Married at First Sight’s closer to reality than you’d think, demographically speaking at least
Nine’s ratings juggernaut MAFS has faced backlash for taking the ‘real’ out of reality TV, but it may be more on the money than we think. In this crossposting from The Conversation, Thomas Sigler and Elin Charles-Edwards look at the demographics behind Australian relationships and how MAFS stacks up.
Now in its sixth season, the Nine Network’s wildly successful Married At First Sight chronicles the adventures of 12 couples as they navigate the highs and lows of married life.
The premise of the show is relatively simple: each contestant (MAFS reportedly received 10,000 applications) is evaluated by “relationship experts” and matched with a partner. Each pair ties the knot without ever having met and – poof! — they’re married at first sight!
The show shoehorns a lifetime of matrimonial issues into a few dozen episodes. Over the course of the season, viewers witness the daily ups-and-downs of marriage and cohabitation, and ultimately we learn the difficulty of matchmaking. MAFS’s couples fight, they cheat and – spoiler alert – most separate (divorce?) within a matter of weeks.
I love the comment that “Australian men and women reported having had an average of 18 and 8 sexual partners, respectively.”
This could mean several reasons and there could be several reasons why they were the findings.
1. Men overstate the number of partners they have had.
2. Women understate the number of partners they have had.
3. There are some women out there that must have had a gazillion partners to explain the difference.
4. Poor research.
But it doesn’t state whether the average of 18 and 8 sex partners, for men and women respectively, refers to same or opposite sex couplings. So perhaps the research is fine and more of the men were sleeping with other men?
It’s funny how often people find research unbelievable and try to discredit it when their own personal experiences don’t match up…