While Alexa Alfia and Brennon Lemieux were firmly Team Zanab Jaffrey amid her Love Is Blind drama with ex-fiancé Cole Barnett, things reached a boiling point during Love Is Blind: After the Altar. Now, the married couple is breaking down where they currently stand with Cole.
“I don’t have any ill will towards Cole,” Brennon, 32, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of After the Altar’s Netflix premiere, which dropped on Friday, February 10. “I told Cole, ‘If he wanted to be friends with me, he could have reached out.’ We’re different people, we have different lives and just because we filmed the show for two months doesn’t mean we have to be best friends, and I told him that. I was like, ‘You know, we don’t have to be best friends. You don’t have to live your life based on what I think.’”
The water treatment engineer and Alexa, 27 — who were one of two couples to wed in the season 3 finale — fervently supported Zanab, 31, after she accused former fiancé Cole, 26, of body-shaming her during their romance. The twosome’s argument came to a head during the Love Is Blind season 3 reunion, which aired in November 2022, in which Alexa stuck up for her pal.
![Love Is Blind’s Alexa Alfia and Brennon Lemieux Share Cole Barnett Friendship Update: 'We Have Different Lives'](/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Love-Is-Blinds-Alexa-Reveals-May.jpg?w=1000&quality=47&strip=all)
“I’m not blindly following [Zanab] because she’s a woman,” Alexa said during a November 2022 appearance on the “Chicks in the Office” podcast. “I’m not just blindly ‘Team Zay’ on something and I’m not, like, anti-Cole. I just see things the way I, physically being there, saw things happen.”
The insurance agency owner continued at the time: “We saw for 11 episodes where he made little comments, commenting on things and I can’t remember if it was shown or not … but like telling her that she was the biggest girl that he’s ever been with and then telling her, like, when she was eating, like, ‘You’re fattening yourself up.’ A lot of those little comments happened and that’s gonna tear anyone down because this [person] is supposed to be your biggest f—king cheerleader.”
Alexa and Brennon have since kept their distance from Cole before the realtor confronted them during After the Altar.
“I wasn’t looking for any kind of apology,” Brennon told Us earlier this month during the joint interview with his wife. “He never injured me or hurt me in any way. So I … just kind of brought him aside, like, ‘Man, I’ve never had any ill will towards you [and] wish you the best in life.’”
Following Cole’s heated discussion with Brennon at Alexa’s After the Altar birthday party, the couple have not further communicated with the Fort Worth, Texas, resident.
“We have not spoken but I had seen him a few times throughout the last year and a half,” Alexa recalled to Us earlier this month. “It was always, like, chill. We were never friends. I, honestly, I didn’t know him very well … but [seeing] someone’s kind of light diminish within them kind of just sucks to watch as a friend.”
She added: “I don’t think Cole’s a bad person at all. I think Cole’s a good person [and] they were just in a relationship that didn’t do anything for either of them. I think that they both learned and grew a lot from it and I think that’s what life is, so I wish them absolutely both the best and that there’s someone for both of them out there. Obviously, it wasn’t with each other and I wish everyone found love the way that we did.”
Love Is Blind: After that Altar season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi