Love Is Blind’s Patrick Says He Was ‘Blindsided’ by Kacie (Exclusive)

Warning: this story contains spoilers from episodes 1-6 of Love Is Blind season 9.

Patrick Suzuki’s journey on Love Is Blind didn’t go quite to plan, but he has since come to a place of acceptance.

The Denver native was introduced to fans on season 9 of the Netflix hit, where he quickly developed connections in the pods with Anna Yuan and Kacie Mcintosh. However, things took a turn early on when Anna suddenly left the pods without warning — leaving Patrick heartbroken.

He then shifted his attention fully to Kacie, and the two continued to hit it off before getting engaged sight unseen. But when it came time for their reveal, it was almost immediately clear that something was off — and Kacie ended things shortly thereafter.

When asked by PEOPLE if his journey unfolded as planned, Patrick, 31, laughs, “No, not at all.”

“I mean, I knew I was going to grow from it, so I guess from that aspect, yes,” he notes. “But as far as the twists and turns, totally didn’t see that roller coaster happening.”

When it came to Anna, Patrick believes an engagement would’ve happened with her first, had she stayed on the show.

“1000%, yeah, for sure,” the construction manager says of his costar. “It sucked [she left]. And a part of it is [because] the last thing her and I talked about … she told me, ‘Don’t break my heart.’ And I told her I wasn’t going to.”

“So it definitely, definitely stung pretty hard to not see her the next day,” he says.

Despite his broken heart, Patrick kept his head up and focused on the other connections he had — primarily with Kacie.

“You’re in this pressure cooker experiment and there’s like, 10 days to make a decision, and I was definitely catching feelings for her, and I know she was catching feelings for me too,” he says of Kacie.

From her side of things, Kacie seemed very sure about Patrick in the pods, even going so far as to have some racy conversations about her sexual fantasies with him and detailing their future together. The hair and makeup artist also repeatedly assured him that his race wasn’t a factor, despite saying she had never dated an Asian man before.

But her tune changed at the reveal when things were clearly awkward. Not long after, she broke the news to Patrick that she didn’t want to continue on the TV show with him anymore.

However, because she didn’t outwardly say she wanted to end things between them for good, Patrick interpreted that as she simply wasn’t ready to get married and they’d continue dating off-camera instead.

“I thought that she wanted to just go away from the cameras and just like, ‘Let’s just hang out for a second.’ That’s why I was like, ‘Don’t worry. We can slow it down,'” he recalls.

But to cameras, Kacie admitted that she was not physically attracted to Patrick and he deserved a woman who was “obsessed” with him. After their final goodbyes — which saw Kacie straddle Patrick in a hug and kiss him several times — the two went their separate ways.

Reflecting on the breakup with Kacie, Patrick admits he “didn’t see that coming,” especially because it came “pretty soon” after their first reveal.

“It was very fast … I was on cloud nine,” he says. “She told me she loved me. She’s kissing me. There’s reciprocity there, so I’m with it. Reciprocity is everything… But I was definitely completely blindsided there.”

“My intuition was already kicking a little bit before even having the conversation,” he adds. “But I told myself, I’m going to go in this experiment fully with my heart on the sleeve, and I’m going to trust this person and give her the trust until she gives me a reason not to.”

Following their split, Patrick admits he “absolutely” questioned Kacie’s intentions and if they were genuine.

“I had a range of thoughts. I tried to find the answer in my head forever,” he explains. “Pick through information, text her, call her, ask her for a conversation. I never got any of that. So I’m piecing it all together. Is it because I’m ugly? Is it because I’m not cool? Is it because I’m too much? Is it because she already had a boyfriend? Is it because she wanted to be famous?”

“I’m running all these simulations in my head [because] naturally you want to find an answer,” he continues. “Every human wants to. Any type of rejection, you feel like that. But once it came to the point where I realized, ‘Okay, this has not served me any justice. I got to go on a healing journey.'”

Despite how things unfolded, Patrick says he doesn’t harbor ill will towards Kacie today — even after watching the episodes and gaining a bit more clarity.

“It was pretty tough,” he says. “It took me many months of travel, many months of therapy and stuff like that. The closure, I figured out pretty quickly. The healing part was the hard part. And then after watching it… I guess it did help a little bit.”

“But for me, I’m just happy that I went with the experiment the way I did,” he notes. “I mean, I’m not mad at her or anything like that. I wish there was an easier way to handle it. But any breakup is difficult no matter what, especially when you’re deeply involved like that.”

“So for me, I tend to give people a free pass just because it doesn’t serve me any justice to try to think about the way it was handled,” he adds. “It was just you have to piece it together that she wasn’t truly interested afterwards, and you got to take it on the chin and he’ll move on from there.”

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Episodes 1-6 of Love Is Blind season 9 are streaming now on Netflix, with the next batch dropping on Oct. 8.