Married at First Sight star Noi Phommasak has explained why she didn't want to live with Steve Moy after "Decision Day," assuming they'd stay together at the end of the experiment.
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Noi, 33, and Steve, 38, were matched by Married at First Sight experts Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Dr. Viviana Coles, and Pastor Calvin Roberson to tie the knot as strangers on the Lifetime reality series' fourteenth season.
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Noi and Steve fell hard and fast for each other and appeared to be the strongest couple on the show at the one-month mark, but Steve's refusal to get a full-time job and Noi's struggle to fight fair and communicate her feelings began presenting problems in their relationship.
During Wednesday night's episode of Married at First Sight: Afterparty, Noi watched back a Season 14 clip of apartment-camera footage catching a private conversation between Steve and herself.
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"I just don't feel ready to move in together," Noi tells her husband in the clip while they were sitting on the couch together.
"I mean, can you explain it?" Steve asks, clearly confused. "What aren't you comfortable with?"
"I'm just not comfortable yet," Noi replies, dodging specifics.
"But why? We already live together now, like what... do you think is going to happen? What benefit is it gonna be to not live together? It just doesn't add up."
Considering it's typical for married spouses to live together, Afterparty host Keshia Knight Pulliam asked what was going on there.
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"I feel like Steve is really trying to get to the bottom of it and he asked you several times, 'What is the issue? Why don't you want to do this?' So why don't you tell him?" Keshia asked. "Or is there something else?"
Noi explained, "I had gotten out of a pretty serious relationship and I lived with that boyfriend."
As Noi explained on the latest Married at First Sight episode, she had originally moved to Boston for this significant other and so it was devastating when the romance didn't work out.
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"And I had to basically start all over," she shared, "and I remember telling myself and all of my friends and family, 'I'm never going to put myself in that situation again.' I'm never going to move in with a boyfriend unless I'm engaged or married.'"
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Noi acknowledged she was married at the time -- but for only a little over a month, and she and Steve had wed as total strangers.
"At this point, we are kind of still dating," Noi reasoned.
When asked if she shared this explanation with Steve, Noi responded, "I haven't at this point and that's why there's conflict."
Noi admitted she was starting to pull back from Steve with three weeks to go until Decision Day because they were "starting to have a lot of arguments and disagreements."
"I'm finding that we're having trouble resolving it on our own," Noi said. "So it's instilling some doubt in me."
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While Noi was working full-time as a talent acquisition coordinator, Steve -- a former sales engineer who claimed he was in a good place financially and had a lot of savings -- was cooking for the couple, taking care of Noi's dog Sushi, and cleaning the apartment.
But Noi felt uneasy about Steve's lack of drive from a career standpoint, especially since she envisioned welcoming three children with him someday and always thought her husband would be a provider.
Therefore, when Steve asked Noi to split the dog and bathroom duties, Noi told her husband to kiss her ass. She said Steve always complained about what she wasn't doing rather than realizing his own alleged shortcomings in their marriage.
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While out to lunch one day with her sister, Noi lamented, "Another thing that really rubbed me the wrong way -- he's like, 'Why don't we do this hypothetical situation where Noi picks up more elsewhere to see if she can, because I don't think that she can. You're already so tired from working.'"
Noi vented, "What?! I'm going to pick up more housework so you can have less?! And then what else are you going to do?"
Noi said she'd be happy if Steve even worked a part-time job but he was waiting for her to "come up with a gameplan" for their future together, which she didn't understand or think was necessary for Steve to just find a job.
Noi suggested that Steve didn't have his stuff together and she never thought she'd date -- nevermind marry -- a man like that.
Meanwhile, Steve thought he was contributing heavily to the marriage, and he kept insisting he would support Noi and always be secure financially. Steve has said that if he needed to take a job for money, he absolutely would.
"I'm contributing three or four times as much. I'm not asking [Noi] to contribute more, so in the now, I don't think there's a problem," Steve explained to his co-star Mark Maher on Wednesday night's broadcast.
"But I think there's a perception problem and I think there's a future problem."
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Steve told Mark that he needed his wife to be clear about her expectations for their lifestyle and believe in him. Steve thought he had proven -- through "verbal and physical expressions of love" -- how committed he was to Noi in their marriage.
Married at First Sight's fourteenth season also stars Mark's wife Lindsey Georgoulis, Jasmina Outar and Michael Morency, and Katina Goode and Olajuwon Dickerson.
The season's fifth couple, Chris Collette and Alyssa Ellman, divorced only one week into the process.
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