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MAFS’ Sam regrets his affair with Ines and wishes he’d never responded to her ‘manipulative’ advances

“She seemed lovely, but you never know what you're going to get with her. She's manipulative and smart.”
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Married at First Sight Australia viewers were left gobsmacked when the developing affair between Sam Ball and Ines basic went to the next level this week with an illicit sleepover during a Gold Coast getaway.

While their affair has been creating some serious on-screen drama, Sam now admits he wishes he’d never met up with the 28-year-old legal assistant in the first place.

“If I had my time again, I probably would never have opened her message,” Sam, 26, told TV WEEK.

“But it was in the moment and I was paired up with someone I didn’t get on with [Elizabeth]. The whole point of applying was to meet someone I could fall in love with. Ines seemed more my type and I was intrigued as to who she was as a person.”

However, Sam says he’s since changed his mind about the striking brunette now he’s had the chance to see how poorly Ines has treated her on-screen husband Bronson Norrish.

“It’s terrible and embarrassing,” he says. “The way she treated him is a true representation of herself. Obviously, I was blind to that – all I saw were the smiles.

“She seemed lovely, but you never know what you’re going to get with her. She’s manipulative and smart.”

Ines decided to stay with Bronson at the last commitment ceremony after telling the relationship experts things were improving between the pair. But her real intentions were clear.

“I just want Sam,” she says on camera. “I don’t want to work on my marriage now. Every time I look at him, I just want to have sex with him.”

Sam, too, agreed to continue with the experiment, saying he wanted to find out “what’s going on” with Elizabeth, who at that point was AWOL.

But he later admitted on camera he’s “done and dusted” with his wife and is staying only to see if things with Ines progress.

“She’s keen and wants to take this a step further, and that’s amazing,” he says.

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And a step further it went. With Elizabeth a no-show to the Gold Coast holiday and Bronson and Ines sleeping in separate hotel rooms, Sam and Ines were given carte blanche to explore things further.

But their affair didn’t remain a secret for long, with fellow MAFS co-stars getting wind of the romance.

“Ines suddenly had a lot to say about Sam, so I asked her if she fancied him,” Jules, 36, explains. “She said no. Little did we know they’d been seeing each other.

“We didn’t know what was going on at all. That was an opportunity for her to be honest. She lied to everyone.”

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Cyrell, in particular, doesn’t hold back her opinion about the affair, as she has been cheated on in the past.

“I was like, ‘How can you do that to good people?’ They could have just been honest,” she says.

“The sneaking-around part got to me the most. It’s how they went about it. I don’t like fake people and I don’t like liars.”

While Sam is keen to play the victim in this whole storyline, telling Elizabeth at the last dinner party that she’d wasted his time, the experts were having none of it.

“Oh I don’t think you’ve wasted your time Sam,” Trisha Stratford commented.

“I think you’ve been quite busy,” Mel Schilling deadpanned.

Watch the moment below. Article continues after video.

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To her credit, Elizabeth isn’t wasting any more of her time worrying about it.

“They belong with each other,” she told TV WEEK. “They would act sweet to my face and then tear me apart behind my back. I think they’re disgusting.”

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