Shazia Mirza: Married At First Sight
Published: Friday 23rd September 2022
Married At First Sight is every single arranged marriage of my parents' generation - without the sex, drama, and tattoos.
My parents met two times before they got married. It was called 'married at no sight'. My dad's parents met my mum's parents and said, "I've a son, he's 25 and needs a wife". My mum's parents said, "I've got a daughter, she's 21, it's time she got married".
My dad told my mum he looked like Elvis Presley so they arranged to meet. When she turned up he looked nothing like Elvis Presley. He looked like a kebab. They've been married for fifty-five years and have five children.
Whether they fancied each other, had a good sex drive, both liked hummus or Elizabeth Taylor, was irrelevant. All they had to do was say yes, get on with it and make it work no matter what. And it did work; they made it work at all costs. I don't know anyone of my parents' generation that is divorced.
What's got so complicated? Why can't people find someone to love? Why is no one happy? I don't know. But what I do know is that sitting on someone's face is not the answer. If my mum had said to my dad on the second date, "Listen Mohammed, I've got a high sex drive, I'm going to sit on your face very shortly," she would have been deported immediately to a village in Kashmir to plough the fields and never be seen again.
I know we live in a different time, a different place, a different culture. We have the internet, social media and the Kardashians. We've got TV shows where people are singing, singing with masks on, dancing with masks on, on ice whilst dancing, and baking cake. It's reality TV. And reality TV is real life. It is the worst of humanity that all of us Guardian-reading Waitrose people have the privilege to avoid. We don't have to watch this; we just go on a march and sign an online petition. So an aspect of E4's Married At First Sight is "it's good television". And yes, it is good television: it is addictive, compelling, tragic, shocking and annoying but the hook on which it is based - marriage - is complicated.
These couples are married, but they don't seem to know what that means. None of them actually say what marriage means to them or what they expect from it. They carry on like they've just met behind the bins at the back of Tesco. It is The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, Big Brother, Love Island and Celebs Go Dating all rolled into one. It's a huge firework display of emotion, anger and sexual frustration and one couple talks about their honeymoon like it was a piss-up in Vegas.
What they expect from a 'marriage' rather than from just a relationship is never displayed. One of the men, Matt, screams "Sexual attraction is the most important thing for me!" After saying "I do", Gemma, the wife, declares she has a very high sex drive and gets very touchy feely at the top table. Matt said, "It's nice to know the attraction is there, just tone it down a bit". However Gemma didn't quite understand this, and told the audience: "I'm going to sit on his face".
She said, "I'm not expecting love, but I just want him to like me". You should be expecting love; you're married to him! My mum expected love and she only met my dad twice. If you don't expect, you don't get. Assuming you want your marriage to last, you're going to need more than sexual attraction to keep you going at seventy.
Liking your husband or wife is a good start to a marriage. It's horrible to discover you don't like someone after you've slept with them or even married them. It's the simple, inexplicable things that can make a marriage work, and are most important as your life together continues: conversation, caring and respect for each other.
"Do you fancy me?" one of them asked the other. That's what I said to Jeremy Stringer outside the boys' toilets when I was seven years-old. I haven't heard anyone say that to anyone that directly for years.
The 'experts' give a riveting analysis of what's going on, but I'd really love someone to give some hard advice to these people and make them act on it because some may never have had any good relationship role models in their lives before.
What's great about Married At First Sight is that it shows people's real emotions and needs, and every type of person is represented. Same sex couples, working class, middle class - and it makes the show more interesting and unpredictable. It's a great show for our time, a good study of human behaviour, what people want and their struggle to get it. You become invested in the participants and can relate to a tiny bit of each one of them, because we've all been disappointed, we all fancy someone who doesn't fancy us back and we've all tried to sit on someone's face after just five minutes of meeting them.
There's something for everyone in this show, including my parents.
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