‘Love Is Blind’ season 7’s Monica reveals what was in Stephen’s texts

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Love Is Blind season 7, episodes 1-9.

Love Is Blind season 7’s Monica Davis is opening up about the suspicious texts she found off-camera on fiancé Stephen Richardson’s phone.

In the latest batch of episodes (now streaming on Netflix), the couple’s engagement came to a sudden and shocking end after Monica discovered “sexual” texts exchanged between Stephen and another woman while he claimed to be drunk at a sleep test. However, the moment she first saw the texts happened when cameras weren’t rolling, so now she’s telling Entertainment Weekly exactly what happened that wasn’t shown onscreen.

“I discovered the texts just by total coincidence,” Monica tells EW. “We were in our apartment that day, and in the morning, Taylor and Garrett had sent all of the couples a text that said, ‘We’re going to be baking fall goods for everyone, and we’re going to drop them off later tonight.’ We were expecting them to come by soon, and he had to go the bathroom, so he left his phone, and it lit up.”

Monica reveals that she and Stephen had a great day together before the bomb dropped, and remembers laughing with him moments before, so she “didn’t even think twice” about looking at his texts to read cast member Garrett’s message.

“And when I went to click on Garrett’s text, I was in his text messages, and there was one at the top right under Garrett that was a girl’s name, and I could see some writing, and it was just … yeah,” Monica says with a sigh. “It was such a quick decision, but I was like, ‘Push,’ and yeah, I saw a bunch of texts.”

Her alarm bells went off immediately at what she saw, so she went into “detective mode” and “read them thoroughly.”

“I was scrolling to the top because I wanted to see when they started, and they started some time ago, certainly before he left to do this [show],” Monica says. “It was like a dagger to the chest in that moment. Five seconds after, Taylor was asking me, ‘What did they say?’ And I couldn’t even remember the girl’s name, but I do remember they were really very sexual. I remember one specifically said, ‘No one’s ever been able to satisfy my kinks the way you do.’ And they were just going back and forth.”

While Monica doesn’t know the exact details of Stephen’s history with this woman, she says “there was definitely a history there, for sure. I don’t know if it was, like, romantic, loosely, I don’t know if it was just a physical thing.” She also doesn’t believe he cheated on her during their post-pods relationship, but he was texting this other woman during that time. And when Monica confronted him about the texts, he “wouldn’t tell” her “much.”

“In that moment, he wasn’t saying, ‘I’m not going to tell you,’ but he was trying to, very quickly, kind of shift some of the blame, just saying, ‘I’m a piece of s—. You’re right,'” she adds. “That’s all I could get from him. He wasn’t really saying much… I was so devastated. I was completely caught off guard. One thing that you don’t get to see a lot of is how much Stephen and I talked about my past with infidelity, and how it’s been very brutal, and he promised… I felt so safe in knowing that that would never be an issue because of how open and honest I was about it.”

Monica reveals she wanted to make sure their breakup was filmed, and she didn’t want to give Stephen a chance to act like it didn’t happen. “I just knew in that moment I was so disgusted and shocked that I needed him to be away from me,” she says.

But when asked if that’s where their relationship officially ended, Monica is hesitant to answer. “When viewers tune into the reunion, they’ll get to hear more about what’s happened since then between him and I and the current state of our relationship,” she says.

As for the instantly iconic moment when Monica demanded that Stephen pay her back on Venmo for expenses she had covered, Monica laughs. “What really inspired it is I have ex-boyfriends who still owe me money for things, so I was like, ‘This is not happening again,'” she says. “It was just for relationship things, and I was like, ‘I’m happy to pay for it all, and then you can pay me back when you can.’ So, groceries, I think dinner one night — it was a couple hundred bucks.”

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Watching these latest episodes has “been a lot” for her to relive. “It’s not fun seeing myself that heartbroken and sad and upset,” Monica says. “It’s been some time since then, so a lot has happened. It’s been overwhelming and sad at times. Mainly, I’m really excited that it’s finally here and I’m getting to see it all and not gaslight myself as to maybe certain things that happened.”

Despite how things transpired for her and Stephen in these episodes, Monica says that she’s still “really grateful” for the entire experience of being on Love Is Blind.

“I’m so happy I did it, and wouldn’t change a thing,” she says. “There’s more to come with regards to what’s happened between Stephen and I since then, but I will say in that moment, the experiment really worked for me, going through this process and really falling deeply, madly in love and figuring out if I was going to go to the altar in a matter of weeks. And I certainly am so grateful that I didn’t go a day further, let alone a couple weeks further, so I think everything happened exactly the way it had to happen.”

New episodes of Love Is Blind season 7 drop Wednesdays on Netflix.