Married At First Sight’s first dinner party episode aired tonight and, no surprises here, it was brimming with drama.
The main storyline of the episode followed jilted bride Elizabeth, who showed up to the dinner party alone. Her groom, Sam, had left her the morning after their wedding in order to fly to New Zealand to attend his ex-girlfriend’s mother’s funeral.
Though Elizabeth agreed wholeheartedly with his decision to go, she wasn’t expecting radio silence as she missed out on their honeymoon and waited alone in Sydney for his return.
With absolutely no warning to Elizabeth, Sam showed up at the dinner party with an entirely unapologetic attitude and a quick ‘honey I’m home!” announcement to his bride. She wasn’t happy.
Elizabeth was shocked by Sam’s arrival (Image: Nine Network).
Not only did Sam not apologise, he also seemed inexplicably confused about why Elizabeth could possibly be upset.
Then, with the help of another groom Mike, he also belittled Elizabeth’s emotions and chalked her response up to being a woman.
“Let her be furious for a while, she’ll go through the motions,” Mike tells Sam in the episode. “I would like if she just forgave ya, but I’m quick to forgive. Is that men?”
“It probably is a men thing eh? Logic,” Sam replies. “It’s not emotions, it’s more logic.”
When asked if he wants to speak to his visibly upset bride, Sam tells Mike “not really” and adds that “she’s just going to keep carrying on.” Sam says that because he is “not all about that” he’s going to let her “do her thing.” Yeah, okay Sam.
Sam and Mike discuss how men are “logical” (Image: Nine Network).
The love experts promised to be less forgiving of participants this year, and in tonight’s episode they delivered.
A loud groan rang out from all three experts – Dr Trisha Stratford, John Aiken and Mel Schilling – as Sam and Mike had this discussion.
“Two men have got together and they’ve summed her up: she’s very unreasonable,” John begins.
“And now it’s a fact,” Mel adds.
“What’s really upsetting here is the way in which Sam and Mike are generalising,” John continues.
“They’re making the women wrong because they have feelings,” says Trisha.
Their faces say it all! (Image: Nine Network).
In perhaps the best statement in the history of MAFS, Mel summed up the experience of so many female participants on this show – and so many women in real life – who have their thoughts belittled because they are ’emotional.’
“As a woman it’s very hard to combat, because no matter what she says he’s going to futher pathologize her and go ‘well you’re just saying that because you’re over emotional’ so she’s actually in a lose-lose situation.”
Things aren’t looking good for Elizabeth and Sam.
We guess we’ll see how the feuding couple fare when the first commitment ceremony airs on Sunday night.
For more, listen to the MAFS Confessional podcast below!
