When the Bubble Bursts

Married at First Sight- Beauty & the Beast Update

I had lunch yesterday with 3 of my former team members. We worked at a domestic violence shelter for 10 years
They are in their 70s & 80s, Crones in the original, highly regarded meaning of the word. Three of us have been following Married at First Sight this year and two of us, myself included, questioned the characterisation of Tim and Lucinda’s story which is clearly a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story where the aggressive, difficult to love Beast is at the centre of the workload for the kind & considerate Beauty.

In the telling of the story, the patiently understanding Lucinda Beauty seeks to have none of her own needs met as she focuses solely on the wounded Beast Tim.

She is enabled by the “experts” who congratulate her on being able to talk him down after his volatile fist slamming, wine spilling eruption at the dinner party . #CoerciveControl

After all it is a woman’s job to monitor and redirect the angry man right?
They even used the moment as a promo meme!
” Lucinda talks Timothy down”.

When she visited him in his own space & saw his unkempt, dog-poo-infused flat & met his friends who said he usually “dotes” on women, Lucinda Beauty was no longer able to idealise Tim & the way she had been treated by him.

Her bubble burst.

Back on home turf, Tim walked away from her, his anger & frustration arose, the same eruption of anger & entitlement that had defined many of his interactions, was now solely on Lucinda.

The experts had enabled Tim’s behaviour but in this moment Lucinda realised she was entitled to better treatment and a healthier relationship.

This is always a turning point moment in the “Beauty and the Beast” stories we hear behind the walls of domestic violence shelters as women confront the coercive control they have lived with.

Lucinda stated “I’m not angry, I’m not”
followed by
“well maybe a little bit”.

She had been fed crumbs and crummy behaviour for many weeks but her caring and loving Spirit had transformed them into a banquet of adoration as she patiently midwifed Tim’s awakening.

But as we saw Tim was not having any of it!

The return to aggressive & difficult behaviour is very common on the cycle of coercive control because now the honeymoon of Connection is over, there is a cost to pay!

Vulnerability is a weakness not the superpower that Lucinda holds as high value.

So what do you think?

Will Lucinda finally experience the anger that she is entitled to after weeks of it being all about Tim and the producers and experts giving no consideration to the sincerity of her quest for love & HER needs, not his?

The “experts” enable Tim and disempower Lucinda by not highlighting the dynamics of coercive control that were happening in the same way they did to Jack and Tori, who had been targeted by them as the “villain” couple.

The professional irresponsibility of selectively highlighting coercive behaviour is both questionable and highly toxic.

…and now that Lucinda-Beauty’s bubble has burst will she see that all along she has been focused on Tim’s wounded Beast-Transcendence, his potential that she knows is not too far below the gruff exterior rather than recognising and interrogating what he has been telling her:
I am a hot head
I am ready to go to war
I am not easy.

The Beauty breaks free from the spell when she recognises that the Beast is just that.

Link to my Blog #BeautyAndTheBeast article:

https://carolom.wordpress.com/2024/02/29/mafs-promote-the-beauty-the-beast-syndrome/

#MAFS #MAFSAU