How Did Kristen Doute and Boyfriend Brian Carter Meet?

Whenever you start a new relationship, you always hope that your friends like your significant other. Lucky for Kristen Doute, she passed that hurdle with her boyfriend Brian Carter way before they started dating. 

After Kristen and Carter met on the dating app Bumble, she told Stassi Schroeder how cute she thought it was that his friends call him by his last name. "And Stassi’s like, 'Wait Kristen, that’s Brian Carter,' and pulled his Facebook up," Kristen told The Daily Dish. "He and I had 25 mutual friends, including Stassi, Jax [Taylor], Katie [Maloney-Schwartz], and [Tom Schwartz]."  

That was a little unnerving for Kristen to see. "All of a sudden, I’m like, 'If you’re friends with all of my best friends, you know exactly who I am and you’re not telling me.' I got weirded out and sort of called him out on it," Kristen said. "And his response was, 'You’re showing your friends my photo?' And then I felt like a weird stalker and I thought he would never talk to me again. I was like, 'No, no, it’s funny. Ha ha, whatever.' I wasn’t reluctant to go out with him anymore." 

Kristen later memorably found out last season of Vanderpump Rules that Carter and Katie once hooked up. "I knew [Katie] for 10 years," Carter said. "I knew her before she met Schwartz."

The Story Behind Katie's One Night Stand

Still, when Carter first saw Kristen's profile in Bumble, he said that he recognized her, but he didn't quite know from where. It wasn't until Carter stumbled upon Kristen's IMDb page that he realized she was on Vanderpump Rules. "It didn’t deter me, even though you had a little history of 'Crazy Kristen,'" Carter said. "It did not influence me. I like to go in with an open mind. I don’t like to judge anybody until I get to know them." 

The two eventually went on their first date, and when Kristen started capturing it on Periscope for her social media followers, Carter admitted that he found it "weird." Finding someone who was comfortable with her high-profile life as a member of the Vanderpump Rules cast was a challenge for Kristen when she was still in the dating scene. "This is what I do every day, but if you want to be a part of that, a part of my life, you have to be willing to be a part of this, too," Kristen said. "That’s a really hard thing to explain to someone when they don’t understand how it works and how it really is our everyday life. There just happens to be a camera there."

But overall, the date seemed to go pretty well since Kristen ended up spending the night at Carter's place after locking her car in the wrong parking garage, which may or may not have been her plan all along, the two joked. Kristen and Carter continued to hang out and made things official a couple of months later. 

Kristen memorably worked with her last two boyfriends, Tom Sandoval and James Kennedy, at SUR, but she couldn't be happier that she and Carter, who works in photography for movie and TV show marketing campaigns, have chosen different career paths. "It’s so, so nice. It’s interesting," Kristen said. "As much as Carter is a part of the group now, it’s nice to not be incestuously dating a SUR guy or someone we’ve known for so long and be able to start a fresh relationship." 

But they have been collaborating on Kristen's new vegetarian food blog, Vegiholic, with Carter providing his photography skills to the site. That wasn't so easy at the beginning. "It was a trainwreck at first," Carter said. "Put it this way, we were both very stubborn and controlling." 

Kristen explained why the two initially butt heads. "It’s finding the balance of my vision but me letting go of the control and trusting that this is what he does. I don’t take photos, that’s why I’m having him do it," she said. "So I need to let go, or I’m trying to let go of the control and trusting what he’s doing. As we’ve shot more, we have a different system now."

That means that they have started to find their groove in doing their own thing while still working together. "I’m doing this over here, and he’s shooting this over there," Kristen said. "That way, I’m not standing over his shoulder, like trying to perfect everything. It was a challenge at first, but I think we got our flow." 

Carter may not work at SUR, but he certainly gets caught up in the Vanderpump Rules drama this season. His name already came up when those rumors about Kristen hooking up with Jax's girlfriend Brittany Cartwright came out. Kristen said that Carter had been sleeping while she and Brittany were in the next room and only shared some drunken kisses. "I think it’s fine. I’m not even mad about it," Carter said of the rumors. "No, [Kristen] definitely did not go downtown."

But Carter said he couldn't stay mad at Jax for spreading those rumors. "I was like, 'What? Why? What are you doing?' Now that I know Jax, that’s what he does. He’s the nicest guy in the world, but at the same time, he just loves to have something to do and something to talk about, something that he can just be centered around, revolved around, I guess," Carter said. "You definitely don’t want him on your bad side, but he’s a good friend. He’s the guy that would bail you out of jail if something like that happened. Drama, he lives for it."

Kristen Doesn't Remember Her Night With Brittany Too Well

The fact that Kristen's life for the past five years has been documented on national TV has its perks, though. "After learning about her history and past relationships, I’ve learned what not to do," Carter said of having watched all of the intimate details of Kristen's love life unfold on Vanderpump Rules. "I can definitely push her buttons when I want to push her buttons. I know when to let her do her thing, like 'OK, everything’s going to be fine.' I feel like I know how to talk to her now and allow her to vent a little bit. I think that’s what people weren’t doing before." 

"And also not be a lying, cheating ***hole," Kristen added.  

Carter has definitely learned that lesson. "That helps. Cheating is not the way to go," he said. "Definitely don’t cheat on her, because she’ll find out. She’ll find out everything." 

As we often hear on Vanderpump Rules, the truth always comes out eventually. "Yes, exactly," Carter agreed. "But we’re very happy, and there’s no reason to consider that." 

Get to know even more about Kristen's new beau, below.

Get to Know Kristen Doute's Boyfriend Brian Carter