If Married At First Sight handed out awards for emotional sincerity, Rachel and Steven would be strong contenders.
From Rachel’s nervous laughter during their vows to the pair bonding over shared insecurities, they quickly emerged as one of the experiment’s more earnest matches.
However, at last night’s Reunion Dinner Party, viewers learned the pair had split, with little explanation as to why.
Rachel entered the experiment carrying the weight of past relationships in which she often felt hidden away, the “secret” in situationships rather than the woman someone was proud to stand beside. Steven, meanwhile, seemed like a natural match. Frustrated by the exhausting checklist culture of modern dating, he told the experts he was simply looking for someone ambitious, with a sense of humour, who would accept him as he is.
At Final Vows, they appeared smitten, both declaring they were ready to start their lives together in the outside world. So what exactly happened?
Are MAFS’ Steven And Rachel Still Together?
Despite making it to the Final Vows whereby the two reaffirmed their relationship by ‘choosing one another’, it seems Steven and Rachel are no longer together. At last night’s Reunion Dinner Party, the majority of the cast reunited, with only two couples having survived Final Vows: Rachel and Steven, and Filip and Stella.
The episode opened with a sweet montage of Rachel and Steven’s journey throughout the experiment, before cutting to Rachel ahead of the dinner party. Fighting back tears, she told cameras, “Steven and I have broken up.”
Reflecting on Final Vows, she recalled how hopeful she had felt at the time. “Final Vows were magical,” she told Alissa and Bec, before charting the relationship’s decline.
“What I noticed was he started speaking in ‘I’,” she said. “He came to Melbourne, and there was just this huge elephant in the room. We were going for a walk and he turned to me and said, ‘Rach, I just don’t think I can be the man you need me to be.’”
Later, Steven arrived, with the two pulling aside for a classic MAFS-style chat. He told Rachel he was “confused” and “feeling a lot of emotions”.
“I don’t know if it was the right decision,” he said, before Rachel tearfully replied, “I can’t believe we’ve broken up.”
He admitted he hadn’t made the relationship a priority, instead focusing on work and “getting back on his feet”.
He did, however, pull his wedding ring from his jacket pocket and slip it back on, later telling cameras, “Me and Rachel, we both really care for each other. I don’t want the relationship to end.”
It seems they both want to try, though whether that’s enough remains to be seen.
From the outset, Steven was slow to build intimacy, and a scroll through a few MAFS comment sections makes it clear many viewers were unconvinced he was ever fully invested in Rachel. While his nervous demeanour and insecurity have often been cited as the reason for his behaviour, it may also point to something simpler: that he wasn’t ready for a relationship at all.
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