MAFS' Samantha reveals the truth about her relationship with Al (2024)

While it certainly wasn’t an immediate connection for Married At First Sight bride Samantha Moitzi when she first laid eyes on her groom Al Perkins, it didn’t stop them from trying to find a deeper connection.

WATCH BELOW: MAFS’ Samantha rejects Al’s kiss

On their wedding day, Samantha was taken aback by Al’s lack of “emotional maturity”, after he recited Eminem lyrics in his vows and later performed the worm on the dancefloor.

While their journey within the experiment wasn’t without its ups and downs, when New Idea caught up with Samantha, she told us they didn’t stoptrying to make it work.

“When you look at our wedding, we definitely, well, for me anyway, it wasn’t love at first sight,” she said. “It was definitely more of a slow burn.”

Indeed, getting married to a stranger and starting an immediate relationship with them can be quite jarring, and while Samantha says she was mentally prepared for the show, it still caught her by surprise.

“You know you’re going to be matched with a stranger, that’s your reality and you fully try and mentally prepare for it and I thought I was built for this,” she said.

“I’m confident, I’m outgoing, I’m extroverted – I’ll be fine, but I haven’t been in a relationship since my ex, he’s my only relationship, and I was like, ‘oh my god I’m so sensitive in relationships’.”

“Intimacy and affection are so important to me, and it needs to mean something, and it was a very overwhelming week for me,” she said, referring to Intimacy Week.

“Whereas for Al, he’s just like, ‘yeah, let’s give everything a go,’” she says. “We both have very different views on intimacy, so it was very tough to navigate it for both of us.”

Throughout the experiment, we saw the pair struggle with the power dynamics in their relationship, and Samantha shed a light on some of their differences.

“It was tough because I came into the experiment with quite a firm idea of what I felt like I needed and what I wanted in a relationship,” she explained.

“And because Al was so different to what I was expecting… Al had never been in a relationship before and I had been in a really serious one.”

Naturally, Samantha felt the pressure to take the lead with Al, but it clashed with her initial expectation of wanting someone to take the lead for her.

“It was almost a bit of a struggle because I didn’t want to take the lead, but I felt like he really wanted me to teach him everything, which then made me feel like his mother.”

While it was tough to navigate, Samantha said it was all about communication with her and Al.

“We didn’t even need the honesty box on our honeymoon because we were just so honest with each other from day one,” she said. “We could just talk so easily and freely that it was quite a safe space.

“But it wasn’t easy because we both had completely different expectations of one another and had to really balance that,” she added.

And despite some of their miscommunications shown on the show, like Al receiving mixed signals from Samantha, she explained that they continued to work on it.

“It doesn’t come without frustration,” she said of their relationship. “We’ve had very, very different lives. We have very different like aspirations.”

“But when we do communicate properly and I stop expecting – when we both let go of our expectations of each other – that’s where things are just so much easier.

“That’s with any relationship, you let go of your expectations of the other person and just be the best version of yourself and generally it’s going to make for a better relationship.”

Despite their best efforts to make it work, we saw Samantha and Al say their goodbyes to the experiment and to each other at the very last Commitment Ceremony of the season.

After trying to leave the previous week, Sam was initially against staying any longer to establish a friendship with Al, but it ended up working out for the pair.

While Al had hoped for a second chance at love with Sam, he knew their time was up and was able to leave on good terms with his bride.

As for where they are now, in a recent interview with Now To Love, Al said that he and Sam are “really tight now” and that “everything is really good.”

What’s more, it seems that his former bride has well and truly moved on, as Sam seemingly confirmed she’s in a new relationship with a new photo to Instagram.

Keeping his face covered with a dinner menu, Sam cheekily captioned it: “What’s on the menu?”

While she’s yet to share any other details on her new beau, So Dramatic! podcast claims to know who her mystery man is.

The podcast has revealed the identity of Sam’s new man as Gibson Cleal, with a source claiming that they have been dating since earlier this year.

The source also claimed that the two knew each other prior to MAFS. Sam is yet to confirm any of these details herself.

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