MAFS NZ episode 7 recap – the first commitment ceremony and boy is it hostile!

The couples are settling into daily life in Auckland and this episode throws a few surprises our way.

First, we see a whole new side of Ksenia – a playful and, dare we say it, vulnerable side.

At breakfast Wayne serves up burnt croissants and rather than raining scorn on them, as we could reasonably expect from Ksenia, she eats them and then goes for a walk with Wayne in the park.

Wayne is stunned when his wife makes a beeline for the children’s playground and swings on the swings and slides down the slide.

He realises he’s the saddo for not joining in – and while he knows he’s using the onion reference a lot, he just has to say one more time that man, his wife is like an onion. “There’s a lot of stuff.”

Ksenia says to camera that Wayne’s spontaneity unsettles her. He gave up his job to be on MAFS and if he doesn’t have a job to tie him to Taranaki, does he have a place to call home?

“I guess I am more grounded than him,” she says. And for the first time we realise she is actually taking this experiment seriously and has reservations that extend beyond baldness and having a good surname.

In the meantime tension is growing between Sam and Tayler.

Sam is frustrated because Tayler seems wishy-washy but to be honest Sam is coming across as pretty hard to please. He wants Tayler to stop saying he’s just happy to go with the flow, but Sam seems so set in his ways we wonder if Tayler is too nervous to put a stake in the ground.

There are also the contradictory messages. Sam tells Tayler not to come to the gym with him… Sam tells Tayler he wants him to come to the gym with him…

Tayler says, “Some of the things he says to me are so surprising I have no words, like he’s told I’m never to go to the gym with him and now he’s asking me to go with him like he’s asked me a million times. And then he gets angry with me because I’ve got no comeback. My mind’s working at a million miles an hour. I’ve got nothing now.”

Dr Trisha explains: “When you move in with someone 24/7 you have to be able to negotiate. You have to be… confident enough to say what you want and need. If we are not honest, if those boundaries are blurred, your partner doesn’t know where they stand. They can’t trust your yes and they can’t trust your no.”

So anyway, Sam storms off to see his friend (because remember he comes from Auckland and is back on home turf – Tayler comes from Christchurch and knows no one) so Tayler goes to Julia for advice. He tells Julia he wonders whether Sam is there for the right reasons and she assures him he is. She says she knows because there is nothing Sam doesn’t tell her.

Nothing.

But when Sam finds out later that Tayler went to Julia he is beyond annoyed. Tayler can talk to his mother, his sister or his best friend but he can’t talk to Julia because Julia is Sam’s BFF, okay?

They kind of patch things up so in the spirit of opening up Tayler drops another health bombshell on Sam (the first being that on their wedding day Tayler told Sam he’d had three open surgeries on his heart as a child). He reveals that he takes medication to protect him from HIV because his heart would not cope with him getting ill. Sam needs some time to process this.

Surprise, surprise, there has also been trouble in paradise for Dave and Julia, with Julia doing her best to spend as little time with Dave as possible. When he asks her what they should do for dinner on their first night in the apartment she announces she’ll be out with Sam.

On to Yuki and Dan… they’re still happy as clams, but we see the first sign of a cloud on their horizon. Yuki would like to develop a deeper connection with Dan and we just hope he can deliver because he’s just told us he’s “only surface deep”.

“I’m not deep and meaningful, I’m not an emotional person.”

Eek.

Monique and Fraser seem to be going well and we just have to say, Fraser is a ninja in the kitchen. It was Dave and Julia who made mention of their love for cooking and food in their wedding vows, but it’s Fraser who’s pumping out meal after incredible meal. First, a full English breakfast, then steak and mushrooms for tea. The following night the couple host their first dinner party for family and friends and Fraser is back in the kitchen again.

He hopes to make a good impression on Monique’s mum and he needn’t worry because she thinks he’s awesome. She couldn’t think of a better matched couple and they’re so similar, she says. (Although we’re not sure Monique agrees.)

