It’s an age old question without an obvious answer: Can you still fancy people when you’re in a relationship? For anyone with a committed partner, it’s complicated. But for people who meet on match-making reality shows like Married At First Sight, it’s even more so.
In the latest series of Married At First Sight, Ella Morgan and Nathanial Valentino were one of the first couples to get married after being matched by experts on the show. However, Ella started to get frustrated by their lack of intimacy and it became apparent pretty quickly that they were entering 'friendship couple' territory.
Despite this, they chose to stick it out and stay in the experiment with the hope of things progressing. That's until halfway through the series when two new couples were thrown into the mix – one of which was JJ Slater, who also found himself in a 'friendship' couple. So when the married couples were split into two groups for a spa weekend, an obvious flirtation started to grow between Ella and JJ and they admitted to fancying each other.
On last night's episode of Married at First Sight, JJ's partner Bianca Petronzi was seen discovering during a visit from a fellow couple that JJ and Ella had admitted fancying each other and seemed angry. But is that really fair? Not only have the couples been thrown together by TV producers, they're also normal people. Is it really fair for any of us to expect that as soon as we couple up, we suddenly become blind to how attractive other people in the world are?
It got us thinking... but reports suggest that when it comes to the question of a harmless case of fancying someone, they might not be the best case-study.
Because it's now been claimed by Mail Online that Ella and JJ – as often happens on reality shows, especially Married At First Sight – choose to split from their original partners and re-enter the experiment as a new couple. For some, it's the ultimate sign of betrayal and for others, it's an unfortunate possibility that anyone in a relationship should accept.
The key difference seems to be between admiring or fancying other people and acting on or developing real feelings for someone else. The former, life coach and boundaries expert Michelle Elman confirms, is perfectly normal. It's the latter that people need to be careful about.
A TV source reportedly told Mail Online that Ella and JJ chose to cross that line. The source said, 'Ella and Nathanial tried to take their relationship to the next level but agreed they were better off as friends. Nathanial was so disappointed by Ella's actions, he thought they had a mutual respect for each other and kissing someone else in the process went against his values.
'Ella loved the attention she received from JJ because it's what she missed in her marriage to Nathanial. After initially leaving the show when their marriages failed, Ella and JJ were given permission by the relationship experts to come back, which certainly ruffled feathers among the cast who have taken the process seriously from the beginning.'
As Michelle says, ‘There’s this idea that as soon as you get into a relationship, you become blind to the beauty around you. You don’t stop seeing the beauty in a puppy or a sunset, so why would you stop seeing the beauty in other people? The only difference is that now you are committed to someone, you can’t act on it.’ This is true of any relationship, but never more so than when you're suddenly committed to a total stranger.
Bayu Prihandito, another mental health, psychology and relationship expert, agrees. She says, 'From a psychology perspective, it's considered quite normal for people to experience attraction to others, even when they're in a committed relationship. In the context of new relationships, these attractions can sometimes be amplified.
'It's because each partner is still in the process of building trust, understanding, and security with one another. During this phase, the boundaries of attraction and commitment are often still fluid and need to be discussed.'
When it comes to working out what is acceptable within a relationship, Michelle emphasises that it’s ok to make a few mistakes at the beginning – which is arguably the case with Ella and JJ – after all we’re only human.
‘Open and honest communication is essential for a healthy relationship – if you don’t tell your partner what has upset you then how can you expect them to stop doing it? As much as we’d like them to be, men aren’t mind readers!’
With reality dating shows, it's even more complicated because these relationships are presented to the audience as serious, committed marriages (even though we all know they're not). We are invited to believe in the reality of their union and to think that exploring anything new is wrong – despite the fact that most of these people have only known each other for a few weeks. And in Ella and JJ's case, their relationships with their original partners never really took off to begin with.
What they did wrong, and why their partners had every right to be angry about their recoupling, is they explored their connection behind their partners' backs and acted on their feelings without having a conversation first. It was obvious to us as audience members that neither of the original pairings would work, but it would have been a lot easier (though probably less entertaining) if they all admitted that themselves too.
Despite it being perfectly healthy to fancy other people when you’re in a committed relationship, it’s also important to know the signs of whether or not you’re with the right person. Finding someone physically attractive is completely different to genuinely being attracted to them. As Michelle explains, in a world where all your potential partners are at your fingertips, people are often too quick to assume that the grass is always greener.
She says, ‘We tend to think that attraction is the greatest sign of a relationship working out, that if you find someone more attractive that your partner, that you should jump ship. However, aesthetics only gets you so far. There are so many things that make a relationship work, like having the same morals, views on money, whether or not you want kids, what you like to do at the weekend. Someone may seem perfect at first glance but good luck holding them up to that standard when you’ve lived with them for a year!’
The Selfish Romantic: How To Date Without Feeling Bad About Yourself by Michelle Elman is out now