Lifetime
Is it just me, or is Mia Bally playing a little too juvenile when it comes to this marriage thing (and maybe life as a whole)?
I’m obviously not alone in this thought though, because her husband, Tristan Thompson, shared such a sentiment on last night’s episode of Married at First Sight. It all started when the couple met up with her sister, Deidre, and father, Indar, for lunch. And though they agreed going in to make the outing a “light lunch” that involved no serious conversations that could cause conflict, Mia started the conversation by telling her family that she and Tristan were thinking about moving to Houston from Dallas. That immediately turned the lunch upside down, and Deidre went on the attack, aiming her concerns in Tristan’s direction.
He dealt with a barrage of questions about the move from Deidre, who at one point decided to call Tristan’s plan to either have Mia move with him to Houston or have an apartment in Houston where he would occasionally stay, alone, to do business since he has multiple tutoring spaces around Texas, “bullsh-t.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ll let her keep her condo up here, you’re going to go down there by yourself, you’ll get an apartment, and you just got married?” she asked. “I think it’s bullsh-t. So you’re pretty much giving her an ultimatum. You can either come or not.”
And while Deidre railed on him, Mia said very little. She held her lip and let her family intrude heavily upon her relationship before finally speaking up.
“I don’t know. It sounds like an interrogation instead of a conversation,” Mia said to the group. “This is the number one thing I didn’t want to happen.”
But instead of de-escalating the situation or standing up for her man (which she should have done considering all that he’s put up with regarding her in just a few weeks), she was pretty useless. He told her under his breath that he was uncomfortable, and she turned around and told her dad and sister “Tristan’s uncomfortable” out loud.
She pretty much threw a bomb, watched it explode and then played crazy about it.
When Mia and Tristan talked about it later, he wasn’t pleased. He told her that it was just common sense that telling her family about the possibility of them moving would cause trouble. She responded by telling him, “But you know my family…” to which he said, emphatically, “No I don’t know them! I met them twice in my entire life!” He told her that he feels like he has to “baby” her through basic conversations to understand obvious things, and she just couldn’t get it, which was weird because his grievance wasn’t that complex at all. They didn’t know what their future was actually going to be, so there was no reason to bring up any ideas to family until there was a set plan.
“I’m thinking I’m doing something good by sharing with my family about potentially moving to Houston,” she said in her confessional. “But Tristan is yelling and I’m just trying to figure out why is he this upset, to me, over something that’s so small?”
We don’t truly know how the issue was resolved, we just know that they did a confessional together later in the episode holding one another and sharing kisses. So I guess one could assume resolution came in the bedroom…
But I must say, outside of sexual intercourse, it’s going to take a lot more to make a marriage work, especially with someone like Mia.
I can’t help but feel like after watching most of this season that she operates from a very childlike place. In this case, that’s not a good thing. When she initially married Tristan, she avoided kissing him, which is not a ridiculous idea, but did so because “I don’t know where his lips have been.” If the camera would have rolled a little longer, we probably would have seen her mentioning her worries about him having “cooties.”
When she was caught out here and arrested for possibly stalking her ex-boyfriend, she lied with the straightest face, only to tell Tristan when cameras weren’t rolling, half of the truth. When she was confronted about lying by “expert” Dr. Jessica Griffin, she responded by fake crying (she was able to turn up her face and make her eyes water — but that’s about it). What better way to get out of a serious conversation then to tear up?
Even their interactions are very childlike. When she hugs him, it isn’t in a romantic way. It’s almost like holding on to a big teddy bear. I know he’s tall, but it’s almost silly.
And her fantasy? It was of him dressing up like a donut. And when he came out in tiny drawls and suspenders with donut illustrations on them and a box of real donuts in his hands to make her happy, she literally said she was more excited about the donuts.
And as pointed out by her husband, she does often need to be babied through things. She doesn’t have much to say during their intense conversations (probably because she knows if she puts it on him later, he’ll let everything go). She just stands there bewildered and always seems to turn into the victim. He often has to damn near perform in a certain way, and be as campy as possible, to get her to open up and be comfortable. She supposedly loves him, but there is no real passion that can be felt between them, and if you make the girl choose between him and some sweets, she might go with the latter.
I don’t know Mia in real life and this isn’t an attack on her intelligence in any kind of way. She owns her own place and professionally, she’s done well for herself. But there is a seriousness, an overall romantic maturity that she seems to lack when you watch every episode. And on top of her past lies, that’s something that can only hurt, not help their relationship.
