Love Is Blind's Sara Carton shocked by TikTok video accusing fiancé Ben Mezzenga of 'mistreating woman' - and a worrying trend is emerging from dating shows

Of course, once their phones are returned to them, they started scrolling through social media. It doesn’t take long for 29-year-old Sara Carton to come across a TikTok video which caused her concern, believing it to be about her new fiancé Ben Mezzenga, aged 30. It comes just after social media was at the centre of another controversy when Taylor Haag accused her fiancé Daniel Hastings of following her on Instagram prior to entering the experiment.

The video in question features a woman called Andra Berghoff saying she’s tired of seeing dating shows celebrate what she describes as “s****y” men. In the video, which was recorded in March 2024 when the cast list was leaked in the US, the woman tearfully explains she knows one of the men and had a problem with him while dating him. She doesn’t name Mezzenga but describes the man in detail. After watching it, Carlton thinks the man being described is her husband-to-be.

In the first of a series of videos, Berghoff says: "I'm just exhausted and tired of society rewarding s****y men who treat women terribly and manipulate and lie all the time.” In a follow-up video posted two days later, she said the man blocked her after she posted the video. She didn't explain what happened between them, but said he was a lot older than her, manipulated her, and "shaped the way I viewed men and dating going forward."

When Carton asks Mezzenga about it he says he thinks the video, which is blurred out on the show, is about him, but seeks to reassure her. "I haven't talked to her in over four years. She's already making stuff up. She was like, how I manipulated and did all these different things,” he said.

He goes on to explain that he met the woman on Tinder and they dated for a few weeks, but admits that he ghosted her and they didn’t have a relationship. He adds that he doesn't remember anything else about what happened or what he did to hurt her.

Carton is still uneasy about the revelation and questions Mezzenga further. He then says that he may have messaged the woman since they stopped dating but didn’t initiate the conversation. Of course, that’s where the episode ends, with new episodes coming this Friday (February 28), where new details will be revealed. A classic Love Is Blind cliffhanger . . .

During the teaser for next week's episode Carton tells her fiancé that she trusts him but asks him for the full story. "I'm telling you now, if more comes out of this, if I find out there's anything at all, I won't be able to trust you," she says. So, it remains to be seen if this controversy will put an end to the couple’s relationship.

Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen told Entertainment Weekly explained his reason for including the TikTok video in the episode. "Well, the video was real. We saw it on TikTok," he said. "We saw it, and the cast, the participants, saw it, and it was something that they had to deal with. We had to think [about] how do we deal with that for our participants? I think our commitment to them is just, we're going to document whatever you're doing, whatever is going on in your life. If there's something going on in your life that's an issue for you, or it's affecting you in any way, our commitment is to just tell the story of what's happening, whatever that is."

He added that he is not surprised that social media has become important on the show. "We live in a world that ever increasingly is that this social media stuff creeps into people's lives. And people are out there. They seek attention. Not everybody, but a lot of people seek attention, and if they think that they have an opportunity to latch onto something to get attention, some people are going to try to hitch themselves to that."

Berghoff has not confirmed that the videos are about Mezzenga, and Mezzenga has not commented on them. But, for me, it highlights a worrying trend coming out of dating shows. That is the issue of supposedly problematic contestants - specifically male contestants.

It was only a few months ago, when the cast list for Married at First Sight UK series 9 was announced, that one of contestants was labelled as an abuser of women. Alex Henry, aged 28, was branded a “domestic abuser” by one person on Instagram, and also a “dangerous individual”. The allegations were addressed by Channel 4 at the time. In a statement the broadcaster said: "As part of our responsibility to safeguard our contributors, everyone taking part in MAFSUK undergoes a rigorous vetting process, involving a criminal record check and multiple psychological evaluations, before they can be cleared to take part. The DBS (criminal record) check carried out on the contributor raised in the allegation was returned clean. We cast contributors based on the information we are legally able to access and we continue to review this process to ensure checks are as thorough as legally possible."

That was not the first time the show has been hit with controversy over the behaviour of one of the stars. One of the 2022 grooms on the show, George Roberts, was arrested on suspicion of controlling and coercive behaviour in September of the same year, shortly after the show was filmed. No further action was taken against him.

We don’t know the precise truth about any of the allegations against the men - and they are only allegations - but there are two big concerns here. The first is that people with potentially troubling behaviour towards partners can get on dating reality shows in the first place. I understand that producers do all the checks they are able to in terms of criminal checks and they are doing the best they can. If there is no criminal evidence of bad behaviour then how can they know about it? But it’s still concerning.

The second is that anyone can say anything like like on social media, and once people sign up for these shows they seem to become public property. If allegations, such as the ones levelled at these men, are untrue than that is extremely damaging to their reputation. Mud sticks, after all.

I don’t know what the solution is to either sides of this worrying coin. There isn’t an easy or obvious one to me. It’s not realistic that dating show creator ask participants for names and contact details for every person they’ve come in to contact with romantically so they can call them to ask if there was anything worrying about their interactions. Even if that did happen, in today’s dating app saturated world where you can be talking to several potential suitors at once and go on a date with someone new every night of the week, can anyone remember every single person they’ve ever gone on a date with or ever spoken to on Tinder? Or still have the contact details of the person they went on two dates with five years ago? Or even remmeber their full name? It’s highly unlikely. So, there’s always a chance someone could come forward with an accusation like Berghoff have made.

Plus, even if it were possible how would any information given then be verfied if there was no contact with police as a result? It would become a very messy case of ‘he said, she said’ which would never end well. In addition, how would troubling behaviour be defined? When does behaviour which isn’t kind become downright unacceptable? Opinion on that would vary from person to person. The lines are so blurred. The phrase can of worms springs to mind.

It’s also just not possible to stop people from posting things on social media. The debate about how to bring more control and monitoring in to the online world, in part to prevent rumours which turn out to be untrue from spreading, has been raging for years and nobody has found the answer yet.

One thing is for certain, this all reconfirms my previously expressed opinion that it’s really not a good idea to go on a dating reality show anymore.