She co-edited The Emma Press Anthology of Illness, and previously spent all of her money on Kylie Cosmetics.