Married at First Sight star Ryan Ignasiak has revealed why he's struggling in his marriage to his new wife Brett beyond his lack of physical attraction to her.
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During the October 6 episode of Married at First Sight: Unfiltered, Ryan watched back a Season 13 clip of himself gently telling Brett, "I feel like I'm such a motivated person in relationships and nothing has naturally happened -- and it sucks. And that's by no fault of yours."
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Brett then tells the cameras, "I feel like Ryan is trying to tell me something, but it seems like he doesn't want to talk about it. Just spit it out because we don't need to talk in circles or try to sugarcoat it."
The clip ends with Ryan deciding to sleep in a separate bedroom from Brett.
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"Can you pinpoint why your relationship is struggling?" asked Unfiltered host Jamie Otis, who starred on Season 1 of Married at First Sight and is still married to her match, Doug Hehner.
Other than Ryan previously sharing on Married at First Sight that Brett isn't his type physically, Ryan admitted, "We are different in a lot of ways."
"I'm very much a go, go, go person, and I'm never going to be the complacent guy that wants to spend a weekend watching Netflix and relaxing. That's not my life," Ryan explained.
"It's a motivation thing -- just motivation about day-to-day life activities."
"And it's not something that I've seen to this point," he added, although last week's MAFS episode showed Brett taking Ryan on a date to a challenging obstacle course she also participated in.
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"And that's making us not doing a lot of things together."
Ryan has also complained on the show about Brett feeling anxious and worked up all the time when he's an even-keeled and level-headed individual. Ryan apparently felt the need to act even more calm around Brett so that she wouldn't stress out over small things on a daily basis.
On Unfiltered, Ryan's MAFS co-star Rachel summed up Ryan's feelings perfectly by saying he's not feeling Brett because of things that make her who she is, but he would never want or expect her to change for him.
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"I'm protecting her feelings," Ryan acknowledged. "The easy thing would be for me to say, 'This is perfect, this is great, this is everything I wanted. But then I don't want to be potentially at the end pulling that all out from under her."
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Rachel and MAFS star Bao told Ryan the longer he waits to open up and share his true feelings with Brett, the worse it will become.
"I don't want to give her that certainty of [I'm done], because I'm not checked out!" Ryan said.
Bao explained to Ryan how it would probably hurt Brett more to hear about Ryan's issues and marriage concerns from someone other than her husband.
"I mean, sadly, I probably have been more open with Zack than my wife about the more difficult things to talk about with her, and yeah, that's absolutely something that has to change," Ryan said.
Jamie reasoned, "When you're trying not to hurt her, [you] might end up hurting her even more."
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"Going forward, I'm definitely going to be more open and change the closed-offness that I've been showing," Ryan insisted.
Jamie complimented Brett for having "the patience of a saint" on Season 13.
On Married at First Sight's latest Season 13 episode, Ryan admitted in a confessional, "I was hopeful that these feelings were going to come, but now we're a month in and they're lesser now than they were the first night!"
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Brett could tell that Ryan was "pulling away" and had almost "checked out" of their relationship over a month into the experiment because he had been acting so differently from their wedding day and the start of the process.
During a visit to the gym with his buddy Zack, Ryan lamented, "I wanted this beautiful love story with Brett and I wanted this marriage to work, but it's just not happening."
Ryan later confided in his sister and revealed, "[Brett is] not going to want to hear 90 percent of the things I want to be open about."
But Ryan's sister thought he was doing "more damage than good" by keeping his thoughts and opinions to himself.
Ryan, who said he didn't want to let Brett down, eventually told Brett during a sit-down conversation that their dynamic -- and his lack of sleep -- was "killing" him.
"It sucks to have this uncertainty and doubt. It's not something you can force. You can't pretend to make something happen, whether you want it to or not. I feel like I was incredibly open to it and I just was fighting with myself about 'this isn't you,'" Ryan told his wife.
Brett had a history of putting so much effort into relationships without reciprocation, and so Ryan said he didn't want to put Brett in that position again.
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"If you don't want to be with me, then please don't be with me," Brett vented in a confessional. "But I feel like he needs to say it, because it's frustrating to not just be told in black-and-white terms."
Married at First Sight, which currently airs on Wednesday nights at 8PM ET/PT on Lifetime, also stars Zack's wife Michaela, Rachel's husband Jose, Bao's husband Johnny, and Myrla Feria and Gil Cuero.
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