A Dissenting Opinion: “Jimmy Is a Master Manipulator”

Spoilers for Love Is Blind season six finale below.

If my life goes awry in such a way that I get dumped at a closed-for-the-season amusement park, that Tower of Terror better work. I would not like to leave the scene of that crime alive. 

Carowinds Amusement Park in North Carolina was the site of the finale of the Jimmy Presnell-Chelsea Blackwell relationship. After asking Chelsea if she’d say yes at the altar (she would), Jimmy revealed that he wouldn’t. The fight they had over Jimmy’s women friends and how often he goes out was so devastating, he said, that he “cannot fathom marrying [Chelsea] after that.” It was a catastrophic mic drop; they could not return from that.

Jimmy strikes me as being about as charming as a bag of rocks. It is so humiliating that when Jimmy called a Chelsea clingy, I had to kind of agree with him. Chelsea would exhaust anyone. On Thursday night, however, I saw a dissenting opinion that piqued my interest: What if I told you Jimmy was a mastermind?

My friend Kim Johnson, a brand strategy consultant, made a good case on her Instagram story on Wednesday night. “This man is a master manipulator and everyone fell right in line smh.” I had to ask her more about this position. “I want to preface this by saying I am neither team Jimmy nor team Chelsea lol. In fact, there is not a single person on this season that I did not think was a certified mess. (Aside from the couple who actually got married whose names I can’t remember. Congrats to them.) I am solely team #claysmom,” she said. Kim agreed to answer a few questions via email.

Hunter Harris: In your IG story, you described Jimmy as "a master manipulator and everyone fell right in line." How was Jimmy manipulating Chelsea, and to what end?
Kim Johnson: I think there were so many subtle signs from the moment they stepped out of the pods that Jimmy was not excited/fully happy with his decision about Chelsea. In their first post-pods scene Jimmy talked for too long (IMO) about how he felt about his last conversation with Jess and made a point to say that she “brought up looks” as something he would choke over when he saw her. (Def could’ve left that part out, buddy.) Then there’s the fact that he called her a “liar” for the Megan Fox comparison (obviously a stretch) and brought it up multiple times, even to her friends, which to me is whack af. Like if you love her you need to be like “Megan who? She ain’t got nothing on you baby” and never mention it again. LIKE THAT’S YOUR WOMAN! But in general, I just don’t think there was a moment during this season where Jimmy acted like he truly liked Chelsea, and she felt that. His expressions of love were giving lights on, no one’s home if you know what I mean. You’re saying it, but we’re not feeling it. 

The reason I consider him a manipulator, though, is because, despite his distaste for her being clear over the course of eleven 1 hour episodes, he waited til the final moment to get her to pour her heart out to him just to tell her he doesn’t want to marry her because she’s not committed to him. Slimy! I get it, Chelsea was very insecure, but her biggest flaw this season in my opinion was right instinct, wrong response. He was too weak to own not wanting to be with her from jump so he let her spiral until he decided he’d had enough.  

I don't think Jess is as present in the Chelsea-Jimmy dynamic as Sarah Ann was clearly heavy on Jeremey's mind as he was engaged to Laura. Do you think the Jess of it all has anything to do with the way Jimmy behaves?
I agree, I don’t think that Jess really had anything to do with the breakdown of Jimmy & Chelsea’s relationship. Honestly, I think Jimmy played Jess in a very similar way to Chelsea at the end of the pods by dragging their relationship as far as he did. I actually rewatched his final scene with Jess in the pods and it’s a foreshadowing if I’ve ever seen one. After Jimmy basically stammers to try to figure out how to tell her it’s over, Jess says “At the very least what you owe me is just one single ounce of directness.” Like damn. That is the kind of energy we needed to see Jimmy up against. Unfortunately, Chelsea just did not have access to the bad bitch juice Jess was on. 

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Is Chelsea's paranoia and insecurity over this relationship warranted? Over Jimmy's relationship with his women friends? 
There’s nothing worse than knowing someone isn’t feeling you but they don’t have the balls to say it (never been me, but still). I think that coupled with her preexisting insecurities was a recipe for disaster.

I think Chelsea’s paranoia over Jimmy’s girlfriends is semi-warranted. You choose to bring only girl friends to meet me, and then tell me off camera you had sex with one of them, and you don’t think that will stick in the back of my head and very well may come up in an argument? You don’t know women. That being said, do I think anything actually happened during the show with his friend? No. 

Why has Jimmy gotten more sympathy than Chelsea, generally? If the answer is just that we live in a culture of misogyny, that's sufficient lmao.
Honestly, I think the Megan Fox thing put the nail in the coffin for Chelsea this season lol. That and she is genuinely pretty insufferable :/ And I think because Jimmy wasn’t as flagrant in his untrustworthiness as like a Clay for instance he was able to kind of slide through the season without much fallout, but I think that is why he irks me so much. 

Were you surprised that this couple didn't make it to the altar? What do you expect from them at the reunion?
Nope! Either chaos or silence!

You can find Kim on IG here.

I scroll the Love Is Blind chat the way a father in the 1950s would read the morning newspaper and ignore his children. This chat is delicious to me. I luxuriate in it. Here are some highlights:

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