Source: JCM Photography / lifetime
The Married at First Sight reunion aired on Wednesday night, and yes, Jamie and Beth shockingly decided to stay together, Deonna and Greg were adorable of course, and Keith made it clear that he did not ever want to date Iris again; but what stood out most for me was how disrespectful Matt was to Amber. Two months after Decision Day, it was clear nothing about him had changed.
How mean was he to an already jilted Amber? Well, he told host Kevin Frazier that he “kind of figured out pretty early on that it wasn’t going to work,” something he had never divulged to her.
When asked when he knew, he replied, “First 15 minutes. I had lots of doubts immediately.”
And despite saying he knew at the altar that Amber wasn’t going to be his wife for the long term, as though implying something was wrong with her from jump, we all saw Matt dive head first into the marriage, at least for a short while. He had sex with her all of the time and around their one-month anniversary, he got on the guitar and played a song for her to show his commitment. Still, Matt maintained that he didn’t play with Amber’s emotions.
“I believed the experts when they said you can work on things and you can grow.”
But Matt didn’t stick around to work on things or exhibit growth. He quickly started staying out later, and as we saw, he at times wasn’t coming home at all while simultaneously avoiding Amber’s calls and not wearing his wedding band out of the house.
When asked why he would do such a thing, Matt told the host that it was too early for him to know about her abandonment issues, as though that would have motivated him to stay home and do right. (And for the record, she told him about how her mother left their family in the first few episodes).
And when asked if he was seeing someone else while away from home, he denied it heavily, only for Amber to say that even one of his good friends admitted to her that Matt was seeing someone else. His response?
“Oh, okay.”
From there, he was visibly annoyed during the conversation about how embarrassing his behavior was to her, and he pretended he was so sure that Amber didn’t know the women he was cavorting with outside of her, as though the whole of Charlotte, including the other wives, hadn’t told her what kind of games he was playing.
It took coaxing for Matt to apologize to Amber for hurting her and making her look a fool on national television. He was pretty much dry and mean, attempting to make it seem as though there was nothing left to talk about and like she was just crazy. At times, he wasn’t even listening to Amber when the host would try and get his attention to respond to something she said.
And yet, it was his callousness, as Amber called it, that left her, once again, looking to be respected and validated by Matt. She wanted to be able to be cordial to him if she saw him in the street and know that Matt didn’t hate her for doing what was best for herself. It was sad, because it once again gave Matt way too much power over Amber, as though she couldn’t fully move on without knowing that he wasn’t angry with her. He had control over her emotions yet again, and I, for one, couldn’t stand it.
I really hope that for Amber’s benefit, she does some therapy now that this is over to ensure that she can move forward from such an incredibly toxic situation with the right tools to find a healthy and happy relationship in the future. Those abandonment issues need to be addressed in order for that to happen.
As for Matt, I so very much hope that he too gets some therapy to figure out why he was so cold to Amber, why he fled their marital home more often than not, had no issue with even trying to hide that he was dating around on her, and why he totally bailed on his entire family. Until he does so, he will continue to float from woman to woman (aka, house to house), counting on his height, good looks and faux personality to drain women of their emotional stability, being as non-committal and narcissistic as possible. Granted, Amber wasn’t the perfect wife (who is?), but Matt was literally the worst. To be specific, he was the worst husband I’ve seen on this show, and out of all the folk that have come and gone and lied and threatened and emotionally hurt women on Married at First Sight, that’s a damn shame…
Check out reactions to a very cold Matt at the Married at First Sight reunion by hitting the flip:
