‘I’ve been compared to Hitler after appearing on Love Is Blind UK’

Javen Palmer is public enemy number one after Love Is Blind UK.

The 28-year-old former pro footballer was among the five couples to successfully leave ‘the pods’ after turning to the Netflix series looking for an unconventional path to love.

He found Katisha Atkinson. She’s smart, absolutely beautiful, kind and essentially the knockout you dream of meeting on a reality series.

But they were doomed from the get-go. Katisha had built a connection with another contestant, Demola Ayilara, even suggesting they would be getting engaged on their next date, until she abruptly changed her mind.

Essentially, she followed her ‘spleen’ and it led her to Javen. Still, he couldn’t quite get his head around the sudden U-turn, even if it worked in his favour.

From their honeymoon to living together in a swanky apartment, the cracks were instant and deepened until one night everything fell apart.

All the contestants from the pods who built connections reunited for the first time, and at least on the surface, Javen appeared to get close to Sophie Willet.

Later that night, after returning home with Katisha — who was visibly upset — Javen went back out. Who was on that night out? Sophie, among others. But it was Megan Jupp who told Katisha that Javen had spent the night with Sophie, even claiming the two snuck behind the curtain of a photo booth at G-A-Y.

Javen denied there was even a curtain at said photobooth, but Love Is Blind fans investigated and confirmed that yes, there was a curtain.

That curtain call was the end of their relationship, and Javen has subsequently been subjected to shocking abuse on social media.

He tells Metro: ‘When you sign up for something like this, you’re exposing your life to the world. Netflix is a massive platform, billions of people watch it, so I think that you have to take things with a pinch of salt – I got compared to Hitler the other day! But this is part of the journey.’

Throughout Love is Blind, it was hard to see what brought Javen and Katisha together in the first place, let alone why they stayed. Javen insists there was a lot that went unseen.

‘Our relationship was portrayed in a very serious and negative way, but it wasn’t like that [while] being in it,’ he says.

‘There was a lot of times where we were intimate on camera, was friendly. On camera, there was a lot more chemistry than what the viewers got to see. I guess, I wish people got to kind of see more [of] the pods and the deeper conversations that we had.’

Katisha, however, said she was ’shocked in the worst way possible’ watching the show back, particularly the chapter in the pods.

‘Watching some of his interviews, and watching how he behaved in the boy’s lounge, but then knowing how he behaved with me, it was two completely different things. I guess, in a sense, that is kind of normal – I wouldn’t be acting the same with my girls as I would be with my partner, but watching it back was a little bit eye-opening.

‘It’s funny, because everyone keeps saying to me, “How did you not see the flags?”’

Megan did see the red flags – and told Katisha, woman to woman. Their relationship may have already been hanging by a thread, but Megan’s version of events was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Javen invited Megan and Kieran to his apartment to talk things through, but it quickly escalated — voices were raised, and tears were shed.

Still, Megan stands her ground. ‘I don’t take anything back. I meant what I said.

‘I would have liked for it not to have got so heated, but when someone’s calling me a liar, I was just seeing red. I would have loved it if maybe I didn’t get so riled up, but I can’t help it, I feel that’s just human, isn’t it?’

Javen and Katisha ultimately didn’t make it to the altar — the only couple to break up before their wedding day. Every other couple said ‘I do,’ except for Bardha Krasniqi and Jed Chouman.

They did make it to the aisle, but Bardha told him she wasn’t ready to commit to marriage… yet.

Regardless, after trying to make it work for a brief stint after the show, they eventually called it quits. ‘It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to say no like that. I flew back to see him to make it work for a few weeks, and we just weren’t compatible. I cut my losses and ended it there, but we did give it a very short try.’

Billy Jervis and Ashleigh Berry, as well as Sarover Kaur Aujla and Kal Pasha, have also gone their separate ways since their wedding days.

Megan and Kieran Holmes-Darby are now the only couple still going strong. And according to them, the key to their success was simple: fun.

‘We were just silly with each other the whole time,’ says Kieran. ‘Once we got through the pod section when it got deep, we’d found out everything we needed to know, so when we got out, we were just having fun.’

Megan agrees: ‘It was really important to be ourselves, enjoy time together outside of filming as well. We made so much effort to go out and do things we wanted to do, even had meet-ups with our families outside of filming (which we probably weren’t meant to do).’

Love Is Blind UK is available to stream on Netflix

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