Finding your soulmate through a glowing blue wall is tough enough, but the biggest test on Love Is Blind comes next: meeting in person. 

And, while love might be blind, apparently there are some things you just can’t unsee, which holds especially true for Taylor and JP. After an argument over looks, one of Season 5’s most promising pairs decides to end their engagement in Episode 6. The sweetness between the couple, aka Sugar and Sugar Butt, in the pods quickly sours in Mexico, as they struggle to establish an emotional connection, resulting in awkward silences, conversations, and… kisses. 

After a ton of prodding from Taylor, JP finally admits what’s been holding him back — his discomfort with the amount of makeup he feels Taylor wore during their big, post-pod reveal. Taylor, angry and hurt, tries to defend herself, but ultimately the pair simply can’t recover. 

So, while the remaining couples continue on their journey to the altar, we checked in with Taylor and JP to find out what was going on beneath the surface of their shocking split. 

Both Taylor and JP agree that their problems began soon after their engagement, when an immediate energy shift ultimately came to define the rest of their relationship. “Without seeing each other, we could just open up and be free in whoever we were,” JP tells Tudum. “But once we saw each other, we put our walls back up, I could sense that something was wrong.”

Even with months of distance from their breakup, Taylor still can’t put her finger on exactly happened in that reveal moment with JP, who she says “crawled back into his shell” after the pods. And, while JP’s comments about her appearance certainly stung, that wasn’t ultimately the “breaking point” for the schoolteacher. 

“I would never leave somebody just based off of an opinion that they had. I’m all about compromise,” she says. “I probably could have relaxed on the makeup a little bit if we would’ve stayed together, but I had one foot in the door and one foot out the door that night on the bed.”

JP, meanwhile, admits that he certainly could’ve expressed himself better during the heated exchange. “In hindsight, what I said and the way I said it might not have conveyed what I was really feeling,” he says. “She took it as an insult, but I was trying to be genuine and say, ‘Hey, I think you look really pretty without makeup, and if you’re trying to impress me, you don’t really need the whole facade to make yourself look good for me.’ But it didn’t come off that way.” 

The firefighter maintains, however, that Taylor’s reveal absolutely caught him off guard, especially given how closely the two aligned in the pods. “I was just kind of taken aback by all the makeup, eyelashes, and everything,” he adds. “If it would’ve been a more natural look, it might’ve been less awkward.”

Even after the pair went their separate ways, the conversation lingered in Taylor’s brain “literally until the day [she] saw the trailer” for Season 5. “Like, did I have too much makeup on?” she remembers asking herself. “But now I know I didn’t, and I’m not going to change who I am for anybody. You’re going to love me with my makeup on, and you’re going to love me without my makeup on. That shouldn’t determine anything.” And, for anyone wondering, her current favorite product is Summer Fridays lip balm. (“I love my lips, and I want them to look juicy all the time.”)

At the end of the day, Taylor says her choice to call off their engagement went far deeper than just looks. 

“I fell in love with a totally different version of JP, and that scared me,” she says. “The person I had fallen in love with in the pods was no longer in Mexico. I had to move back with him for three weeks, live with him, wear a ring on my finger, find a dress, have my dad walking me out on the aisle. All those things are so big for me, and I didn’t want to do it with the wrong person. When I had that doubt in my heart, that’s ultimately why I walked away.”

So what was actually going on with JP after the pods? Well, according to him, Taylor’s energy set the tone from the start of the trip, and he just shut down. “When we got to Mexico, she just did not want to be there and I wasn’t prepared for that,” he says. “She was just not giving me anything to go off of and really had one foot out the door pretty much as soon as we got there. The whole time it was just draining.”

But Taylor says she immediately addressed the disconnect between them. “I brought it up super early, day 1 in Mexico, to try to fix the problem and figure out what was going on,” she says. “I was just so confused.”

For the record, she says JP’s looks didn’t play a factor in her final decision either. “I’ve seen a lot of people [online] talk about the comment I made about his teeth,” she explains. “When I said that, I meant that in the past I would’ve judged him off of one small flaw, but now I wouldn’t.”

Apart from exchanging a few texts back and forth, the two haven’t spoken since the day they left Mexico, leaving both without a sense of resolution to their relationship.

“I’m pretty OK,” says JP about where they stand today. “I just want to know what I did wrong or what was wrong about me that she didn’t like.” 

“Watching back, we were so strong in the pod. Nerves, insecurity, and maybe him just not liking the way I look [got in the way],” Taylor adds. “I’m still trying to figure it all out myself. I do plan to talk to JP about that when we do chat.”

As for what that conversation will reveal, you’ll just have to keep watching, but at least there’s one thing Taylor has clarity on. “Nothing’s changed about my makeup,” she says. “I’ll wear it when I feel like it, and if I don’t feel like putting it on, I just don’t put it on. For a while, I did question myself, but after seeing it, I’m like, ‘No way.’”

To learn more about the other couples continuing on in the experiment, check out our official cast guide.