A lot has happened with Izzy Zapata after Love Is Blind season 5 finished filming. While he didn’t get married to Stacy Snyder in the finale, he thought they would still be together. But only a week after filming ended, so did his relationship.
“We gave each other a week apart — we’re so mentally and emotionally drained that we felt like it was okay to take the time,” Izzy tells EW. “We didn’t necessarily establish if we were boyfriend and girlfriend or if we were still engaged, so during that week it was tough for me. I was going crazy. We would probably exchange a text or two every day [as] a quick mental health check-in kind of thing. I wanted to do my best to respect her space, but when you’re in love with someone, it’s hard to be away from them, especially in a time like that — that’s where you should be closer together.”
Greg Gayne/Netflix
When Izzy and Stacy finally met up again a week later, he thought they were going to pick up right where they left off as an engaged couple. “She’s still wearing her ring, we go out on a date together, and I’m like, ‘This is great. There’s no cameras around,'” he remembers. “I would always tell her, ‘It’ll be even better once this is done and there’s no pressure of cameras because when we’re off-camera, it’s so organic and the chemistry is amazing.'”
But throughout the date, Izzy felt like there was “something off” with Stacy so he confronted her about it later that night. “I ask her, ‘Are you even in love with me?’ And she was just like, ‘No, I’m not feeling it,'” Izzy says. “I was just like, ‘What the f—?’ And then I got up and I just left, and I never spoke to her again for a year.”
Izzy didn’t understand where Stacy’s decision to end things came from. “I really didn’t know what it was, I was confused,” he says. “For about the first six months, I was so angry toward her because I never really got a reason why, or I thought maybe she lied to me. But yeah, then after about a year, we ran into each other, and that was the best because we clarified [everything]. We both had so many questions that we hadn’t answered. After doing that and reconnecting again, that’s why now we’re just closer than ever and we have such a great friendship.”
A year and a half later, Izzy still isn’t sure of the exact reason why Stacy changed her mind about their relationship. “It’s crazy, because we’ve had this conversation, but it’s late nights, glasses of wine,” he says. “I don’t know for certain. I think she just felt like there was a lot more I needed to do. I think she didn’t have so much confidence in me, thinking that I still wanted to live this young bachelor life. Which I clearly didn’t want to, I was ready to settle.”
But once Stacy was out of his life, it didn’t take long for him to reconnect with his pod ex Johnie Maraist. Only a week after his breakup with Stacy, he and Johnie reunited and things got heated — but in a very different way than it did at the barbecue when he yelled at her.
“The whole cast was out at the bar, and I went and met up with them and she was there, so I wanted to apologize and give her my side of why I reacted the way I reacted at the barbecue,” Izzy says. “I pulled her aside and we sat outside on a bench, and we were talking — the whole conversation was like an hour long. She apologized to me about the whole telling Chris one thing, me the other thing. We clear that and we’re on good terms, and then we’re like, ‘Well, there’s chemistry here. You’re attracted to me, I’m attracted to you.'”
Rebecca Brenneman
While Izzy claims they never went on a “real date,” they did give a relationship a shot on multiple occasions. “I would go over, we had wine one time, and we’ll talk,” he says. “I stayed the night a couple of times, but we never hooked up or anything. And then I went out with her one time with a couple of her friends to the bar. But I wouldn’t say we even had an official one-on-one date.”
Ultimately he and Johnie didn’t get back together, which was a decision they came to mutually. “That was super short-lived,” he says. “Obviously I shouldn’t have been even dating, I’m still devastated from Stacy, she wasn’t over the fact that I turned her down in the pod, and she was still sad over the Chris scenario too. We just realized that it was not a good time — maybe later on down the road. But then she and I came to see we’re just not each other’s person, we are different people, so that’s why we kept it as just good friends.”
Regardless of how his time on Love Is Blind ended, Izzy doesn’t regret picking Stacy over Johnie in the pods. “Stacy was the right choice for me,” he says. “I don’t regret anything through this experience, other than the way I [treated] Johnie at the barbecue.”
During the season 5 reunion, Izzy also revealed that he learned fellow cast member Uche Okorhoa had been talking negatively about him in the pods. “I was hearing from other cast members that he just wasn’t a fan of me, he was thinking I wasn’t a good guy and I was superficial,” Izzy says. “One time, when me and Stacy reconnected, Uche was actually out with us and a couple of other people having drinks. I walked to the bathroom and as I’m gone, he’s trying to tell Stacy stuff right then and there.”
Ultimately Uche reached out to Izzy to apologize. “He was like, ‘I was getting all this stuff fed from Johnie,’ because Johnie was talking bad about me to him,” Izzy reveals. “He was like, ‘Now that everything’s playing out, I’m seeing how Johnie really is. I see you are a really good guy, so I just want to apologize for that.’ Now we’re on good terms. No bad blood with anybody.”
He does, however, wish the whole world didn’t know about his financial history. “It’s not the best, you know what I mean?” he says. “I think a lot of people can relate and wouldn’t want to just broadcast that out there. But at the end of the day, I don’t regret it because through this entire process, I’ve been open and honest and truly myself. It’s not something that you would obviously want to tell, but at the end of the day, I’m still proud that I told the truth.”
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