Aiken and his family moved to New Zealand when he was 12, and he spent three decades living here, playing cricket for Auckland and Wellington while studying, before he and his Kiwi wife, Kelly, moved back to Australia in 2008.
“We always come back once a year. The kids, we like to keep them in touch with New Zealand culture, and I have a strong affinity for the country. It’s important to me.”
While Aiken and his wife are going strong, he has seen a lot of couples go through their emotions on MAFS. Aiken is the sole original expert to still be with the show, and over the past 10 years, he has seen changes in society seep into the contestants that come on to the show.
“When I started the show 10 years ago, social media wasn’t really a thing, and it’s blown up in front of my eyes and it’s certainly taken its impact on the participants.
“Every year they are thinking about image, they are thinking about the world after the show and what they can do and careers they can have. I think also, married with that also is the apps that are out there for people to meet and date. It’s very transactional. And so I don’t know whether the younger generation that is coming through have the same sort of element or commitment in relationships that perhaps we might have when we were younger.”
Aiken and the other experts can spend up to two months at the start of each season going through the match-making process pairing the participants together, only for the contestants to fixate on preconceived ideas of what they are interested in - such as physical appearance and hobbies - that prevent them from fully getting into their relationships.
Asked by Bennett if he gets as frustrated as the audience does at some of the contestant’s behaviour, Aiken admitted that he does.
“When I’m sitting on the couch, I can actually feel myself getting frustrated with what I’m hearing because they’re doing old patterns that they’ve always done that sabotage them in intimate relationships. And when I’m holding a mirror up to them, they’re not listening, and that is quite challenging at times because even the group are giving them feedback saying, Hey, We’re seeing a pattern here and they’re not hearing it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
“So it is a show that I think everybody watches and relates to and sort of invests in, which has made it so popular.”
However, the “fairytale” element of the show is what has made it so popular, Aiken said - as well as inadvertently offering viewers at home examples of how not to act in a relationship.
For more of John Aiken’s insights into the current season, and for advice on how to find luck in dating and maintain a healthy relationship, listen to full podcast here.
Ask Me Anything is a NZ Herald podcast, hosted by Paula Bennett. New episodes will be back in March.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