Dr Trisha reveals that research now tells us that partners who are similar to one another are more likely to sustain a long-term relationship.

Weirdly, we haven’t seen anything of Ottie and Gareth except for a brief glimpse of them doing an inventory of their coffee cups but maybe they locked the camera crew out? You’ll get what we mean later…

So anyway, it’s only been a few days and the couples are summoned for their first get-together with the experts.

They’re all apprehensive. It’s going to be confronting, Fraser announces. Monique doesn’t want “a big D and M in front of all the other couples”.

Julia confides to camera, “Things haven’t changed for me in the attraction stakes.” Dave is still too metrosexual and owns far too many moisturisers. She thinks Dave is jealous of her friendship with Sam but she’s independent and “didn’t sign up for a stage five clinger”. Sam is her friend and there’s no pressure with him, she says.

At the get-together they’re split into two groups (boys and girls) and told they’ll be spending the afternoon reflecting on their relationships before tonight’s first commitment ceremony. Whaaaaaat? First commitment ceremony. Nobody thinks they’re ready.

So the girls go off (with Sam) and get on with the job of reflecting.

Sam is agitated and whispers nasty things about Ksenia to his BFF. Afterwards he tells us, “That conversation was f…g boring. I found some of them really dull, they weren’t giving me anything.”

But his ears prick up when they talk about who’s sharing a bed. Turns out Yuki and Monique, with their respective husbands, are the only ones.

In the guys group Wayne shows off the new shirt that Ksenia bought him. It makes your eyes pop they tell him before getting on with reflecting.

At the commitment ceremony everyone files in like they’re going to an execution. The experts are waiting and Gareth and Ottie are called up first.

How’s it been going?, the experts ask. Good, they reply. We’re off to a monosyllabic start.

“Tell us a little bit more about good,” Tony probes but they’re not keen.

Ottie explains, “We said verbal vows but we’re not emotionally married because it’s too early.”

“So you’re not feeling anything special toward each other?” Dr Trisha asks.

Ottie has nothing to say; Gareth says he’s enjoying spending time with Ottie.

Dr Trisha wants to know if feelings are growing between them but Ottie says that’s private: “are you asking if we’re having sex?”

The other couples shift uncomfortably but Dr Trisha holds her own:

No, I am asking you if you are building towards a relationship more than a friendship.

“What’s a relationship?” Ottie asks.

Oh dear.

Gareth says, “I don’t mean to be rude but for us it is a day-by-day thing, we’re not looking… into the future.”

Ottie concurs: “I don’t even know if I’ll be alive…”

“There’s a really tight alliance between you two,” Stephanie observes coolly.

Away from the others Gareth says proudly, “I don’t think the experts were quite ready for myself and Ottie. If we’re not comfortable talking about it we’re not going to.”

Ottie claims she’s emotionally stunted and has no idea what falling in love means. She can only focus on the day-to-day in a relationship and that’s how she conducted her relationship when she was with someone for 13 years, but as expert Tony points out “and how was that for you?” and that wipes the smirk off her face.

Dr Trisha reminds them that they’re part of a social experiment and they’ve got to “give us something”. They’re looking for growth and she suggesst Ottie and Gareth try a different approach to relationships.

When it’s time to reveal whether they want to “stay or leave” we really have no idea what they’re going to say but and they both say they’ll stay and then Ottie apologises for giving the experts a hard time.

Next up are Ksenia and Wayne and we get even more of an insight into how Ksenia ticks. She reveals that when Wayne said he’d hit the jackpot on their wedding day this had totally freaked her out. Other women would take this as a compliment, expert Stephanie Dowse points out but Ksenia took it as pressure: “like he owns me already”.

Wayne is surprised but also intrigued because he wanted a woman with substance.

He seems to realise that he needs to find ways other than using humour to get Ksenia to open up to him. Dr Trisha notices they look uncomfortable together.

We find out tomorrow whether they both opt to stay.

Married At First NZ airs on Sundays at 7pm and continues Mondays and Tuesdays at 7.30pm on THREE.