FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, there are very few people who’d be willing to marry a complete stranger for a social experiment.
Yet, for the last few years, Channel 4 has somehow managed to track down a significant number of individuals who were happy to sign up for their TV show Married At First Sight.
For the third series of the show (it’s been going on since 2015!), 4,000 single people in Britain who were fed up of looking for a partner decided to sign up to Married At First Sight.
After six long term relationships and several engagements that did not work out in the end, 32-year-old Stephanie (photographed above) is completely fed up with trying to find someone to settle down with and is handing the reins over to “science”, in the hopes that she will find her life partner. This sounds like an episode of Black Mirror.
A panel of experts spend weeks assessing the participants and their intelligence, attitudes towards things like children and politics etc. before setting a couple up.
As wild as the whole premise is, Stephanie got matched with a charming and humorous millionaire. Let’s see Tinder find you one of those. Maybe this idea isn’t so bad after all.
Then there was estate agent Carrie and insurance broker Wayne.
After four years of being single, Carrie was matched with Wayne because the show’s experts thought that the thoughtfulness that they both displayed would make them a very nice couple.
Carrie was delighted when the experts phoned her up and told her that she was officially engaged.
Meanwhile, Wayne was a bit overwhelmed and when he was told his match was found he said “Oh. Well… Eh… Shit.”
Wayne then headed to his family home and told them that he was officially engaged. When he spoke to his parents, he was really excited about getting excited in six weeks time. “I’m well up for it. I really am.”
Despite the fact we had only seen about three minutes of footage of both him and Carrie, they actually seemed like they’d really suit each other. The episode went on and each individual got more and more excited for the big day.
Until the last minute.
Before Wayne got the opportunity to meet or see a photo of Carrie he met up with the registrar, like all of the other participants to declare his intention to marry Carrie.
I’ve had to think a lot about whether I’m going to actually declare my intention to marry. The whole thing is obviously a big deal… Agreeing to marry someone that you’ve never met before. I’ve had to think long and hard about this but I really am sorry.
It’s a very, very, very understandable decision to make. Yet viewers had grown so invested in the potential relationship he could have had with Carrie that they were actually fuming.
Sai. / Twitter
Sai. / Twitter / Twitter
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Some viewers believed that Wayne should have still met Carrie, regardless of whether they got married or not.
Who knows? Maybe Wayne watched it last night and regretted his decision to leave the show. You’d think that everyone would be relieved that neither of these people had to marry a stranger, but watching Carrie lose her potential husband was actually more devastating than when someone doesn’t turn up on First Dates.
