Josh and Caitlin leave Married at First Sight Australia in 2nd Commitment Ceremony
Tonight’s Married at First Sight Australia in the UK will see two couples leave the experiment as the show’s second Commitment Ceremony arrives.
The first commitment ceremony saw both Harrison and Jesse write leave after a tumultuous first few weeks with their respective partners Bronte and Claire. Yet a lot has changed since then – both husbands have moved back in with their wives, and suddenly there’s hope that they can make things work.
Both couples dominated the first few weeks of MAFS Australia, but now the limelight has firmly shifted to some of our other pairs, and two are about to leave the experiment for good!
Firstly, who stays?
Well, after getting their relationships back on track, Harrison, Bronte, Jesse and Claire all write ‘Stay,’ and they’re all stoked about it.
Some of the other participants aren’t sure that Bronte is making the right decision by staying with Harrison. They’d be right, as he places all of the blame for their problems on Bronte not showing her “best side,” and claims it was her apologising that fixed things – but it doesn’t matter; they’re staying for at least one more week!
However, John does tell Harrison that he has to do better, after it was revealed that he took a girl’s number on a night out.
“Have we even met this pair?” asks expert Mel Shilling when she see Claire and Jesse all smiles on the couch.
When she asks Jesse how he’d describe the feelings he’s beginning to develop, he tells her: “I wouldn’t have reacted to certain things last week if I wasn’t feeling a certain way about Claire, so…”
“Yeah, I like her.”
Our other loved-up pairs also stay – Tahnee and Ollie obviously aren’t going anywhere, and neither are Lyndall and Cameron.
Alyssa and Duncan, are also blissfully loved up after Alessandra’s Intimacy Week, which Duncan calls “a great balance of dominance and delicacy.” ? Thankfully Alyssa stops him before he tells us more.
Melinda and Layton are in a tricky place – there’s a disconnect when it comes to communication, and Melinda says that they “can’t have a conversation without the other one taking offence or getting triggered.”
However, Melinda also says that they’re at a strong point other than that, and she chooses to stay, before her husband says the same.
Sandy and Dan had their first little blip, when Sandy wasn’t sure whether to trust Dan after Harrison seemingly accused him of having taken a girl’s number on a night out. However, Sandy admits that she has trust issues, what with this being her first relationship, and decides to persevere as Dan hasn’t given her any reason not to trust him.
Janelle and Adam also stay, despite Janelle now being a little bit suspicious of her husband.
The issues began on the fateful night out that kicked off MAFS’ cheating scandal, and Lyndall revealed that Adam had asked her to stay on a night out, as if she went home, he would likely go home with Claire!
So that just leaves two pairs. Yes, in Monday night’s episode, we’re saying goodbye to Josh & Melissa, and Shannon & Caitlin.
Josh and Melissa leave MAFS
These two have seemed doomed to failure since the very beginning, and we don’t know what the experts were thinking when they matched them. Oh, yes, ratings.
Sex-obsessed “mumma bear” Melissa wanted a strong, confident Thor with a big hammer, and instead she got Josh, the loving, caring dad who named his kids after Disney characters and genuinely wore Disney pajamas to bed.
At the wedding, Melissa’s friends were instantly concerned that she’d be too much for him, and they were right. Things started off well, and Melissa got her wish of sleeping with her husband on their wedding night, but Josh soon realised that she wasn’t interested in actually forming a connection, or anything other than sex for that matter.
In last Wednesday’s episode, things got really personal, when Melissa asked Josh if she made him feel less like a man.
Things stayed remarkably drama-free during last Thursday’s dinner party, with Shannon’s antics with a mystery woman dominating things, but Josh really lets his feelings be known in tonight’s commitment ceremony, leading to a rule-changing decision from expert John Aiken.
Josh is practically shaking from the moment he sits on the couch. “There’s been a significant change,” points out Mel Shilling, before Melissa admits that things are “not great.”
Josh says that they had some nice dates, then tried some physical intimacy, but it “didn’t work” and felt like the “wheels fell off again.”
Melissa explains that Intimacy Week should’ve been her favourite week, yet she was made to feel by a “conservative” Josh like she shouldn’t talk about sex. “But then it suppresses me, and then I feel like I’m the alpha in the relationship.”
Josh is offended that Melissa seems to be painting him as “some sort of shrew or 40-year-old virgin,” and reminds the experts that they were intimate in the past couple of days.
He then comes out with something that nobody was expecting, as he accuses Melissa of controlling him.
“In this relationship, Melissa has attempted to restrict my access to the TV, she’s attempted to restrict my access to my mobile phone… she’s tried to tell me when I can go out, where I can go out, who I talk to… and last week you heard her talk about the fact that she’s going to limit intimacy. That was never something I agreed to.
