Love Is Blind star reveals chronic health issue and gives update on her marriage to co-star as she hits back at trolls
Love Is Blind star Lydia Velez Gonzalez has revealed she’s been battling a severe chronic health issue for years - and has given an major update on her marriage to her co-star.
Lydia married James ‘Milton’ Johnson on season 5 of the show back in 2023. She doesn’t give many life updates on her Instagram, so not much is known about what the pair have been up to since they appeared on the hit reality dating show.
But, she’s just given a major upate on both her marriage and her health, revealing that she has been living with fibromyalgia.
Taking to Instagram a few days ago, she shared a long caption about the condition alongside a video of her smiling: “Smile. Shine. Pretend. That’s the audio. But let’s be honest, it’s also the daily routine when you live with fibromyalgia.”
Because of the condition, Lydia wrote of how she’s had “depression, anxiety and guilt”. She added that she’s now “done pretending” about her health and wants to raise awareness about the health condition.
She went on: “This month I’m showing up for me for the ones silently suffering, for the ones getting misdiagnosed, for the ones wondering if anyone sees them.
“And for the ones who don’t have the audience or platform to speak up, I use mine for all of us, because creating awareness matters, because we’re not faking the pain, we’re faking being fine.”
The reality TV star also hit back at the trolls who have been nasty to her in their comments. “People keep asking me what the symptoms are, and then there was that one troll who said, ‘You’re always crying’. But maybe if more people understood what this condition really feels like, they’d stop judging and start listening.”
Some of the symptoms Lydia said she’s had to deal with include “waking up already exhausted, pain that spreads through every inch of your body, your bladder acting up, your stomach flipping on you [and] your chest hurting for no clear reason.”
It comes just days after Lydia gave a major update on her marriage to Milton, who she met and married within around a month on Love is Blind. She last posted about her husband in March when they attended the Southwest by Southwest festival in Texas.
“An amazing weekend with amazing people! Loved spending time with all of these amazing humans! Forever grateful!” she wrote.
On an upload from two weeks ago ew, one fan quizzed Lydia on the status of her marriage. “You're not married anymore?”, they asked. She replied with a very definite statement: “Still married.”
Lydia and James Milton, or Milton as he is known, are the only success story from Love Is Blind season 5. Lydia was unsure about their romance at first as she was 30 during their time in the pods, while Milton was 24.
He soon won her over, however, as they bonded over their shared love of science. They got married in June 2022 on the show and then had a second wedding in her native Puerto Rico. In October 2023, they revealed they were in a long-distance marriage because Johnson had to relocate from Houston, Texas to Long Beach, California, for work.