Married at First Sight star Lauren has opened up about Orion's refusal to forgive her for making a joke about the color of his skin.

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Not long after Orion and Lauren kicked off their honeymoon in Cancun, Mexico, they had a serious conversation about culture and racism.

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Orion -- who is of Navajo lineage -- admitted to his wife, who is Black, that he had used the N-word "ignorantly" and regretfully when he was younger, and then Lauren accepted responsibility for having used some derogatory words in her past as well.

Orion then asked, "Redskin?"

"No, I don't think I've ever used that language. I've actually never said [that]. I don't even know what redskin means, honestly," Lauren replied.

Lauren then looked at Orion's face, which she claimed was a bit sunburned, and started laughing.

"Oh! I do! I just looked at your face," Lauren said with a giggle and a smile.

Once Lauren could see that she had offended and hurt Orion, she apologized and insisted she had meant no malice or disrespect. Orion eventually seemed to get over it, but then the conversation resurfaced on Day 8 of marriage.

On Married at First Sight: Afterparty, which aired on Wednesday, November 30, Lauren watched back a clip of the spouses' honeymoon Zoom chat with MAFS expert Pastor Calvin Roberson.

"I've been trying to research and just get myself more aware of terms -- not just derogatory terms, but tears of endearment in the Navajo culture. Terms and anything I can basically get off Google," Lauren tells Pastor Cal in the footage.

Pastor Cal then asks Orion, "Is that not enough for you?"

"Unfortunately," Orion replies, confirming that Lauren couldn't make up for her mistake.

"Because of this reason alone," he elaborated, "The first time I experienced racism was within my own culture, and now this second time, I experienced that level of it was with a very crude joke -- from [Lauren]."

Lauren acknowledged on Afterparty how that moment was "really difficult," and her Married at First Sight co-star, Clare, declared how Orion was "giving [her] nothing" to work with.

Afterparty host Keshia Knight Pulliam asked Lauren what was causing her to be emotional when watching that clip back, and Lauren said in tears, "I'm feeling all the frustrations that I felt. I'm doing everything, I'm telling you how profusely sorry I am, and he's just like, 'No, it doesn't matter.'"

Lauren complained, "He literally just said, 'It doesn't matter what you do.' And I'm like, 'I don't know how much to give before I'm just like, okay,' [and give up]."

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Keshia pointed out how Orion seemed to be having "an internal conflict" because Lauren had done everything she could do to mend the situation.

"Is it possible that this isn't your stuff?" Keshia asked Lauren.

"I always say, 'I'm not a therapist,' but in that moment, I did see, like, you're comparing my situation to something that happened when you were, like, 12 years old," Lauren explained.

Lauren recalled Orion talking about his first racist experience -- when someone had called him an "apple," meaning red on the outside and white on the inside -- and pointing out how his second racist experience was with his own wife.

"I'm like, 'So now I'm racist.' I feel like he was projecting childhood trauma onto me," Lauren shared.

Keshia suggested that if Orion couldn't work this out within himself, he'd probably behave the same way in any relationship with a future girlfriend or partner.

During that Zoom chat with Pastor Cal on the latest Married at First Sight episode, Orion made it seem like he wasn't going to be able to forgive Lauren for her remark. He actually admitted, "I can't get past what was said."

Lauren walked away from the Zoom conversation with Pastor Cal in tears, saying she just needed a moment to compose herself.

"I could write a 50-page essay and give a PowerPoint to the entire USA about derogatory terms in this nation, and it wouldn't matter to him because it's a 'him' thing," Lauren vented to producers.

"There is nothing more I can do. There can't be more remorse. There's nothing I can do that I haven't done."

"Yeah," Orion agreed. "I don't know what more I can say to explain this, but I can't move past this."

On Afterparty, Keshia asked Lauren to reveal what viewers missed after watching that heated exchange play out on Married at First Sight.

"So after the talk with Pastor Cal, we talked off-camera with some of the executive producers, some of which who are married," Lauren recalled.

"And they let us know, like, 'These are topics, especially in an intercultural relationship and intercultural marriage, these are topics that come up. And you think in the moment that you can't come back from it, but you do.'"

Keshia said both spouses in a marriage need to be willing to fight for it in order to get to the other side, and also that a person cannot pour into a partner from an empty cup.

Married at First Sight will continue airing its seventeenth season Wednesday nights on Lifetime. The show also stars Emily and Brennan, Austin and Becca, and Clare and Cameron.

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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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