Married at First Sight is on its 12th season with a total of 44 couples tying the knot the first time they meet. And yet this “social experiment” seems to go wrong much more often than it goes right. One look at the numbers and anyone can see that the show isn’t a success, at least as far as relationships are concerned. The so-called “relationship experts” pairing the couples might as well be randomly pairing the couples.
Season 12 included the disastrous pairing of Chris Williams and Paige Banks. Williams had a number of red flags that you didn’t have to be an expert to know made him a bad candidate for a successful marriage. The marriage was doomed and so was fans’ trust in the experts. Despite what the experts claim, their high failure rate and blindness to obvious character flaws are proof enough to fans that the experts are more focused on creating a season full of drama than a show full of successful couples.
Just how bad is the failure rate? Out of the 39 couples from the first 11 seasons, only 12 are still married, and 27 are divorced. As if that number weren’t bad enough, the divorce rate continues to rise as couples who initially stayed together get divorced. Of the 12 couples from the first four seasons, only one is still together. Jamie and Doug from season 1 have worked hard on their relationship to defy the odds. Seasons 5 through 7 all have only one couple still together from each season.
After so many failures during the first seven seasons, the show made changes. Rather than changing how they pick couples, producers decided to up the numbers from three couples to four couples. Still, half the couples from both seasons divorced. Season 10 again saw an increase, this time up to five couples. This also led to season 10 being one of the least successful, with four divorces and only one marriage still together. Season 11 currently has three marriages and two divorces, but since that season is less than a year old, it is likely they will go the way of the 12 couples who stayed together on decision day only to later divorce.
While not everything on the show is real, the marriages are valid and the nearly 70 percent divorce rate of contestants is real. Rather than being a show about finding lasting love, Married at First Sight has become merely a test of endurance to see how long poorly matched couples can stand to stay together. The drama will attract some audiences for a time. The question is how long couples will expect that they will get anything out of this show other than their 15 minutes of fame and a divorce.