Welcome back to your Married At First Sight 2024 recaps, this time for Episode 29. Surely these MAFS Commitment Ceremonies are over soon, right? RIGHT?
Jade has progressed to popping Ridge‘s pimples — a monumental milestone, if you ask me — and Tori reckons she’s bored of the MAFS Commitment Ceremony questions.
Eden and Jayden are fighting. Sara‘s been saying nasty things about Tim and Jayden wants to tell him. Eden does not.
In fact, she has given him an ultimatum: if he tells that story tonight at the MAFS Commitment Ceremony, she will leave the experiment.
Tim and Sara are up on the MAFS Commitment Ceremony couch first and Tim says only lovely things about her considering the hell she’s put him through.
Sara thinks the whole ordeal where she lied to Tim about seeing her ex has brought them closer together in a weird way. She then proceeds to apologise to him, which I would hope she had already done before now.
“I never, ever thought that an experiment like this could really work,” Sara tells the MAFS experts.
“We see right through it,” Jayden interrupts. “We see right through her fake act, pretending to like Tim when she doesn’t like Tim at all. She just wants to stay here to save her image.”
“All I’m hearing is how she’s constantly putting Tim down and how her and the ex-partner were making fun of Tim that night when they were out together.”
Sara denies the allegations and then Jayden throws Eden under the bus.
Eden and Jayden argue on the couch and I hate his tone. It comes across as very controlling and I, for one, would hate to be in an argument with him. Mainly because I think it would be hard to win (and I like to win).
“If you don’t have any proof, why would you say it to me?” Jayden asks Eden. In front of everyone.
“Because I didn’t like it, I guess,” Eden responds.
“She’s spoken badly about Tim, that’s the bottom line,” Eden says before saying she wants to tap out and not be involved in this relationship’s drama anymore.
Sara is now saying she’s not as lucky as the other couples who have gotten along like a house on fire from the get-go, including Jack and Tori?
“Some of us actually have to go through struggles to get to this point,” Sara schools Jayden. You know what? Fair.
Sara wants to make it up to Tim and “prove everybody wrong”, which is kinda weird but I guess at least she said it out loud.
Lucinda and Timothy are up next on the MAFS Commitment Ceremony couch and the experts would like to know all about the kiss they had at the last dinner party.
“It felt right,” said Timothy.
MAFS expert Alessandra Rampolla wants to know why Tim got emotional afterwards.
“When we kissed, I realised that I’m 51 years old and I’ve never really let anyone in. And I thought to myself, I’ve wasted those years. It just got the best of me, my emotions got the best of me.”
“Vulnerability is a superpower,” Alessandra tells him.
Timothy explains that it was “really nice” to have Lucinda there to support him last night before turning to her and thanking her. It’s a really powerful piece of television tbh.
The MAFS couple confirm they feel admiration for one another, before Alessandra tells them that “admiration is the gateway to love”.
They choose to stay. Perhaps we’ll get some tongue next week!
Jonathan arrives on the couch to give an update on Lauren‘s health. He chooses to stay and I guess Lauren will just have to deal with that.
Cassandra and Tristan have officially friend-zoned each other and it’s about bloody time. They both leave, but not before they’re asked to share how they feel about one another like an intimate Show & Tell.
Eden and Jayden are up.
Jayden shares what Eden said about Sara talking shit about Tim.
“She wanted me to basically lie,” he tells the MAFS experts.
Jayden mentions the ultimatum.
“That didn’t sit right with me,” he explains. “Either I do something that is morally wrong or I lose my wife.”
He reckons she didn’t care about what he wanted in this situation.
Eden explains that she wasn’t saying she’d leave Jayden, just that she’d leave the experiment.
“A lot of my efforts are getting brushed under the rug,” Jayden shares. He’s getting emotional now.
He explains that he’s trying very hard to understand Eden’s anxiety and gives her flowers “five times a week”.
He also made her dog into a pillow because she misses him (or her, I can’t remember), takes Eden out every weekend, and writes a list of all the things he likes about her that he adds to consistently.
“The other day because I wouldn’t do one thing you blew up at me and said, ‘Why don’t you do something nice for me for once in your life?’,” Jayden tells Eden.
Eden apologises immediately.
“I don’t know if Eden is everything that I thought,” he admits.
Eden doesn’t like him feeling like he’s not enough and they both choose to stay and work on their relationship.
Jade and Ridge are fine as usual and staying (as usual).
Tori and Jack are up and MAFS expert John Aiken says he doesn’t want to talk about all the dumb shit Jack does and says. Instead, he would like talk about this relationship and how it’s actually going.
First, John asks how Jack feels about Tori because, like the rest of Australia, he’s “not buying it”.
Jack says he likes Tori “a lot” and is developing “serious feelings” for her.
John wants clarification, because saying that Tori makes him feel “good” isn’t enough for John.
“I’m actually sleeping really well,” he tells John.
John has now brought Melissa Schilling‘s husband into the equation because it would appear that he knows how to express genuine emotions. Apparently, her husband says things like she’s his soulmate and he can stop looking because he’s found the one.
John now wants to get Jade involved.
Jade confirms that Jack would’ve slept with someone by now if they were more his type.
Jack reckons Tori is his type, which makes literally no sense.
Jade says if she was in Tori’s position, she would feel like her partner didn’t like her.
Tori thought “fair enough” when Jack said that thing to Jade about sleeping with his type by now.
Australia is confused. John’s pissed.
Tori said she’s not in love with Jack but he allows her to feel safe and herself.
John asks her if she’s “for real” and she asks him the question back because she, like me, cannot comprehend such young and hip lingo coming out of our king.
“We are intimate, we are sexually intimate, we have just not done the deed,” Jack shares.
“We’re both ready to have sex,” Tori says. “But there is a lot of pressure.”
“I almost don’t want to do it, because I don’t want to give anyone the satisfaction,” Tori, a woman who got matching tattoos with Jack as a “fuck you” to the MAFS cast, explains.
Tori thinks Jack’s behaviours to date show that he is “stubborn”.
“I would say the word, ‘cruel’,” Lucinda jumps in.
Mel tells Tori she’s so focused on protecting Jack all the time, that perhaps she’s missing how she actually feels about the situation.
“Respectfully, I am my first priority,” she tells Mel.
She rattles off her usual shit about how she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want to be, and that she thinks Jack is a good person. They’re both staying.
Andrea and Richard are up and at this point, I’d like them to just call a spade a spade.
They feel like they’re at a dead end and have mutually decided to leave, followed by Dicky telling her he’ll never forget their first 10 days together.
Tomorrow night is home stays, which should be really enlightening in Australia’s rental crisis. See you there.
Chantelle Schmidt is a freelance writer. You can follow her on Instagram.
