‘Married at First Sight’ Recap: Lauren and Orion’s Early Decision Day
Married at First Sight couples are supposed to stay married for eight weeks before deciding whether they want to remain together or get a divorce. But one season 17 couple wasn’t even done with the honeymoon before they started seriously talking about splitting up. Lauren and Orion’s once-promising relationship fractured over the fallout from a racially insensitive comment, and in the Dec. 6 episode of the Lifetime reality series, they made an early decision about the future of their marriage.
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Dec. 6 episode of Married at First Sight Season 17.]
Lauren and Orion’s ‘Married at First Sight’ honeymoon didn’t go as planned
The Married at First Sight Denver couples have returned home to the Mile High City after a week in Mexico. Most are looking forward to settling into real life with their new partner. But not Lauren and Orion. Things have been tense between the pair ever since they had a conversation about offensive language and slurs during their honeymoon.
Orion has been unable to get past Lauren’s joking response when he asked her if she’d ever used the term “r*dsk*n.” He was also upset when he learned she’d slept with someone else two months before their wedding, while she was already in the midst of the MAFS casting process. (Slut-shaming, much?) A blow-up fight on the last night of their vacation led to an emergency video chat with Pastor Cal Roberson. Orion admitted he was unable to forgive Lauren for her hurtful comments. She was frustrated that he was unwilling to accept her multiple apologies.
“We’re having irreconcilable differences,” Lauren told the other couples this week as they waited for a ride to the airport outside of the honeymoon resort.
Orion disagreed.
“No, I would just say we’re dealing with topics we’ve never dealt with before,” he said. “So it can get really murky.”
Orion tells Lauren he wants a divorce on ‘Married at First Sight’
In a confessional interview, Lauren shared that she was having trouble figuring out where she stood in her marriage to Orion. “It feels very up and down … the honeymoon was a lot,” she said.
The rollercoaster continued on the flight home to Colorado, when Orion told Lauren that he’d had a change of heart and “would like to do a full reset.”
“He drags me this way and he drags me that way,” an exhausted-sounding Lauren said. “I’m trying to be hopeful that my husband is able to forgive me as I have forgiven him.”
But any hopes Lauren might have had for a reconciliation with Orion didn’t last long. Soon after, he sent her a text telling her he didn’t want to continue in the marriage, though he did want to continue in the Married at First Sight process. That left Lauren (and us) confused. “I thought the process was a marraige,” she pointed out.
A one-on-one chat with Dr. Pia Holec proved that Lauren and Orion could no longer find any common ground. Though the MAFS expert urged the couple to look to the future, Orion couldn’t be swayed. He also blamed Lauren’s intense reactions – which “go from zero to 100” – for the problems in their relationship.
“There is no romance within me anymore … I want to continue to follow through with wanting a divorce,” he said.
Lauren says Orion ‘robbed’ them of a chance at a happy marriage
With Orion unwilling to look beyond the mistakes of the honeymoon, Lauren had no choice but to agree to the divorce. But she wasn’t happy about it.
“I knew what marriage looked like and that there would be obstacles and marriage requires a lot of forgiveness, a lot of grace,” she said to Dr. Pia. “And I’m just thinking that I can’t wait to be in a marriage with someone who wants to try as hard as I do.”
Her frustration with Orion’s rigidity came through in a confessional.
“This whole thing is stupid,” she said. “Both of us were robbed because of his unforgivingness. And that’s annoying. Because this could have went totally different if he gave it two more weeks.”
Orion admitted that there were a lot of things he “could have done differently” in his brief marriage. Still, he had “absolutely no regrets,” he said in his own confessional. “I do truly believe that this is the best course.”
New episodes of Married at First Sight Season 17 air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
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