MAFS expert John Aiken defends Tim after wild wedding confession

Married At First Sight’s Tim Calwell left his bride Sara Mesa stunned during Monday night’s premiere when he shared surprising details about his last relationship at their wedding.

While the couple got off to a great start and were both thrilled with who they had been matched with, Tim caused some controversy when he revealed that things had only ended with his ex “about six months ago”.

“She was unfaithful to me,” he explained. “Six years, we were together for six years. I was going to propose to her this year.

“Hopefully it’s not too much of a curveball for you,” he added.

Sara, whose ex-partner had also cheated on her “multiple times with multiple women”, was shocked by Tim’s admission and questioned if he was ready to be on MAFS.

“I mean, I think my biggest concern with that is just that it’s like, so recent,” she shared, to which he replied, “I guess it still is probably pretty recent, hey”.

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The conversation became even more awkward when Tim said “I need your help”, which Sara interpreted as meaning he needed help to get over his ex.

“Damn, that does not sound good. That’s not what I meant, at all,” Tim said in his piece-to-camera interview, adding that he was “definitely, absolutely” over his ex.

During her piece-to-camera interview, Sara admitted the revelation felt like a “slap in the face” and had “triggered” her due to her past relationship.

“I feel like I’ve been in the situation where I’ve been hung up on an ex,” she shared. “I don’t know if I believe him.

“I’m not here to help him get over his ex, I don’t want to babysit him. Don’t waste my time.”

John Aiken defends Tim

Sara’s concerns are definitely valid given how many similar moments there have been on MAFS over the years where grooms haven’t fully committed to the experiment.

Season 10 groom Harrison Boon was famously called out for seeing someone right up until he left to film his wedding, while his co-star Shannon Adams told his bride just two weeks into the experiment that he was still in love with his ex.

While viewers weren't too pleased with Tim's timeline on social media, relationship expert John Aiken spoke to Yahoo Lifestyle earlier this month and shared his thoughts on whether six months is long enough to get over an ex and appear on MAFS.

“Even though it might only be six months that they’ve been separated, you can be out of a relationship and still in it for a year and a half or two years,” he pointed out. “He’d been cheated on a lot, so you can't really judge how ready they are just from a timeline.

“When we do an assessment, we are across all sorts of different areas. And he was certainly, as he said, ‘I’m ready, I'm over that’. And perhaps that's why he was so upfront about it because he's happy to talk about it.”

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Channel Nine’s executive producer John Walsh added that people are “very active in the dating pool” nowadays and timelines aren’t as important in the era of modern dating.

“Six months to some of the people we meet seems like a very long time,” he told Yahoo Lifestyle. “That may have been a more serious relationship, but I’d guarantee [Tim] has dated maybe a dozen people since then.

“I think the era of digital dating speeds up the process of getting to meet someone quickly, it speeds up the breakup process, and it speeds up the moving on process.”

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