Married at First Sight--show

Has anyone seen this crazy reality show? I saw the first episode on Hulu.

A few of the people getting matched up claimed to be Christians. One of my concerns about this was that if Christians aren't to go to law before unbelievers, should we let them match us up? (The religion of the 'spiritual advisor' on the team of matchmakers is apparently humanist.) I was just considering some of the bad situations the matchmakers put the people in. They were very focused on the characteristics of the couples, but the scenarios they put people in weren't very good, and they didn't do a very good job with some of the characteristics.

The idea of the show is that two people matched up by a panel of experts would marry sight unseen.

One of the brides was going to walk herself down the aisle because her parents didn't agree with what she was doing. She was being matched up with a very busy fireman whose mom had some serious problems with cancer. He's being married into a family that doesn't agree with the wedding without knowing it in advance. She's going to have to live with her mother-in-law who is dying, without knowing it in advance. This is a tough situation for a couple to choose to go into , but they don't even know the situation beforehand, before getting married.

Another couple they matched up was a guy who was described as not being the best looking man in the world. The woman was very attractive. She said personality was more important than looks for her in a man. The matchmakers said they had similar values. But when she walks down the aisle, she isn't attracted to him physically, and we are left with a cliff-hanger, wondering if she will back out of this crazy experiment, or continue on.

We've got another thread talking about arranged marriage. This TV show has one of the craziest forms of arranged marriage. For me, it makes a lot more sense for parents to arrange these things than a panel of so-called experts. If parents and children have similar beliefs and values, the parents know the children a lot better than some so-called experts on a reality TV show. If the participants on the show were that desperate, why didn't they ask their parents to try to set them up on blind dates. It makes more sense than what they do on the show, IMO.

bluegreysky said:

It sounds like they turned marriage into a game for TV and that's dumb. But this is coming from a girl who, when everyone else witnessed the "bachelor" getting married on tv a few months ago and went "awwwwww", said "that's rigged for TV too just like everything else". (which made them mad)

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I actually finally watched much of a season of the bachelor with Sean after reading about a Christian 'virgin bachelor'-- not actually, just a man living celibate. While I don't recommend the show for all the skin (I kind of listened to a lot of it anyway as a window while working on spreadsheets anyway), it was entertaining. And Sean was a really nice guy and really wanting to get married. I do think the show can get people together. If nothing else, it puts people in a situation where they can have feelings for each other. Both women and men can respond to competition in a situation like this which can also stir up jealousy and increase the emotional tension. Some women also tend to think men are attractive if other men think they are attractive, so competition can increase that tendency in those who are susceptible to it.

I don't know if the couple from that season is the couple you mentioned, but if it is, I think they really got married and it wasn't just a show.

This other show about being married at first sight isn't a game. But it is a reality show. The premise is just so crazy. Listening to the 'experts', I don't have much confidence in their ability to choose a spouse. Apparently, attractiveness was a lot more important to one of the brides than she let on, and the 'experts' didn't get that information.

I also wonder how many of their tools for choosing spouses were based on self-reported self-analysis. There are things about ourselves that we don't realized, and when we answer surveys, we can have blind spots and answer about the way we want to be, whether we are that way or not. Surveys in America show that most people are above average drivers. But that doesn't make sense mathematically.

It did seem pretty involved. Those couples can tell people they never met before they were married, and that Dr. Pepper set them up. What they had in common was that they both liked Dr. Pepper.

Using FBI and CIA tests that had never been used for matchmaking is a little risky, since they had never been used for matchmaking.

I hope they did interview about how the couples would respond to being in an elder-care situation and things like that. I know they can take sound bites out of countless hours. I think it was the sociologist they interviewed who said if they didn't match them well, these couples may have to divorce. It didn't set well with me, as if they were matchmaking but were thinking, they can always divorce. When I was looking for a wife, I was trying to find someone with never having to go through a divorce in mind. But folks who let a TV show match them up may not think that way.

'Experts' matching people up like this is crazy enough. But it is even worse that they are putting someone into a marriage like this where one spouse was divorced, or the family of one spouse does not agree or attend the wedding, or one spouse's mother needs a lot of care because she is suffering from cancer without informing the ones being matched up is rather cruel if you ask me. But I suppose the drama could make for exciting entertainment for the public at their expense. Those are the types of things a potential spouse should specifically consider before getting married. It's possible they did inform the candidates for marriage on the show and didn't show us that part. I hope they did.

I was thinking if the man with the mother who was exhausted from chemo should have just waited to see what happened to his mother's health. She was too tired from the medication to attend the wedding. I wonder if she had told him she wanted to see him get married while she was still alive, or if that was a consideration he had in mind. I thought they were going to match him up with the nurse.

I got curious and watched episode 2 on the Internet. The channel has it posted online, and so does Hulu.

One couple, where they were both attracted to her seemed to get along well. They said they were both Christians, so maybe they matched them according to that. The girl was really nice looking. I assume the man was too by the ladies' reactions. They were the only couple that kissed during the ceremony. He was preparing to be a fireman, and her dad and brother were fireman, and they really seemed to click right from the start. My guess is they will probably do okay if they are dedicated to staying married and neither one of them is nuts or has some major character flaw.

I found some parts of the vows rather annoying. And it would be stupid to agree to always support someone in everything they do. A good spouse is going to point out if something you do isn't all that smart instead of supporting you. They had a few other stupid things in the vows. There is a reason the book of common prayer vows are still used. I guess it's like EULAs and credit card contracts. Some people just agree without considering the details.

There was one woman who it turns out was a contestant on the bachelor once, who married a guy she wasn't attracted to. I thought, why didn't she just back out when she saw him? She was talking about how difficult it was for her, how she wanted to cry. I didn't feel that bad for her since she made the decision to do it, and she could have said no at the altar. I felt bad for the guy she married who is portrayed as a really nice dependable guy. She basically said she wasn't going to sleep with him on his wedding night, too.

This is one of those shows where it isn't totally stupid to pray for the main characters. The recording is in the past, but you can pray for these folks and their weddings. I just don't want to go to a prayer meeting at church and hear a prayer request that Jack Bauer breaks out of the handcuffs before the nuclear bomb goes off.

I wonder if, by watching it, am I contributing to other people doing this stuff in a second season? I don't think it's immoral, necessarily, to marry at first sight, but potentially rather foolish to do so.