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Danna Richards from Bravo‘s Love Without Borders filmed herself having a panic attack on the flight to Ireland and revealed why she was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.
Richards knew essentially nothing about her match, other than that he was from Galway, Ireland, and reality set in that she left everything in the U.S. to meet a complete stranger. “I thought I would feel so excited,” she admitted on the show as she began to tear up. “I’m excited but I’m also freaking out about it. I wanna go but I’m so scared.”
Why did Danna Richards get upset on the flight on ‘Love Without Borders’?
Richards said the whirlwind nature of the experience caught up with her on the flight. “I think it just happened really fast,” Richards recalled to Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “And I really gave up everything. I gave up my job, and my travels. Being away from my support system and just everything I know … flying into the unknown. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“And yeah, I felt like I was giving up a piece of my adventure,” Richards said. “I’m on a new one, but I really value my independence as well. So it was really hard for me to put my trust in other people, to send me to a location and match me with somebody who was genuine and good for me. So yeah, it was nerve-wracking for sure.”
She needed to have a good cry before landing in Ireland
Richards was living the Vanlife experience before she departed for Ireland. She was seen agonizing with her father over whether or not to go on the journey. Richards went back to her original fears that the experiment could fall apart and she’d be stranded in a foreign country with no support system.
“I think I just needed to get through those emotions and feel that and kind of honor that,” she said. “And once I cried it out a little bit on the plane, I felt better. I felt excited.”
Meeting her match, Brian Dilleen also helped – a lot. “Once I met Brian, I felt at ease,” she said. “So … it all worked out.”
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Having a good cry set her up to finish her flight feeling a little calmer. But it didn’t extinguish the nerves that re-emerged when she knocked on Dilleen’s door in Galway. “It was so nerve-wracking, so nerve-wracking because you never know,” she said.
Danna recalled the whirlwind first few hours on ‘Love Without Borders’
Richards had a million thoughts buzzing through her head before Dilleen came to the door. “I mean, just the small things like how tall is he going to be? What is it going to look like? What is his house going to be like? Are we going to get along? You know, there are so many nerves,” she said.
“It’s like a first date times a thousand,” Richards shared. “Because there’s almost a little pressure behind it. Because you’ve made such a big commitment and left so much behind. So, yeah, I was very nervous and it kind of made me feel good that he was a little nervous too, because, it’s like, OK, we’re kind of in this together.”
Those initial moments were an absolute whirlwind, Richards recalled. “There’s so much happening so fast. Lack of sleep. You know, just taking it all in. It’s like stimulus overload. So I was really just trying to connect with him and keep it light. My focus was on him and wanting to connect and learn about him. And I didn’t really notice a ton of stuff around me because I just kind of laser-focused on him. And yeah, I really liked his accent. I thought he was really cute.”
Richards and Dilleen decide to share the same bed hours after meeting. Richards shared what went through her mind at the time. “Everything was so disorienting,” she recalled of those first few hours. “I don’t know if it was moving fast or slow. It’s just the whole experience was so new and exciting and scary and just so many emotions. It’s hard to take it all in. But yeah, I was just kind of going with the flow and doing what felt right in the moment.”
Love Without Borders is on Wednesday nights at 9 pm ET on Bravo.
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