The last thing I could’ve expected from this mystery man *so* heavily associated with Love is Blind Season 8’s Lauren was a self-made LIB intro poster. You read that right. Before we get into all that, we know that his mystery man is a huge factor in Lauren and Dave’s relationship, and before his self-exposure, everyone was wondering exactly who he was.
Well, the search has come to an end because the mystery man revealed himself on Instagram. But that’s not all. He went as far as to make himself a LIB-inspired poster, which screams attention-hungry, but that’s just me. In a now-private Instagram, the mystery man revealed himself as 37-year-old lawyer Daniel Nides. To introduce himself to the fans, Nides shared his self-made poster and though it’s no longer visible to the public, Reddit came through with the receipts.
Nides was said to be a part of the same friend group Dave and Lauren share, which evidently put a lot of strain on the pair’s relationship. While Lauren was filming LIB, Nides apparently reached out to Dave and Lauren’s mutual friends, telling them about his and Lauren’s supposed relationship, which she claims was nothing more than a hookup.
Lauren’s two friends, Delaney and Melissa, backed her up, adding more context to the story while explaining things to Dave. They even related this situation back to Dave’s life, saying Lauren’s so-called relationship with Nides was as serious as someone going to a bar and meeting another person or swiping right on dating apps, something Dave admitted to doing prior to filming, so what’s the big deal?!
It was only after Episodes 7-9 dropped that we got Lauren’s true feelings about Nides. In a Feb. 22 interview with Vulture, she said, “Me and him had never once talked about anything beyond a friends-with-benefits situation. We never had serious conversations about that – or much in general. When we got back and I was hearing his version of things, it felt like a 180 compared to any conversation we ever had. I was so confused where it came from.”
A few days later, on Feb. 25, Lauren opened up even more about her and Nides’s pre-pods situationship — if you can even call it that —while speaking with Us Weekly. “[Dave] got those messages, like, right away, but he didn’t really tell me that that was such a strong voice in these group chats and in those conversations until like a couple days after we got back [from Honduras],” she told the outlet. “I didn’t know that that’s what he was internally struggling with in the beginning.”
But Dave still couldn’t get over this.“I wouldn’t even consider it a situationship because if it were a situationship, it would be like, ‘Oh, do we wanna be together or not be together?’ And like we weren’t having those conversations,” Lauren said of Nides. “He knew that I was having conversations with casting the entire time that we were talking. And I remember him saying, ‘We don’t need to take this very seriously.’ We were friends with benefits.”
It’s safe to assume that Nides was in it for the airtime, which spoiler alert, he never got! So I hope it was worth it to him to come between two people who could have explored a connection, but that’s also wishful thinking because let’s face it, Dave is also to blame in all of this.