A tangled web! Kwame Appiah was involved in a dramatic love triangle with fiancée Chelsea Griffin and fellow contestant Micah Lussier throughout Love Is Blind season 4.
Kwame, 32, sparked immediate pod connections with both Chelsea, 31, and Micah, 27, sight unseen. While the Portland, Oregon, resident was sold on proposing to Micah early on, she eventually broke things off in pursuit of her other pod romance with eventual fiancé Paul Peden. After some heartbreaking soul-searching, Kwame realized that Chelsea had been steadfast in her love all along and he decided to pop the question.
While the sales marketing manager and the speech pathologist enjoyed exploring their physical connection after meeting face-to-face, lingering feelings for Micah continued to surface after the cast’s Mexico pool party. Kwame even noted that she still held a “special place” in his heart despite getting engaged to other people.
“I think no matter what, especially when you start looking at the life that you have now, but when you think about the connection I have with Chelsea — Zack [Goytowski] mentions this a lot — the pod relationship you have with someone [is] completely different from the actual relationship you have with someone,” he exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the season 4 premiere, referring to Zack’s own love triangle with ex-fiancée Irina Solomonova and new fiancée Bliss Poureetezadi. “Like when I went past the pods with Chelsea, I was just like, ‘OK, this is almost a reflex for us, the way we interact, the way we under understand each other.’”
Kwame added: “I just don’t believe that would’ve ever been the case with Micah, and I can respect that. I think we had a great relationship in the pods, and that’s what I meant [by] ‘She has a special place in my heart.’ But I knew deep down in my soul that there was just no possibility of us going past that and having anything that was actually of value to us as human beings [and] as people who are in love. Like, we had a great time in the pods. It was great to move on from there.”
Micah, who struggled at first to connect Paul’s voice to his physical presence, also opened up to Us about her feelings for Kwame.
“When I chose Paul, I chose Paul all the way and I never regretted that or have looked back on it,” the former real estate broker told Us earlier this month of the 29-year-old Louisiana native. “I think that Kwame and Chelsea ended up [engaged] for a reason. And, you know, to my understanding, I think they [were] really happy and I think they both deserve that. He’s a great person and, in that way, he’ll hold a special place in my heart.”
After shutting down her romance with Kwame, Micah was focused on her engagement to Paul. The environmental scientist, for his part, told Us that he “really didn’t” feel threatened by the pod bond.
“I feel that we were super open in the pods with each other and in the men’s lounge and I think it was obvious that we all had like very good intentions in that we wanted the best connection to be the one to move forward with, like, no matter who it was, you know?” Paul told Us in March. “And so, it wasn’t a competition. We genuinely both wanted the best connection.”
While Kwame and Paul were able to maturely pursue connections with the same girl, Chelsea was seemingly jealous after seeing her fiancé get close to Micah during the Mexico getaway.
“Oh my gosh, you have to understand it, like, you go on the show knowing that the person that you may be falling in love with is talking to multiple other women and that’s something that is not for the faint of heart, but it’s part of the experience,” Chelsea recalled to Us. “It wasn’t in my nature to insert myself in their conversations and in their kind of closure and what needed to happen for them. I respected Kwame’s journey and his vetting process and he wanted to be really sure.”
She continued: “I have no hard feelings for her [and] the way I see it, if somebody likes the person I like, they must be like-minded and cool and awesome. … I think that we came to a really good conclusion with it and I’m understanding that it needed to be a part of their journey.”
Love Is Blind season 4 is currently streaming on Netflix. New episodes drop on Fridays.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
