'Married at First Sight: Jasmina and Michael Reveal They 'Didn't Speak' During Their First Month Married in Exclusive Reunion Preview
Married at First Sight's Jasmina and Michael didn't know if their marriage would make it after they "didn't speak" for the first month of their relationship following their major fight. In a PopCulture.com exclusive sneak peek of the Lifetime series' all-new reunion episode Wednesday, Jasmina and Michael reveal how their communication issues could have spelled the end of their marriage almost immediately.
Early on, Michael said it was tough to take their walls down as near-strangers, which made communication more difficult. The two then look back on a conversation the couple had previously with Pastor Cal, in which Jasmina said she felt Michael was "very aggressive," "very loud" and "just disrespectful in general" when they would have conflicts off-camera. Michael didn't take to that well, saying that while he would agree he was speaking in a "condescending tone," he wasn't "yelling" at Jasmina, who responded at the time, "Alright, so I'm a liar now."
When reunion host Kevin Frazier asks Michael why he seemed "shocked" at Jasmina feeling that way, the reality personality says he was thrown off by the word "aggressive," which he took as synonymous with "threatening" or "trying to intimidate" her, which he didn't think he was, "not even a little bit." Jasmina isn't backing down with her use of the word even now, however.
"I still stand by the word aggressive," she chimes in. "I think people, when they hear the word aggressive, they automatically think of maybe physical. But people can also be aggressive with the way that they speak. And he didn't like that I chose that word being a Black man, but I'm also a Black woman and I understand what Black men and just people my color go through."
She continues that the term was so divisive in their relationship that "for the next month, he didn't want to speak to me because I used that word." Frazier asks, "When you say didn't wanna speak to you, so you all just didn't talk?" to which Jasmina responds, "No. I don't wanna speak for him, but from what I got from the conversations was he felt like he couldn't speak to me after that because if he would, it would come off as aggressive. And so for the first month that we were married, we didn't speak."
"How can you have a marriage when you're not speaking?" Frazier wonders, as Michael steps in to defend his reaction. "The way I felt was, 'Okay, if I handled the situation to the best of my ability in that moment, the next time I have an issue with my wife, how do I bring it up to her in a way where this word doesn't come up again?'" he explains. "I felt like I didn't have the tools, or us in our marriage didn't have the tools in order for that to not happen again. That made me so nervous, that freaked me out."
Michael knew that "in a marriage, you have to speak," but says he was so "nervous," he felt like he had to be silent. Frazier wonders if during that period either of them thought their marriage was doomed to end, to which Jasmina answers affirmatively, "Yeah. A couple of times." Married at First Sight (produced by Kinetic Content) airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.