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24 April 2024, 16:58
Married At First Sight couple Natalie and Collins have struggled with one another from day one, but are they still together now? Or have they split? Here’s what we know about the 2024 pairing.
MAFS Australia’s Natalie Parham and Collins Christian have had a rocky road since day one of their marriage on the hit TV show.
The couple failed to connect on a romantic level despite experts Alessandra Rampolla, John Aiken and Mel Schilling deciding to pair the two together because of the ‘geeky’ qualities they both shared.
A recurring issue between the couple was Collins inability to lower his walls and drop the TV persona facade he seemed to be projecting whilst on the show, causing Natalie to feel like Collins was an actor.
But do the pair manage to figure it out amongst themselves? Are Natalie and Collins still together after the show? Here’s what we know about the Married At First Sight couple.
WARNING: Major show spoilers ahead!
No, Married At First Sight 2024 couple Natalie and Collins are most certainly not together. In fact they didn’t even make it to the end of the show.
Natalie wrote leave in the couple’s first commitment ceremony, whilst Collins wrote stay. However, despite being forced to stay another week on the show, Natalie walked out on her on-screen husband early.
Prior to doing so, Natalie questioned Collins on why he wrote stay when there was blatantly nothing between them. Collins waxed some sort of nonsensical verbal poetry about being happy every time he was with Nat, meaning the bride interrupted him to tell him his speech felt like an ‘Oscars performance.'
“I can’t listen to you without hearing ‘orchestra’," Natalie says in the episode, “I cannot communicate with someone who talks to me like we are on the set of Neighbours or Home & Away. It just feels so manufactured."
Natalie goes on to say: “If this is genuinely you, that’s you, but it is not someone that gives me energy, it drains me. I don’t feel I can build a romantic connection with you; I can’t see a future. It is time for me to go.”
Natalie’s walk out of the show was photographed by The Daily Mail at the time as she was seen leaving Skye Suites with all her luggage in August, just a couple weeks after filming had began.
The publication reported that both Collins and Natalie left the experience just two days after that first commitment ceremony was filmed and that according to an insider source, the pair ended on “bad terms.”
Natalie was rightfully upset about her partner’s behaviour on the show, but the reality of the situation was that she was also dealing with a lot of emotional baggage at the time. Her father had passed away just six months prior to when filming had started and on top of that, her mother had just received a cancer diagnosis.
Collins has since spoken to Australian breakfast radio show Kyle and Jackie O about how Natalie's grief was the reason she had to leave the show so abruptly.
“I tried to be as supportive as I could but during the two, three weeks that we were on, it was really apparent that Nat was struggling with grief and homesickness,” Collins said to the radio hosts.
According to the contestant, it was very obvious from the get-go that Natalie was going through a lot of emotions, “After her wedding I hear Nat absolutely bawling her eyes out in the bathroom and I’m like, oh god what’s going on, and it’s not just tears, it’s BAWLING her eyes out,” Collins admitted on air.
“We all know this is a brutal reality TV show, it’s hectic… There was a part of me thinking, ooh are you sure you’re going to be okay to do this experiment,” Collins questioned after seeing Natalie’s fragile state of mind.
However, just in April 2024, it came out that Natalie had briefly begun seeing a woman after the experiment. The experience had left her open-hearted and minded to finding love no matter the person's gender.
"After the reunion I rekindled my friendship with someone very special in my life who I was attracted to and interested in, and getting to know her again opened my heart back into the dating world," Natalie told 9entertainment.
"It really opened my eyes that I see people for who they are on the inside. That's what attracts me, it's not gender or their identity, I'm attracted to who someone is.”
Watch the latest teaser for MAFS
There have been a lot of rumours that Collins was on the show for the wrong reasons and Natalie’s been fanning the flames ever since leaving the show.
Speaking to 9entertainment, the young reality star said: "I had to call it when the time was right… I feel like he was very focused on how he looked on camera and not so much building that connection and that's why I didn't trust him."
"Watching my light slowly get snuffed out by his performance was sad, and really heartbreaking to watch back."
"I still know that I'm worthy of love and I will find my perfect person."
With everyone backing Natalie, we hope she finds what she’s looking for in the future.
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