Jax & Stew Unpack Her Shocking Love Is Blind Exit

What started as a fairytale love story for Jax Guelli and Scott “Stew” Stewart on Love Is Blind Season 11 quickly went south when they left the pods. After meeting face-to-face for the first time in Episode 4, Jax told production she wanted to leave the show immediately, saying the chemistry with Stew felt different from the connection they had built behind a wall. It was a shocking about-face that left her former fiancé blindsided and unable to contact her to hash things out.

Looking back, Jax and Stew can see things a little more clearly. “It was really overwhelming, meeting someone for the first time after getting engaged,” Jax says. “I didn't have a moment to take a beat, and cameras are on you. It's a lot.” The 31-year-old skin care entrepreneur says she realized that it wasn’t going to work out from the moment she sat down with Stew at the reveal. “He's a very intense person, and that's one of the reasons why I like him, but it didn't feel like the connection was right for me.”

For his part, Stew had no idea that the vibes were off between them. “Honestly, it was such an unprecedented situation,” the 34-year-old engineer says. “I wasn't noticing anything. There was so much going on in my own head.” Still, he doesn’t hold hard feelings toward Jax, even if it was a “crazy situation” at the time. “Everybody deserves some grace. I think going back, we would have both approached what went down slightly differently.”

Surprisingly, Jax’s exit wasn’t the end of their story on the show. Episode 5 showed the former couple meeting at a restaurant to talk things out, and Jax revealed that her family encouraged her to give things with Stew another chance. While she won’t share the end result of what happened between them, Jax says her family is still “in full support” of them being together. “My family loves him, and I don't think his family likes me. Valid for how it went down.”