Love is Blind’s Clay Gravesande is opening up about his journey on the reality dating series.
Season 6 of the Netflix show brought a lot of ups and downs for the 31-year-old enterprise sales and entrepreneur, as he fell for real estate broker, Amber Desiree (“AD”). What seemed like a match made in heaven — and after Clay seemingly did the work on himself — it was time for them to head to the alter and say “I do.” But fans (and AD) were in for a shock during the wedding episode when Clay made it down the altar and decided that he wasn’t going to say “I do.”
“AD, I love you. I don’t think it’s responsible for me to say, ‘I do.’ But I want you to know I’m rocking with you… I know fully I’m not ready for marriage,” he said.
On Thursday, Clay appeared on The Tamron Hall Show, where he opened up about his last minute decision not to marry AD.
“We had a really good last two weeks of our relationship,” Clay told Tamron. “You know, we had a lot of ups and downs but the last two weeks [were] really good. We really got to a point where we could see ourselves as being a married couple. I think for me, Tamron, it was just watching her walk across the aisle, it really sat with me like this is really real. And I just think that I just got pessimistic — I didn’t trust the process. I didn’t trust myself and ultimately I made the decision. I said, ‘I don’t think I am a husband and I didn’t want to put her through anything.'”
Clay explained that he felt like he was going to commit to marriage in the days and right up until the moment it was time for him to say the two words that AD hoped to hear. However, he ultimately decided it wasn’t the right time.
“You know, it’s funny you say it’s a short walk [down the aisle], I honestly felt like it was an eternity. I felt like every step she took, I’m just battling with myself,” he said. “So honestly, it just kind of dragged out and you’re having these thoughts in your head — you know how things could be internally when you’re just battling with your inner demons.”
Clay added that he was even talking to himself as AD was walking down the aisle.
“Essentially,” he recalled to Tamron thinking at the time. “‘Clay, you know, you’re not that guy. You know you’re not, you know, a husband.’ It was a tough realization to have because you want to show up and at the end of the day, I put on a tuxedo, I was ready to be a husband that day.”
Clay was joined by his mother, Margarita Gravesande, who shed some more light on her son’s decision and how the conversation with his father about his infidelity may have impacted it.
“Well, you have to understand as a mom, when I looked at him, my heart was just broken,” Margarita told Tamron. “And I knew exactly in that moment what was occurring, because I saw it on his face. He wanted to be in a relationship, he wanted to be married, but I also felt like he was just dealing with a lot of emotions that really [weren’t] his to deal with. And unfortunately, I didn’t know what I didn’t know until in the end, and I never said anything to my ex-husband that I knew because that was his story to tell him.”
Revisit Clay and AD’s Love is Blind season 6 journey below.