Spoilers are ahead. The hit Netflix reality show Love Is Blind is back, but not with a new season and new singles. Instead, the show has returned with a three-episode special called Love Is Blind: After the Altar that reunites the original cast, culminating in an anniversary party for the two couples who are still married. And while you might think that all of these people moved on from each other while making their best attempts to become Instagram influencers, that’s not the case. In fact, two of them, Mark Cuevas and Lauren “LC” Chamblin even dated — and had a very dramatic breakup — after the show, and it's a focal point of After the Altar.
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And before we get too far ahead of ourselves: yes, that Mark. The Mark who wanted to marry Jessica Batten and was left by her at the altar. The Mark who cooked Jessica a dinner that they ate in separate rooms because she preferred their relationship when they couldn’t see each other. The Mark, who, as Jessica repeatedly said, was only 24 years old.
Well, while Jessica was portrayed as the one propelling the drama and made out to be the bad guy on the original season, Mark is the villain of After the Altar — and he doesn’t even appear on the show. Mark decided to sit out of the reunion, but he plays a major role, because LC is on the show and shares a lot about how her connection with Mark ended. Here’s everything we know.
LC and Mark dated briefly in 2020.
As a refresher, on Love Is Blind, LC was one of the women Matt Barnett was interested in, along with Jessica and his current wife, Amber Barnett. She was only on the pod portion of the show, since Barnett didn’t choose her.
Fast forward to 2020, and LC started dating Mark in May. In a credits sequence at the end of the final After the Altar episode, LC explains that Mark slid into her DMs when he saw her doing a drunk review of the film adaptation of Cats and asked to hang out… that night.
LC claims Mark cheated on her.
On After the Altar, LC meets for lunch with Jessica, Diamond Jack, and Giannina Gibelli. LC explains that she broke up with Mark, because she dropped him off at the airport when he said he was going to visit his dad for his birthday, but the next day she says she saw a picture of him on Reddit “all over” another girl. As she tells it, she confronted him and said she didn't want to be in a relationship that’s not exclusive. She claims Mark was defensive and said, “I’m not that kind of guy.” She says she also DM-ed the woman to tell her she didn’t know about their relationship apparently being open, but didn’t get a response.
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In her confessional, LC says, “We were dating. We were talking every day. He was really just sitting there gaslighting me, like, now all of a sudden we weren’t dating. And then he didn’t even apologize. If I did get any kind of apology, it was always followed up with ‘I’m sorry, LC, but you weren’t my girlfriend.”
LC commented on the photo of Mark on reddit.
The Reddit thread LC refers is still live on reddit, but the image of Mark with the woman is no longer there. (By the way, they’re still together and have a child. We’ll get to that.) What does remain, however, is a comment from LC — verified by the subreddit's moderators — in response to the news.
“This is awkward because I live in Atlanta and I’ve been dating mark since the beginning of May….,” LC wrote on reddit. “Oh and btw, this is LC from Love is Blind. Feel free to DM me on Instagram if you would like more information! But I definitely just broke it off with mark so I really do appreciate you posting this and saving me the energy on dating another liar.”
Mark commented in the press.
Mark might not have shown up on After the Altar, but he did speak out about the situation. Mark and LC’s breakup ended up being covered widely by entertainment news publications. In response to the split and the cheating claims, Mark told Us Weekly, “I enjoyed spending time with LC for a few weeks, but at no point were we in an exclusive relationship, as LC confirmed herself. I wish her the absolute best.”
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LC did think she and Mark were exclusive, per Love Is Blind: After the Altar.
Even though Mark wasn’t at the big anniversary party on the show, he was a topic of conversation. Amber and LC get into a major argument about Mark, because Amber is still friends with him, takes his side, and says she loves that he was supportive of his new girlfriend by not attending the party. Amber is very passionate about the fact that no one should assume they're dating someone exclusively. (Okay...?) And after LC shares that she didn’t want to be in a non-exclusive relationship during a pandemic, especially because she has asthma, their convo went down like this:
Amber: As a grown woman I never assumed that anyone was exclusive with me.
LC: During a pandemic?
Amber: That’s not relevant.
LC: It is relevant. I got COVID. That’s why it’s relevant.
LC: During a pandemic?
Amber: That’s not relevant.
LC: It is relevant. I got COVID. That’s why it’s relevant.
Yikes. Needless to say, they don’t find common ground on that one.
Mark is now a father and engaged.
The end of this story is that Mark is now engaged to the woman who LC believes he cheated on her with and they have a child. Mark and his fiancée Aubrey Rainey welcomed a son, Ace, in April 2021. Lauren Hamilton says on After the Altar, “It was like two weeks and she was pregnant.” Really, it would have been around July 2020, or a month after LC broke up with him, that they found out they were expecting. Anyway, it looks like things are going well in Mark's love life now, and he probably made the right decision by skipping After the Altar.