The experiment may be over, but the work isn’t done. Danielle Ruhl and Nick Thompson opened up to Us Weekly about life after Love Is Blind, revealing how committed they are to their relationship.
“I think the biggest challenge for us was losing the structure of the show,” Nick exclusively told Us during a joint interview with his spouse. “We quickly realized like, ‘Hey, two months ago, we weren’t married, we were single. Since then, we’ve met and married, we have friends, we have family, everybody — some people know, some people don’t.’ And so, it’s like, ‘How do you navigate these waters and how do you go from doing whatever you want two months ago to, like, being part of a family?’”
The twosome, who got engaged in the pods during season 2 of the Netflix series, noted that they started going to couples therapy to build the “framework” of their relationship and work on their communication.
“[I’m] learning that I need to listen more and talk less in some of those situations,” Nick continued, noting that professional guidance is helping them “navigate” life post-filming.
Danielle, who was candid about her anxieties throughout the show, agreed but noted that their romance is “such a different relationship” than fans saw on the series.
“Him and I fell in love so quickly and because we both knew at the end of the day we wanted to stay together, we did feel so pressured to figure out what was the best route for us to take,” she explained. “That created this, like, pressure cooker environment that we felt like, ‘Oh, my God, like what do we do?’ And we both came to the conclusion, like, ’It’s us, like, we’re spending the rest of our lives together.’ I just can’t wait for people to see the relationship that we have now.”
Nick cited cooking and trying new restaurants as highlights for the pair as they experience “all these things that we had always wanted to do and have someone to do with,” but they both admitted that their commutation is still a work in progress.
“The couple therapist literally was like, ‘Danielle, you speak French. He speaks German. And when you’re talking to each other, it doesn’t translate. And it takes months, years sometimes, to be able to actually communicate with each other,’” Danielle told Us. “And so the harder we try, the more our therapist is a translator for us, the easier it becomes. And like, even with my anxiety — and we both go through our stresses — one time, I might need to be alone. One time, I might need him to hug me. And I have to realize, I can’t assume that he is gonna know how to be there for me. I have to verbalize, ‘This is what I need from you right now,’ and be patient with him not completely, always understanding what to do in those situations.”
Nick added that the couple has “rules” that they’ve put in place to work on how they handle conflict. “I don’t think there should be any stigma around getting therapy individually, getting therapy with a couple because, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus,” he said. “We’re all coming [from] a different place and you can’t fault someone for that.”
As for Danielle’s infamous Rock Band set, which the duo argued over during the season, she told Us that his friends play the game more than she does now.
“The Rock Band set’s here, the costumes are here. He wears the costumes more than I do,” she quipped. “We figured it all out. Compromise, compromise.”
Love Is Blind season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.
