Unpacking the Uche and Lydia drama on 'Love Is Blind': An unofficial timeline of their relationship up until the pods
- Warning: Spoilers ahead for the first four episodes of "Love Is Blind" season 5.
- Uche and Lydia's past relationship put a strain on his romance with Aaliyah when he revealed it in the pods.
The fourth episode of Netflix's "Love Is Blind" season 5 features a major revelation: Uche Okoroha, a lawyer who's forming a strong connection with ICU nurse Aaliyah Cosby, reveals that his ex, Lydia Velez Gonzalez, is also looking for love in the pods.
Aaliyah is understandably upset at the admission, but she and Uche seem like they're going to work past it — Uche even describes Lydia as simply "a girl I've dated in the past," and says their relationship only lasted for "a few months."
But after Aaliyah speaks to Lydia about her past relationship with Uche and learns new details about the relationship from Lydia, she grows suspicious of the situation. Episode four ends with Aaliyah abruptly leaving the pods without saying goodbye to Uche.
Uche and Lydia give differing accounts of their relationship on the show. Here's what we could piece together about the time they spent together.
Lydia and Uche's complicated history
On "Love Is Blind," Uche emphasizes in his conversations with Aaliyah that he and Lydia only dated "for a few months."
"I just didn't think that we were that compatible, so I ended things. It hurt me so much because she deserves an amazing person who is completely sure about her, and I really hope she finds that," he tells Aaliyah.
Uche also says that he didn't have lingering feelings for Lydia, who had apparently blocked him on Instagram after their breakup, and that their relationship was "over with."
Lydia, for her part, doesn't say much on camera to Aaliyah about the longevity or timing of her relationship. What she does share, however, definitely complicates matters even further.
"Last time we saw each other was back in January, this year, and we slept together," she tells Aaliyah.
When Aaliyah subsequently confronts Uche about Lydia's claim, telling him that she'd heard he and Lydia had sex only "three months ago," Uche doesn't deny it.
When did Lydia and Uche date before 'Love Is Blind'?
Both Lydia and Uche's Instagram accounts are sparse, with almost no tagged photos or grid photos to scroll through. Neither of them have any photos, tagged or otherwise, with one another. Perhaps they tend to keep things minimal on social media, or maybe Netflix encouraged them to wipe their profiles before filming "Love Is Blind" season five.
Either way, the first post Lydia liked of Uche's was a shirtless pic from January 2020. The next few photos she liked were posted in April, May, and June of 2021 — Lydia even commented "Looking good" on a photo of Uche and two friends from May 2021. Uche responded at the time: "thanks!"
"Love Is Blind" cohost Vanessa Lachey told E! News in April 2022 that season five was set to begin filming in a few weeks. That lines up with the conversation Lydia and Aaliyah had — April 2022, when the pod conversations would have happened, would have been approximately "three months" after Uche and Lydia last had sex ("in January, this year").
What's trickier to pin down is when Uche and Lydia actually dated. Based on her social media interactions with Uche, which stopped after June 2021 (when she potentially blocked Uche), it seems like they dated in spring of that year.
It's also unclear why they saw each other in January 2022, as Lydia revealed to Aaliyah in the pods. Maybe the two were friends with benefits after their breakup, or maybe they tried to rekindle things but failed.
Either way, the relationship between the two was definitely messy, so much so that Aaliyah decided to leave rather than involve herself in a dramatic love triangle.