At the beginning of The Ultimatum Season 1, Colby Kissinger seems like a catch. He’s easy on the eyes, fiercely loyal and very ready to settle down. Then the 25-year-old starts talking to co-star Lauren Pound, who enters the series with longterm boyfriend Nathan Ruggles. The initially flirty introduction begins to feel more like a harrowing interrogation as Colby’s red flags pop up at an alarming rate, especially for women who don’t want to have children or become mothers. Women like Lauren.

Lauren’s stance on motherhood is subjected to intense questioning, as if it were a threat to national security. “It’s not so much just raising the kid,” Colby pries, clearly trying to come up with a theory. “It’s just having the kid?” Eventually he asks if she will “overcome” her opinion on motherhood, as if it were an obstacle or illness. Lauren calmly, if self-consciously, explains her reticence is 75% “the parent thing” and 25% “being pregnant.” Lauren calls herself the “black sheep” of the cast and knows she must spill her guts to make up for her opinions. Despite having only spoken to Lauren for the first time in that moment, Colby leaves the conversation confident he “can tell” that Lauren “wants to have kids.” A year later, Lauren, now 30, is still blown away by “the cockiness” on display during the scene.

“It was like, ‘Oh my God. So you’re just going to walk in here and think that you are the person to fix all of my problems?” Lauren tells Tudum. “Like, ‘No, sir, not that easy.’ ” Sitting on a back porch in a comfy flannel, she is still wearing her engagement ring from Nathan, who unexpectedly proposed to her in Episode 3.

Colby, left, with Madlyn, Lauren and Nathan.

Lauren has listened to others talk down to her for years about her choices. “What I’ve been told my entire life is, ‘You’ll change your mind when you get older,’ and I finally was just like, ‘Guys, I’m 30 now!’ ” she says. Lauren isn’t much of a black sheep when it comes to having children: 44% of non-parent adults between the ages of 18 and 49 say it is unlikely they will become parents, according to a study by Pew Research Center. Now that The Ultimatum has premiered and is available in nearly 200 countries, Lauren hopes her short-lived time on reality TV will start important conversations and make similarly minded women feel a little less alone.

“Everyone who wants to have kids just gets an easy pass,” she says. “And then the people who don’t get a little bit more shit for it.” Lauren has found that scrutiny often comes from an unexpected source: other women. That initially made her nervous to share her feelings during filming, “just because I get a lot of pressure from women more than men,” she says. This anxiety was particularly pressing during casting, because it was a major roadblock in her relationship with Nathan, who has an intense desire for parenthood. It was Nathan who issued the ultimatum. “Even during the recruiting process, they were like, “Oh, a woman who doesn’t want kids,’ she recalls. “And the guy does — the [traditional] roles have reversed.”

While many people would have been afraid to publicly rock the motherhood expectations boat — Lauren does admit she was worried viewers would find her “crazy” — she ultimately felt happy to “represent” others like her. “There isn’t one reason that I’m hesitant about kids,” she says. “It’s such a complex situation. So having to explain it to multiple people over and over and over again, it was really redundant.” Lauren responded by putting up a “wall” during production — the same wall that formed between Lauren and Nathan during their two-and-a-half-year relationship, leading them to The Ultimatum. Eventually, in repeatedly explaining and defending herself, Lauren found strength in her convictions around motherhood.

“It became more of a reality check for me,” she says. “Like, I don’t need to figure this out with someone else. This is not something that needs to be solved with another person or a new person or a stranger I just met. This is something that dictates my future.”

So, Lauren focused on what she wanted and accepted Nathan’s proposal. While co-stars and viewers may be confused about her decision, she is unbothered by naysayers, laying everything out in simple terms. She says dating other people on The Ultimatum was “awful,” and she quickly realized she didn’t “want to get to know someone again” because she couldn’t help comparing everyone to Nathan. Deciding to leave with him, while agreeing they both wanted the other person more than their strict parenting stance, was easy. “Love just overcame everything else,” she says breezily. “Then we had a lot of conversations after that. It wasn’t just like a ‘Yes, I’ll marry you,’ and then it was said and done.” Instead, the couple went to therapy to work on seeing “eye to eye” on difficult subjects.

As viewers who have already seen The Ultimatum’s reunion know, these conversations led Lauren and Nathan to a consensus. “I have agreed to one child, and one only, because I think that feels a little bit easy,” Lauren explains. When asked about her passions, she lists travel and her new cocktail blog called Shake Shake Pour. Lauren doubts those interests will be impossible to maintain as a mom of one. “Our lives can still pretty much stay, not exactly how they are, but close enough,” she predicts. “I think whenever you start having multiple kids, that’s when it’s like, your life starts revolving around children’s activities.” Nathan, for now, is content with the idea, and Lauren is open to wanting a second baby one day.

Despite the serenity in her voice, Lauren knows that told-ya-so slingers may come calling now that she has, in fact, reconsidered her dreams of living life child-free. She would rather they didn’t. “Yes, they were right,” she admits. “I did end up changing my mind. But who were you to say that was going to happen? Who were you to predict where my decision was going to go? Maybe in the future, just bite your tongue. Don’t say things like that to people; it doesn;t feel very good and it makes the way they feel seem less valid.”

Lauren hopes viewers who might disparage child-free women to rethink their judgment after meeting her on The Ultimatum. “Instead of trying to find a solution to their ‘problem’ or whatever they think is a problem, just hear them out and really listen, because it’s not a problem. It’s their future,” she says. “Women were not put on this planet to have children. We are not your baby ovens.”