The mother of Love Is Blind star Tyler Francis’ three children, Bri Thomas, claimed that the reality TV personality initially ended his relationship with his kids due to a “financial disagreement.”
“He asked to claim the kids on his taxes,” Bri explained in an interview with Jessie Woo, posted to her YouTube channel on Thursday, November 7. “I did not agree, because, like I said, we disagreed a lot about like, ‘Hey, you could be doing more with the kids.’ So, it was a disagreement about that. And then he cut them off.”
She explained that after Tyler, 35, “found love” with a woman named Andrea, he decided he wanted to be a “sperm donor again.”
“It would seem like, he again, fell in love, cut off, decided like, ‘Hey maybe I don’t want kids or maybe I was just a sperm donor,’ or whatever fits the story that he needs to tell,” Bri continued. “We never had this agreement, like, ‘Hey, yeah it’s fine for you to say that you donated sperm,’ so that was never an agreement of ours. He never told me that he tells people this, so it was very painful to hear on national TV that’s how you refer to them.”
Tyler found himself at the center of controversy on season 7 of Love Is Blind after he revealed to his now-wife, Ashley Adionser, that he was the father of three children just two weeks before their wedding. He initially claimed that he was nothing more than a “sperm donor” for a couple he knew.
Bri’s comments follow Ashley, 32, detailing what cameras didn’t capture about how Tyler broke the news to her about him being a father to three children.
“He begins to allude to the fact that he’s a sperm donor to a lesbian couple who was married. You know, he was afraid to tell me because he didn’t want to lose me,” Ashley said during the November 6 episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. The Netflix star said that Tyler didn’t “want to talk about it on camera or that he [didn’t] want to hurt that family or have people searching for them,” but she couldn’t do that.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way I can continue with this experiment if we don’t talk about this in some capacity because I’ve been giddy the entire time and if my energy is this low right now, the viewers are going to see it,’” Ashley continued. “I asked him, ‘If I were to sit down with your ex right now or flings or people you dated, what would they say about you?’ Because for two reasons: one, I wanna see if I can see remnants of that behavior and begin to look for it — not that I’m searching for it, but just to begin to pay attention. And two, I wanna see how you’re gonna answer because it’s a red flag when men blame everything on a woman.”
In addition, Ashley told host Nick Viall that Bri wrote her on Instagram to apologize to her and Tyler for the scandal.
“[She] said she’s praying for us and she never meant for it to go this way. She won’t say too much on this forum,” she explained. “She also wrote me and said it was OK if I never wanted to respond and she knows my world is crazy right now and she never intentionally meant to cause me any pain.”
