There’s already trouble in paradise for one of the Love Is Blind season 9 couples.
The first six episodes of Netflix’s reality dating experiment once again took the drama to Mexico for a post-pod engagement vacation. But the dream trip turned into a nightmare quickly for Madison Maidenberg, who is now opening up about what actually happened and what wasn’t shown from her first fight with fiancé Joe Ferrucci.
After falling in love and getting engaged to Joe in the pods, Madison met a very different version of her fiancé during the pool party with the other four engaged couples on the trip. Joe proceeded to get drunk, annoy her (and multiple other cast members), and ultimately exit the party early to pass out in his room. He told Madison he didn’t want her to come with him, and when she checked on him later that night, his shocking behavior left her in tears.
Joe kept repeating the same questions to her and didn’t seem to remember what happened at the pool party. He claimed he was just “waking up,” and not as drunk as she thought he was. He also laughed off her concerns over his well-being. But Madison says the worst of it wasn’t caught on camera.
“As soon as we were told that the cameras were off and dinner was coming, he popped up out of bed,” Madison says. “It seemed like he was completely fine. And that’s when I just had had it and I was like, ‘Get out, get your own room. If you can pop up now and talk and you’re all bright and chipper when the cameras are going away, that’s not going to fly with me.'”
While Joe didn’t admit it at the time, Madison says that he did “overindulge” at the pool party and “had to leave,” which is what led to their fight.
“We were all partying, we were all getting to meet each other, there was drinks flowing,” Madison says. “What you see in me is just frustration and confusion, because I was hoping for him to really step up more and show up for me. I was the same person there that I was in the pods, and I was starting to see a side that I hadn’t seen before, which is a little bit concerning.”
While she can understand accidentally getting too drunk, it’s the way he treated her afterwards that she wasn’t okay with.
“He wakes up and he’s asking me these weird questions. I mean, it seemed like he had a stroke or something,” she says. “I was so confused, and I was just really frustrated. It was like, ‘I don’t know why you’re not able to show up for me the way that I’m showing up for you. This is my first time doing this as well.’ So, it was just a really big culmination of exhaustion, frustration, and just overall hurt. I wanted the same person in the pods to be there with me in Mexico and that wasn’t what I was getting, so that’s really what kind of led to my emotional state.”
What made matters worse was Joe’s earlier comments to her about how he’s usually into thinner women and not someone who has a “larger physique.” He told her that physical attraction can grow, and while he wasn’t “at peace” with their relationship initially during their in-person reveal, he was now. Madison later confronted him over his body-shaming, telling him that it made her feel “sick” and like she wasn’t enough for him because she wasn’t his “usual type.”
“That was definitely something that was very hard to hear and very hurtful, obviously”. “Usually, we date people that are attracted to us, so it was a really uncomfortable comment that he made and really hurtful. I would hope that he’d be more mindful when he’s speaking about women’s bodies in the future. I’m very confident in myself. And what’s not to love?
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