Source: Victoria Vazquez / Kinetic Content
While watching Married at First Sight last night, I felt like I finally realized why so many marriages in Season 10 have been…well, a dud. Maybe it’s not just the missteps of experts this season, but also the egos of some of the participants that have gotten in the way. Marriage is all about compromise, putting aside pride for the advancement of both parties, but many of the people in Season 10 are not willing to make those sacrifices. It’s not about being right and holding on to grudges for days on end. It’s not about wanting to be the victim all of the time so you can have the upper-hand in the marriage. It’s about working together for the greater good. The one person who really understands that though, is the one person we’re seeing being absolutely dogged out this season, and that’s Mindy. (You know I usually only talk about the Black couples, but when I see a walking trainwreck happening on this show with non-Black couples, I have to say something.)
She, to me, is like Amber of Season 9. I know you remember Amber and Matt, the latter being the slimy professional basketball player who would leave home with no plans on when he’d return and started seeing other women during his eight-week marriage. Knowing Amber had abandonment issues, he left her in pieces more often than not when he would go out and not call, text, smoke signal — nothin’. And while it was a disgusting display to watch, I think Mindy’s husband Zach has somehow found a way to be even worse, if you can believe it. He is the embodiment of someone who went into a marriage solely focused on himself after claiming he would do whatever necessary to make it work. Zach has only thought about what works for him, and doing marriage his way — even though he needed to get on TV to receive help finding a partner since he’d done so poorly on his own.
Not only has Zach told Mindy on more than one occasion that she is not attractive in the way that he’s used to, but he refuses to live with her in the apartment the show set up for them. How do you work on a marriage to a stranger in a limited amount of time if you’re living outside of the home you share? How can you also work on a marriage if when you claim you have some information about your partner that is detrimental to the marriage, you won’t share it with them to move on?
During last night’s episode, Zach played a manipulative mind game, at their anniversary dinner no less, where he told Mindy that he found out she hadn’t been so honest with him about something following their honeymoon in Panama. When she asked him what it was, being that she felt she’d been completely open with him, he told her he wouldn’t say. He then used this information he was keeping as a way to shut down the valid issues she’d had with his behavior during their marriage. You could literally see her internally losing her sh-t over the situation, to the point where she called him a liar and proceeded to leave the uncomfortable dinner. But because she was hellbent on doing everything to make her marriage work, as those ready for such a thing usually should, she invited him over the next day to look at their wedding photos and talk. She wanted to give it her all.
The next day he tried to come back around pretending he was Mr. Nice Guy, but chose to continue to play mind games with Mindy about whatever secret he claimed she was keeping. It wasn’t until Mindy flipped the script on him and asked him if he was holding on to some information he heard from one of her friends, that we realized how much of a con man Zach really is. He had been having inappropriate conversations, as it turned out, with her good friend Lindsay, who was a guest at their wedding. Not only that, he also lied about the details, as Mindy would find out from her equally fraudulent “friend.” He said it had been days since he talked to her last, but he actually contacted her the morning Mindy exposed him. He said they only talked about ways to be a better partner for Mindy, but Lindsay said they talked about more than just that. And to make matters worse, Lindsay not only deleted his text messages out of fear of being caught, but she also said she asked Zach not to call her again until after the season had aired. WTF?
He tried to pull a textbook move of accusing Mindy of doing exactly what he’d been doing, which was being deceitful. He didn’t apologize for his interactions with her friend and he couldn’t even be honest about them. Zach has done nothing but run back to his apartment with his dog and his hair products, with his tail between his legs. He’s tried to concoct new ways to pretend he’s all in while simultaneously, constantly hurting Mindy, because he knows she won’t give up without a fight, a fight he’s not interested in. What a joke.
I really hate watching Mindy go through all of this. It was bad enough her family, with the exception of her sister, chose to bail on her wedding day because they thought the decision to marry at first sight was a bad one; but for her to actually end up with someone who day by day proves them right is even worse. Marriage is not easy, and I commend her for trying to see past the hurt, the disrespect and the lack of effort from Zach to see things on the brighter side and want to try. However, it takes two to make it work, and he’s sat back and done a whole lot of nothing, pretending visiting her at their shared apartment is him giving it his all.
Pastor Cal told me last year that they don’t break up couples on the show because it’s up to the parties involved, who, as adults, can call it quits at anytime. I hope that during next week’s episode, when the couples meet with experts halfway through the process to either stay in it or bail out, she will take the out and run for her life. Zach may have been interested in being someone’s husband, but certainly not hers. She needs to take whatever self-respect and sanity she has left and not look back.
Check out reactions to last night’s episode, specifically Zach’s poor treatment of Mindy, by hitting the flip.
