Here’s the piece I posted and then removed immediately a couple of weeks ago. I removed it because it had just been published in The Spectator and I wanted to give them a couple of weeks of exclusivity.
Since I wrote it, the series has progressed, so I’ve added an extra couple of paragraphs.
Married At First Sight feels strangely traditional
There’s an earnestness in the contestants’ search for love
12 March 2024, 4:59am
From Spectator Life
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There should be a salacious German word for the blissful relief one feels at not being in another’s uncomfortable situation. Not pleasure at their misfortune, as in schadenfreude, just toe-stretching- and-dancing joy that you are safely under a blanket on the sofa while others are undergoing intense public scrutiny.
This is the feeling I have when watching Married At First Sight, the hit American TV programme that is now franchised to 24 other countries across the world. The original programme in 2014 was influenced by a very similar Danish TV series, Gift ved første blik, and has also spawned eight (and counting) slightly desperate sounding spin-offs such as Married At First Sight: Honeymoon Island, and MAFS: Happily Ever After.
Is there a happy ever after? Well, the last available stats in 2023 showed that of the 64 couples who had made the leap of faith, 11 are still married. Which is probably better odds than just swiping right on Tinder.
What makes the couplings interesting is that the individuals are carefully chosen and matched by an in-house team of ‘experts’. These include therapists who will follow them through the ensuing journey, analysing everything from body language to micro-aggressions. In MAFS UK, the current ‘experts’ are Mel Schilling, Paul Carrick Brunson and Charlene Douglas. They are all on first name terms with each other and the contestants, reducing professional barriers and encouraging that panacea of therapists, ‘opening up’. Mel is a warm, beseeching Australian relationship therapist; Paul a positive American self-proclaimed ‘love doctor’ who has also appeared on another match-making reality show, Celebs Go Dating (although his degree is in business); and Charlene is a sex and relationship therapist who featured on TV’s The Sex Clinic.
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It’s important to know that despite the elaborate display of ceremony with vows and exchange of rings and the reception for family and friends, the couple do not enter into a legally binding marriage. However, they have signed up to living with this stranger for many weeks until and unless they leave the programme. This must produce pressure on the two to develop physical and emotional intimacy.
The day after the ceremony and reception, the couples are whisked away to exotic honeymoon locations, after which they return to a rented apartment provided by the producers. With nothing to do on the honeymoon except bask in the sun, and with no contact with friends and family allowed, many of the couples do fall in lust if not love.
The couple later have to meet each others’ loved ones. This can be ‘awks’, as the young people say, if someone’s best mate has taken umbrage at the newcomer, or a parent feels the new hubby wasn’t friendly/polite/suitably besotted. But the best friends can be remarkably perceptive. Many a time a ‘he’s hiding something’ has proved to be prophetic.