Could this explain MAFS bride Ning's meltdown at the altar?

From the moment we met Ning on tonight’s episode of Married at First Sight, it was clear it would take a lot for the 32-year-old to let her guard down.

After being introduced to a caring and loving mum-of-three, viewers were definitely left scratching their heads when instead an almost rude and stand-offish Ning arrived at her wedding ceremony.

The signs were there early on – she was highly emotional, and broke down when speaking to her friend in the limo on the way to the nuptials.

And when she arrived and ‘met’ her new husband for the first time, she said: “I’m just here for the food and drinks, not you, not this… just the food.”

Clearly wanting to establish a connection with Ning, 41-year-old Mark tries to make a joke as well about how he was “worried” she wouldn’t turn up.

“Yeah I asked the limo to turn around but it was too big,” was Ning’s baffling response.

To camera, she explains she “makes jokes out of situations” when she is uncomfortable, but Clinical Psychotherapist Claire McHalick says something much deeper was going on.

“Ning has attracted strong friendships with women who know her in all her strengths and vulnerabilities,” Claire tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

“These women were instrumental in helping Ning get through what was clearly a serious anxiety attack at the wedding ceremony.”

At the beginning of the episode the relationship experts introduce Ning as a “feisty hairdresser” and an “incredibly complicated individual”.

And Ning herself explains she has trust issues and is constantly dealing with feelings of abandonment.

“She’s so afraid of being left again that she’s developed strong defence mechanisms, she can sometimes push men away,” relationship expert John Aiken said during the matching process.

“I just hope Ning can let her guard down. She has a habit of putting up walls. But Mark is a rock and I think he will be able to ground her and give he the reassurance she needs.”

And Claire agrees that these inner battles cause what Ning likes to describe as the “word vomit”.

“Ning is a woman with considerable self knowledge, but because of her experiences with abandonment she can lose the ground she is standing on,” Claire tells us.

It was the reassurance and encouragement from her friends that finally helped Ning warm up to her new husband during the wedding reception.

“With the honest guidance of her friends giving her straight forward advice about what to do – ‘make eye contact’, ‘face him’ – and reassurance – ‘he seems like a good man’ – the adult Ning made her appearance,” Claire says.

“Mark, who had been pretty worried by the way Ning had been relating to him, immediately softened and was able to say the things to Ning she longed to hear.”

Claire agrees the couple are an “intelligent match” by the show’s experts.

“There is a lot of hope being held by the experts for this couple because it is not as clear that their match will work,” she says. “This is because they are quite different people. There is a complexity to both of them as individuals and their life experiences.”

But the pairing will only work if Ning can let Mark in.

“At this early stage it appears that Mark has the emotional stability that Ning needs, and Ning has the emotional strength to help Mark open up to his potential,” Claire explains.

“They will be interesting to watch as they negotiate the building of relationship. It could be rocky, but it could also succeed and I think this is what the experts were looking at and holding hope for.”

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