Love Is Blind's Madison Breaks Down Her Fight With Joe In Mexico

The Love Is Blind pods are one thing, but the real relationship test begins once an engaged couple enters the real world together. Just ask Madison Maidenberg. After she fell head over heels for Joe Ferrucci without even seeing him, things took an unexpected turn when they met up in Mexico. Now, Madison is explaining exactly what she was feeling during her conflict with her new fiancé.

Madison and Joe seemed to sail through the Season 9 pods without much drama, but that all changed once the wall came down. While on their trip to Mexico with the other engaged couples, Madison became annoyed with how Joe was behaving at the cast meet-up party, noting that he seemed more interested in downing drinks and goofing off with the men than spending time with her.

It didn’t take long for Joe’s partying to catch up with him, as Madison encouraged him to turn in early for a nap to sleep off the alcohol. But when she checked on her fiancé later in the night, his incoherent questioning worried her. While the situation led to the couple’s first major fight, Madison says she didn’t feel their relationship was in any real trouble in that moment.

“Oh, the infamous nap. There wasn’t a point that I felt like it was over between us,” Madison says. “I was in the mindset of, we are transitioning from a very abnormal situation in the pods, and Mexico is kind of the in-between before real life. So I had a lot of grace for that situation. We were all drinking. We were all partying. I was definitely upset about the way it was handled, but there wasn't a thought in my mind that this was the beginning of the end.”

Though their blowup seemed intense on the show, Madison emphasizes that she and Joe were still at such an early stage in their relationship that they were focused on learning how they behave in certain settings.

“I was in observation mode at that point, where it was kind of like, ‘OK, this is how you move through the world in this situation,’” Madison explains. “I was really just taking him in, seeing him in different situations, because it's our first time together outside the pods.”