Emma Betsinger Was ‘Pleasantly Surprised’ by Her Love Is Blind Edit—Tears and All

Love Is Blind contestant Emma Betsinger has always been a solid maybe on whether or not she wants to have kids one day, which has been fine with the people she’s dated in the past. So when Emma entered the Love Is Blind pods, she wasn’t expecting this to be her most serious issue, she tells Glamour.

She was prepared to discuss a few other key things about her background—such as her adoption and medical history—but on her own terms for once. Emma was adopted from China by a white family and as a child had to undergo several surgeries to remove a potentially dangerous birthmark, leaving her with a significant scar. Most people’s personal histories aren’t quite so visible, and Emma was looking forward to taking her time with telling her story to the men she was interested in.

“In the past, it was kind of like, you could see me and you could see my parents, and you can put two and two together,” she says. “I think when you take that physical appearance aspect out…I wanted to tell my story and how it impacted me and my life, and I wanted to share that with someone that I cared about. And Mike and Connor really made me feel safe and seen.”

When Emma decided to tell Connor and Mike, her two strongest connections in the pods, about her personal history, it was because she could see a real future with them. The question then became whether they could see a future without kids.

For Emma, her adoption is a big part of her ambivalence to having children. On the show Emma said she worries about passing down genetic problems she doesn’t know about. What if her child inherits a birthmark like hers and has to go through what she did? Plus, there are other concerns. Like, what if she is too selfish to be a mother? What if there are sudden financial problems?

But Mike had an answer for everything. He suggested getting genetic testing. He promised that they would weather whatever storms that came together. He also seemed convinced that Emma could make a great mom. Rather than put Emma off, she tells me she began to open up to the possibility of children in a real way. “Mike did share about his birth story too, which was very, very touching and so full of heart and meaningful. And I think that was a moment where I was like, This could be it,” she says. By the time they left the pods as an engaged couple, Emma was seriously considering children, though the question was by no means settled.

“I think something that the viewers might not know is that I was working through these things in real time,” Emma says. “So my pauses or my tears—those were such true emotions that I had to work through and then go straight into a pod or a date.”

It’s true that much of the conversation online has been in reaction to Emma’s heart-on-sleeve personality. Some suggested, in a way that has been suggested about women on this show before, that Emma needed therapy not the altar. But, Emma says, “I was very proud of myself for working through and being able to have these conversations with Connor, Mike, and Steven in such a crunched pressure-cooker time.”

In an interview with Glamour, Emma tells us all about getting into the big questions with Mike, Connor, and even Steven.