Sara Mesa gets defensive at the dinner party when confronted about her whereabouts last weekend. Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
Sara Mesa gets defensive at the dinner party when confronted about her whereabouts last weekend. Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
OPINION
It is week six of Married at First Sight Australia and that means retreat week! A few days away in a 16-room mansion in sunny Byron Bay would leave most people feeling relaxed and stress-free, but this is not the case for our couples.
From two cheating scandals to offensive body-shaming comments, this week we were served another massive heaping of drama so let’s dive right in.
We ended last week with a dramatic dinner party where Ben Walters broke things off with his wife Ellie Dix. He said he and Dix aren’t “meant to be together”. Walters breaks up with her in front of everyone, saying, “I do think we’re better off friends and I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
Dix gets a round of applause from the room when she writes “leave” and says she “won’t be single for long. Walters also writes “leave” and the pair is gone.
Felix is noticeably devastated by this revelation and says he is “doubting” himself. Maybe they will turn it around next week?
Alas, this is not the case as we start Monday’s episode with Felix revealing he caught Stewart flirting incessantly with a hairdresser in person and over text.
Stewart does not deny this, saying he felt a “spark” with the hairdresser and it proved there was no sexual spark with his husband.
Michael Felix and Stephan Stewart’s relationship is on the rocks after Stewart flirted with another man. Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
“I feel s***, but feeling that instant attraction to someone made me realise what we’re missing,” Stewart says.
“I had a 30-second conversation with someone and felt it was so much easier to get flirty with them than I did with you in two and a half weeks.”
Although it seems like the couple is heading towards ending things, they join the couples in Byron Bay for the annual couples retreat with Stewart claiming the new environment might help mend their relationship.
As the retreat begins, Sara Mesa admits to her husband Tim Calwell that the ever-controversial Dunkley kissed her on the neck during an apology and tapped her on the bum when he walked past her not long ago.
He was confronted the next night as the group shared drinks around the fire pit. Dunkley apologises but insists that he doesn’t remember any of the events and that they were probably just accidents.
Dunkley is not let off the hook yet though, with Timothy Smith jumping on the chance to question him about comments he made by the pool the day before.
According to Smith, as he, Lucinda Light and Tristan Black were enjoying the sun, Dunkley walked past and remarked, “I see the whales are here today.”
Dunkley feels the wrath of everyone present when his “whale comment” is revealed to the group.
Cries of “body shaming” ring out amongst the group while Black sits there uncomfortably.
He later says the comment “made him feel like the fat kid in school again” and really brought him down in a moment that makes you want to reach out and hug him through the screen.
As this is going down, Dunkley’s wife Adams takes off. She later says in a confessional she feels like an “idiot” for constantly backing him.
“I’ve always said that Jack is not a malicious person but that comment is completely malicious,” she says as the rose-tinted glasses seem to slip.
Meanwhile, as the drama has continued this week Eden Harper has been hinting the whole time she has a secret that would “make everybody hate her”.
As a personal trainer, Dunkley remarks that “this one really hit home for [him]” and extends an apologetic gift to Black in the form of a gift card to a supplement store.
Jack Dunkey apologises to Tristan Black in the form of a gift card to a supplement store, sigh.
Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
Harper and Eynaud whisk Mesa and Calwell again next and delivers the damning ultimatum.
“I’m going to give you the opportunity to tell [Calwell] what you did last weekend otherwise we will do it,” Harper says.
After Mesa attempts to brush it under the rug, Harper finally spills all the details leaving Calwell in despair.
“I’m not OK, I feel lied to, strung along, heartbroken. I’ve been played for a fool,” he says.
“Whatever she says, in my mind she’s just a liar.”
Mesa returns to the dinner party to clear her name after Harper shares the revelation to the group.
“I didn’t cheat on the guy, I didn’t do anything that terrible but I know the group will make a big deal of it when it really isn’t,” Mesa says.
Sara Mesa gets defensive at the dinner party when confronted about her whereabouts last weekend. Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
It eventually becomes clear that Mesa had slept with her ex-boyfriend one month before the experiment when he was seeing someone else, and that she had lied about her whereabouts and claimed to be puppy-sitting.
Mesa erupts at the group when she realises what she has just admitted to.
“I have never cheated on a partner and I can f***ing contest to that,” she shouts.
Mesa soon storms out but she will have to front up to her actions during Sunday’s commitment ceremony.