“She has used degrading and dehumanising language to me, questioning my manhood… That is the core of the issue right there.”
All of the other couples are shocked, moreso when Josh tells them that Melissa has repeatedly told him she “came here to meet a man.”
Melissa then reiterates this when she tells John she wants a “manly man,” to gasps from the others.
As Josh bursts into tears and walks out, the other men walk out to support him, and it’s clear that everyone is on Team Josh, with nobody in Melissa’s corner.
When it comes to the decision, it’s a simple one for Josh – he’s leaving.
“I can’t stay here any more, I wanna go home and see my kids.”
Remarkably, Melissa has written stay, but only after crossing out her original decision to stay. She explains that Josh is a great guy, “so why would you not want to stay with him?”
Everyone is shocked into silence. And then John makes a big decision:
“I’m going to do something that I’ve never done before, because I’ve never seen a relationship like this before in the experiment. And we’ve also been around long enough to know that there is no coming back for you in this experiment, Josh.”
Unsurprisingly, Josh chooses to leave, and we get our first exit of the year.
Shannon and Caitlin say goodbye
The playful pair had so much potential when we saw them at their honeymoon, and they both seemed like they were there for the right reasons. Both seemed delighted with who the experts had matched them with, and life was good.
However, we got a sign of what was to come during the couple rating challenge, when Shannon rated Caitlin as the third most attractive, telling her that some of the other girls’ “natural beauty shines more than yours.” And so began Shannon’s cruel strak.
Shortly before the first commitment ceremony, Caitlin overheard Shannon on the phone to his ex-girlfriend, and it led to him admitting that he was still in love with her. It soon came out that he’d slept with her just one week before the experiment began, and expert John was pretty disgusted that Shannon had still come on the show.
However, Shannon was remorseful and agreed to forget his ex and give things with Caitlin a real go.
Yet during Alessandra’s eye-gazing task, which was meant to bring them closer, Shannon realised that the simply wasn’t attracted to Caitlin, and that no amount of staring into her eyes was about to change that.
Not only that, he told Caitlin that he was hoping for someone to wow him when they walked down the aisle, and Caitlin simply didn’t do that. If he’d been matched with someone who had wowed him, he wouldn’t have even considered speaking to his ex again!
So basically it was all Caitlin’s fault for not being pretty enough. Caitlin was, understandably, devastated, as she truly came to the experiment hoping to find love.
When this all comes out at the commitment ceremony, John does not hold back as he asks Shannon what on earth he’s doing in the experiment.
John calls Shannon’s behaviour disgusting – “why did you feel the need to say all those things to Caitlin?” he asks, and Shannon can only shake his head.
“I don’t really even have an answer for you.”
After some more pushing from John, Shannon eventually admits that he simply said the things to hurt Caitlin, before seemingly coming to the realisation that he’s got no excuses: “I’m really sorry that I’ve done this.”
Then it’s decision time. In another remarkable show of idiocy, Shannon decides to stay: ”As much as what I’ve said is repulsing, not noticing it, and how deeply, deeply sorry I am. I’m gutted. But I wanna stay.”
Nobody can believe it, especially Caitlin, and John tells him that he’s “not talking a lot of sense,” choosing to stay after acting so cruelly.
“Because there’s still that gut feeling inside me that says ‘stay’. I don’t wanna give up.”
But John jumps in, convincing him that he’s wrong when he says he doesn’t want to give up. He tells him he’s been 100% focused on giving up this week.
“It is glaringly obvious that any chance that you get, you have tired to push her away and to hurt her. Why should we believe now that you’re gonna change?”
Finally, Shannon admits that he’s a monster: “It seems that in any relationship that I have, all I do is just put people down. To make me feel better about myself.”
When John asks for an explanation as to why that is, all Shannon can do is shrug his shoulders.
And so comes the second big shock of the week.
“I have never seen a relationship like this before in the experiment,” John tells them, as he asks Caitlin what she wants to do. He tells her that if she decides that Shannon isn’t worth sticking around for, she can leave – despite Shannon choosing to stay!
Caitlin reminds everyone that they’ve already done this once – at the last commitment ceremony, Shannon said that he needed to do better and would own it, but nothing came of it.
“It’s… not an apology that is actioned. I deserve to be respected… I deserve to be treated like a human being. You don’t deserve me.”
“This here, this isn’t what I wanted. So I will be leaving.”
“Good,” says John, as the rest of the room applauds her decision.
As the group hug Caitlin, Shannon takes off his wedding ring and walks out of the room with nobody following him.
Married at First Sight Australia airs on E4 and All4, Monday–Thursday at 7:30pm.
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