Getting on your mother-in-law’s good side is an issue many wives have dealt with since the dawn of time, but even on-screen mother-in-laws can be a problem.
It’s something Married At First Sight‘s Cathy had to face when she came to blows with husband Josh’s mum Mandy during the family and friends’ visits, but in an exclusive chat with Now To Love, the ordeal was a whole lot more tense for Cathy than what we saw.
Cathy said that watching the dinner scene back when Josh’s mum told her: “don’t ever ignore my son again,” she realised that it was “downplayed significantly” on the show adding that when she spoke about it with the friends who were with her at the time, they all agreed that it was “a very civil way of putting what happened to air.”
“I don’t feel cheated but actually the whole situation was a lot more intense and a lot more threatening in my opinion,” Cathy told Now To Love.
“I’ve got friends there to vouch for it and they all said that was threatening because it was their best friend who the family was attacking.”
Cathy received lots of supportive messages after the episode aired but remarked that had they seen the whole thing, she would’ve had more people would’ve “jumped ship” to Team Cathy.
“I remember feeling kind of shocked that Josh had thrown me under the bus, I mean we had just had the conversation of ‘Look, we’ve gone through a bit of a rough patch but we’re going to see our family and friends and it’ll be a really good time so let’s not talk about it right now,’ and the first thing he brings up is that! My jaw literally dropped, I was like ‘What are you doing?'”
Josh went on to say that Josh and his mother have the similar habit of repeating themselves and that she said the phrase “don’t you ignore my son,” over and over.
“We could honestly say she probably said it over 10 times and I was kind of looking at her like, ‘alright, I get the message.’ I was actually shocked,” Cathy confesses.
“I know I said ‘I didn’t ignore you for three days’ and he said to his mother ‘No Mum she did,’ so when he said that I was like ‘Why are you getting your mother to fight your battles?'”
The MAFS bride added that she felt “kind of like a deer in the headlights” because she didn’t know how to respond.
“I was like ‘well I don’t want to go off at your mother and I don’t want to go off at you in front of your mother, I mean she wants to kill me already!'” Cathy jokes.
“I was seething, I was absolutely furious but you know what, I don’t want to ruin a relationship that only just began with his mother so I was like ‘OK maybe this can be fixed,’ but after that I felt like there was no chance of rehabilitating that relationship. I felt like she had drawn the last match and there was no way of building a connection between each other again.”
But to make matters even more interesting Josh told us that even though a lot of what happened at the lunch was left out.
“Cathy did a one on one interview saying that we agreed not to bring up anything negative at lunch. That was never discussed between me and Cathy,” he told Now To Love.
“I was upset that day because of being ignored and Cathy knew that it was going to get brought up at lunch. Cathy knew that it was obvious, you could tell something was wrong with me. So, the first time I heard about there being this deal not to bring this up I was watching it back.”
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Josh adds that whilst him mum perhaps shouldn’t have “had a go at her that much”, she would speak to him on the phone when Cathy wouldn’t.
He also said that since contestants weren’t allowed to talk to other grooms and brides, except for dinner parties, while Cathy would meet up with friends in Sydney, he had no one to speak to and therefore turned to his mum.
“She [Mandy] just came in, was obviously upset and angry, and gave it to her [Cathy], and then things calmed down and we had a lovely lunch, but you don’t get to see it all on TV,” he said.
“She was just being the protective mother I guess, cause she was probably the only person that had heard how upset I’d been the last few days.”
Following his wedding to Cathy, Josh’s mum gained herself many admirers on social media but was quickly slammed following her confrontation with Cathy.
And even though he adores his mum and confessed that it breaks his heart that she’s still single, Josh himself has noticed how the tides quickly turned.
“She’s been the hot mother and now she’s the mum from hell hanging out with Connie’s mum!” he joked.
For more juicy Married At First Sight 2020 goss and scandals, check these links out below!
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Which Married At First Sight couples from 2019 are actually still together?
Is Married At First Sight real or fake? Let’s examine the evidence
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The explosive pasts from the Married At First Sight 2020 cast revealed!
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