Love may be blind, but … would it look better with a piercing and a different haircut According to Aneha, one of the Boston-based singles on Love Is Blind Season 11, the jury is still out after she laid eyes on her fiancé, Cam, for the first time.
Despite an undeniably awkward introduction, their reveal doesn’t end in a ghosting like a certain other pair this season. Instead, the connection the two developed in the pods is strong enough to withstand a communication style that even they admit isn’t for everyone.
“I can be a little bit sassy. I say a lot of stupid things that I sometimes don’t even mean, but I truly have a good heart,” Aneha tells Tudum. “I just wanted someone to understand me for me.” She finds that in Cam, who says he was drawn to her infectious energy, and the way she brings out the “best version” of him. “When you watch it back, it looks like she wasn’t super into me,” he says. “But I didn’t feel like that.”
Ahead of new Love Is Blind episodes, the couple reflect on their journey so far — from the pods to their return back to Boston — and what they have to say to viewers who don’t fully understand their dynamic.
Rest assured, Cam and Aneha’s bond goes deeper than a shared appreciation for dad jokes. “He does joke around a lot, but if you just peel back some of the layers, he was able to tell me about his past and his family,” Aneha says. “I wanted someone with humility who didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth.” In Cam, she says, she could relax into “a safe environment for me to share things that I don’t really like to talk about.”
Cam felt it too, envisioning a future with someone he’d never seen. “I started to picture and formulate a life with her that I really enjoyed,” he says. And when he broke things off with Malaine, his other pod connection, Aneha says she felt truly chosen for the first time in her life. “I am someone who needs lots of reassurance vocally,” she says. “And he gave me that.”
Pod chemistry is one thing, but face-to-face is another beast entirely. For Cam, the reveal day started rough before they finally met. “I was all over the place,” he says. “It was such a long day.” From losing his suit to production delays, Cam was already mentally drained by the time the doors opened. “I was waiting for like nine hours,” he recalls. “But this is a huge moment where you’re supposed to be so emotional and active.”
Aneha admits she was a bit surprised at seeing the person who stepped out behind the wall. “He just looked completely different from what I was thinking,” she says. “Was I initially 100% attracted to him? No, I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But I fell in love with this man talking to him and accepted his proposal. He’s so beautiful on the inside, and attraction can grow.”
But Aneha’s first impression had nothing to do with the lack of physical affection between them. Long before the big moment, Aneha had been up front about her boundaries. “People are like, ‘Oh, she didn’t kiss him at the reveal. She hates him.’ No, it’s not that,” she says. “I come from a more conservative background, and I have to stay true to myself.” Cam says he got the memo, even if things played out a little clumsily: “There’s a brief moment where I look at her, try a little bit, and then she turns away. And I’m like, ‘All right, not comfortable. That’s fine.’”
Aneha wants viewers to know that the cameras didn’t capture the whole story. “I kissed him later, OK?” she says. “You just didn’t see it. That’s for me and for him.” Once the cameras went down in Mexico, Cam says the long-awaited first kiss put a lot of his anxiety to rest. “We finally had a moment where it was like, ‘OK, we can just sit here, and there’s not so much pressure.’”
With no kiss and no Champagne to smooth things over (Aneha doesn’t drink), the two filled the silence the only way they know how: with jokes and some unsolicited feedback on Cam’s style. “I’m a yapper and sometimes my mouth gets me in trouble. I can’t stand silence,” Aneha says. As for suggesting Cam get a “fuckboy haircut” and maybe add a piercing, she chalks it up to nerves. “Genuinely, I have no idea where that came from, and I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t want a fuckboy. I just wanted him to get a fade!”
Looking back, Aneha is the first to admit her delivery could’ve used some work. “People are like, ‘This is Love Is Blind, not Build A Boy.’ Valid, fair, heard. I get it,” she says. “I probably wouldn’t have said those comments, to be honest. I was just trying to be flirty. I was trying to be cute, if anything, but it did not come off as cute.”
Cam mostly rolled with it. “It’s hard to say it was funny, but I do find a lot of humor in things. After the fact, I was like, ‘Wow, does she hate me?’” he says. “But I don’t do great with people telling me what to do. You got to deal with me how I come.” True to form, he leaned into the bit ahead of their Mexico trip, buying a clip-on earring just to mess with Aneha. “I was going to show up with it on, but I forgot about it.”
“She was pointing out things that maybe she wanted to change about me,” he adds. “'[I thought] that might play a factor in her decision to continue on. But once we were together in Mexico, a lot of that dissolved.”
Aneha chalks up the misperception that she’s harsh to how she and Cam communicate. “I love the guy, so I was being a little mean to him. I'm sorry, but I didn't mean it that way,” she explains. Plus, she says, Cam doesn’t exactly mind some playful banter. “Cam likes people being mean to him,” she adds. “We’re from Boston. He’s from Boston. You know what I mean? It’s different around here.”
Aneha likes to refer to herself as a “traditional modern woman,” and is candid about wanting a partner who can provide.
“I do want my man to lead. With that being said, I want to have a bomb-ass career,” she says. When the two hit a wall over rent budget, it struck a nerve. “I remember telling him, ‘That would mean I would have to put up more money than $1,200.’ And he said, ‘Well, the max I’m putting up is $1,200,’” she recalls. “That made me emotional. I want someone who is able to provide for me instead of me always having to.”
Cam, meanwhile, “felt stuck” in their conversations about money. “I can't double my salary overnight,” he says. “It's out of my control, to some extent.” Ultimately, it became clear that they weren’t as aligned on the vision for their future as they once believed. “If somebody gave me $200,000 tomorrow, I’d still live in my same place,” he says. “We all want different things, but in terms of relationship compatibility, it can definitely be a roadblock.”
Family added another layer of complexity, especially because Aneha’s parents kept some distance from the process. “Obviously, marriage means a lot, especially for my family,” says Aneha. But as she and Cam inched closer to the altar, the support they were receiving from loved ones became a point of contention.
“I don’t really like sharing stuff specifically about my family necessarily because it’s their business,” she adds. “I’ve only recently got to a point with my mom, for example, where I could even talk about boys. Up until this experience, I don't even think she ever thought I'd kiss a boy … It’s a big jump [for them] going from not even thinking I’ve kissed a boy to [me] getting married.”
Cam says the issue was one of the “most challenging” parts of their relationship. “I couldn’t have done it without my family,” he says. “It's hard to navigate the line in between understanding that this is an insane process, and also wanting to connect with her family. But at the end of the day, it’s her choice.”
To find out what happens next for Cam and Aneha, make sure to watch new episodes of Love Is Blind Season 11 on Wednesday, as they get closer to their wedding day, along with the other newly engaged Boston couples.
