In the gutting Love Is Blind season-three finale, Zanab Jaffrey rejected Cole Barnett at the altar, saying, “The last two months have not been picture-perfect. You have disrespected me. You have insulted me. You have critiqued me. And for what it’s worth, you have single-handedly shattered my self-confidence. And I hate that you have had that kind of effect on me.” The former couple then didn’t speak until the reunion episode, making After the Altar even more gut-wrenching. Jaffrey claimed that Barnett admitted he had tried “to kiss a girl and got her number at the bachelor party.” (His response? It’s “impossible.”) If that’s not a big enough red flag, Jaffrey accused him of body-shaming her on- and off camera by “pushing food away from me,” “asking if I’m ‘gonna eat that,’” “trying to get me to order a salad,” and making “daily comments about my face and my body.” “I stopped eating,” she confessed. “I was eating, like, a banana and a teaspoon of peanut butter just so I wouldn’t pass out on the long days we were filming.” Barnett denied her account and later broke down in tears.
Jaffrey noted that Barnett’s “saving grace” was that many of the interactions had been cut from the show, and she told a story about Cuties that wasn’t cute at all: “One day, it was like 2 p.m., and we were still filming. I hadn’t had a chance to eat, so I grabbed two Cuties — like two little oranges that fit in the palm of your hand. And he looked at me and goes, ‘Are you gonna eat both of those?’” she told co-host Vanessa Lachey. “And I said, ‘Well, yeah, that’s a serving.’ And he goes, ‘Well, we’re going out to eat later, like maybe save your appetite.’” Barnett again appeared baffled and asked production to “please air it” if they had the footage. The reunion ends with the clip Jaffrey referenced, in which she grabs a second orange as Barnett asks, “Are you about to eat two of those? You better save your appetito.” When he asks if she’s working on her “wedding-dress bod,” Jaffrey responds, “Something like that.”
“I did love him,” Jaffrey later told Variety. “The things he was saying to me did hurt. I was somehow trying to make myself desirable to him, whether it be skinnier or” — taking a deep breath — “I’ve never had someone speak to me that way about my body or eating. That was very real for me. I did change what I was eating. I was just eating a banana. I did lose weight by the wedding day. It had nothing to do with fitting into my wedding dress.”
