Why Was Birth Control Such an Issue for Amy & Johnny?
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Love Is Blind Season 6 Episodes 1-11.]
Amy Cortés and Johnny McIntyre are without a doubt the strongest couple of Love Is Blind Season 6. Their one roadblock through the whole season has been the issue of birth control. Amy didn’t want to disrupt her body with hormonal medication, and Johnny didn’t want to get a vasectomy, but they both agreed some kind of birth control needed to be put to use.
Hormonal medication could actually be helpful to Amy, as she says in Season 6 that her doctor has suggested it as a treatment for her anemia. But her concerns about disrupting her body’s natural functions are legitimate; hormonal birth control can cause a litany of uncomfortable problems even if it’s helping in some ways. Johnny looked into getting a vasectomy and was justifiably scared that the procedure could not be reversed (that is a real risk).
While they figured out their solution, Amy and Johnny decided not to have sex to err on the extreme side of caution. Johnny dreaded the idea of having a child before they were financially ready, because he grew up in some financially unstable circumstances and wanted to avoid that entirely for his own children. Amy was open to the idea of having a kid earlier than planned, but respected Johnny’s worries. In a long talk in Season 6 Episode 11, Amy agreed to consider taking hormonal birth control.
Amy tells TV Insider that while it may have seemed like she and Johnny weren’t exactly on the same page on this issue, they very much were.
“It was definitely a huge concern for me because I wanted to make sure that if we were going to take that step of getting married, I wanted to make sure that we were fully aligned and on the same page,” she says. “And so I feel like his fears were completely valid. I mean, I have the same fears. I also don’t want to have a child anytime soon. And so I feel like we were completely aligned in that sense. It was just really finding the best next steps on how to be sexually active without bringing a child into the world. And so it was multiple conversations that had to be had, and I feel like it was very important that we went into it the way that we did.”
Johnny explains that his anxiety was also rooted in wanting the time together as a couple before expanding their family.
“I think the big thing was, it goes back to the timing of the entire experiment,” he says. “You get engaged after eight days, then after another month you’re married. I didn’t want it to be after another maybe two to three months we start having kids. I want to have a long, prolonged experience of actually getting to know her, get into her family, building that relationship before we start welcoming kids into the world.”
Amy’s only other concern this season was getting her father’s blessing. Being from different cultures and this experiment being so outlandish and hard to grasp, Amy feared that her family wouldn’t accept Johnny. On their honeymoon, she said she didn’t think she could move forward without her father’s blessing. Happily, he gave that to Johnny in Season 6 Part 3, streaming now.
“I have [dated people outside of the Puerto Rican culture], but with him, I just didn’t know how it would go,” Amy tells TV Insider. “I wanted to see how his family would be and all, but I feel like I come from a very smothers and love type of family. I thought that that would be a little bit too much for him, but then I realized that his family was very similar in that sense, too.
“He has a big family that is just so full of love and energy, and I feel like there really wasn’t that big of a difference,” she continues. “Obviously we don’t speak the same language and there’s that barrier within both of our families, but at the same time, I feel like the love that was there was shared between both families.”
Find out if Amy and Johnny make it down the altar and say “I do” in the Love Is Blind Season 6 finale.
Love Is Blind, Season 6 Finale, Wednesday, March 6, Netflix