Perhaps the most confusing thing about Love Is Blind season 10 (other than Chris Fusco’s behavior) is Alex Henderson’s lore. The self-proclaimed nomad introduces himself as a former Division 1 soccer goalie whose career was cut short due to an injury, but his job history after that point is…unclear, to say the least. His fiancée, Ashley Carpenter, has also raised some questions about his murky dating history, and to make matters more confusing, it seems Alex previously went by a different first and last name.
So what exactly is this man’s deal? Here’s all the info I’ve managed to cobble together about Alex’s ~nomadic~ journey, including his reported career path and dating history, as well as his real name. Starting with…
What is Alex’s job?
While chatting with Ashley’s family, Alex revealed that he currently works as a youth soccer coach and “day trades the Australian dollar over the U.S. dollar on the side.” According to Alex, this entails conference calls with his close, personal friend Jerome Powell.
Prior to his day trading, Alex’s career was a bit all over the place, and he even admitted to Us Weekly that “it’s confusing to me, too, to be completely honest.”
As he explained, “I worked at Merrill Lynch after soccer ended in Denver, went to Chicago, worked for a Canadian bank there called BMO for three years. Then COVID ended my career. [They] gave me a severance package, which led me to traveling the world at a time where travel was difficult.”
During his time as a #nomad, Alex lived in Australia for a year, where he spent four or five months as a commercial fisherman in the Northern Territory, ran a gym in Bondi Beach outside of Sydney, and worked at a casino in Melbourne.
Oh, and according to People, he also spent part of his nomadic years “living in places like Florida, California, Arizona, and New Zealand, where he said he has dual citizenship.” During that time, he worked in sales at Hibu, a digital marketing company, and at Block, a fintech company.
And of course, at some point, Alex spent some time in Austin. Which brings us to…
What happened to Alex and his ex-girlfriend in Austin?
Pod squad member Priyanka Grandhi complicated things for Alex a bit when she revealed that she knew him from his time in Chicago…as well as from Austin. Alex was then forced to reveal to Ashley that yes, he did spend a “little bit” of time going back and forth between Cleveland and Austin, where he stayed at his ex’s place “while she was on assignment” as a travel nurse.
What Ashley didn’t previously realize: His ex was on assignment in Austin…which meant they had been living together.
“She’s a travel nurse that was living there, working there, for a few months at a time,” Alex later clarified. “I stayed at her place and then went to the F1 [race] with her. It made sense for me at that point because I wasn’t in a relationship.” (He was also apparently seeing a woman at his gym during that same timeframe but said no cheating was involved on his end.)
According to Alex, the travel nurse ex now lives in Florida with her boyfriend, and “there’s no tie at all” between her and Alex.
What’s the deal with Alex’s soccer career?
In addition to being a nomad, a big part of Alex’s personality is being a former athlete. He told Tudum that he fell in love with the sport as a kid, eventually earning a scholarship and all-American honors while serving as the goalie for the Wake Forest University soccer team in North Carolina.
Minnesota United later picked up Alex in 2017 as the first goalie selected in the Major League Soccer draft, but a knee injury ended Alex’s professional soccer career before it even started.
Side note: In a strange attempt to impress Ashley with his soccer prowess, Alex deemed legendary soccer player Tim Howard a “weirdo” and said that David Beckham is “not even good.” Alex has since apologized to Tim with an Instagram Story, saying the insult was “one of my lowest moments on this show.”
Oh, and here’s what’s really confusing: Both the team roster on Wake Forest’s site and an article from Minnesota United refer to him as Alec Ferrell. So the question begs…
Why did Alex change his name?
When did Alec Ferrell become Alex Henderson? According to court records obtained by The Sun, Alexander Ferrell’s name was legally changed to Alexander Henderson on December 1, 2020.
Alex confirmed as much on his Play Life Beautifully podcast, saying he’d taken his stepdad’s last name during a legal adoption. He later decided to revert back to his original birth name once he started traveling during COVID.
“This is what I was born as, this is what I want to build my name off of, I don’t want the Ferrell name attached to me,” he said on the pod. “I don’t want something I changed into, I want to reclaim what I had.”
Do I still have questions? Yes. Am I going to get any more answers? Probably not!!
