Sitting down for a candlelit dinner in all their festive finery, the stars of Married At First Sight UK have certainly pulled out all the stops for our exclusive OK! Christmas shoot.
Couples Paul Liba, 26, and Tasha Jay, 25, and Jordan Gayle, 26, and Erica Roberts, also 26, look a million dollars as they prepare to strike a pose for the camera.
Getting into the festive mood, loved-up Paul and Tasha share a cheeky kiss as he pours lashings of gravy onto his plate. But it isn’t long before madness descends and a food fight erupts — with Jordan and Erica playfully launching carrots across the table.
It’s a scene of festive fun and happiness, and a million miles away from all the drama and tension we witnessed between them on the E4 series. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, you would assume that these four had always been the very best of friends.
Here, as we sit down with the two couples for an exclusive chat, they spill the beans on their Christmas plans, their regrets over the way they behaved on the show and their intentions to get married for real.
How has life been since MAFS UK ?
Tasha: It’s been amazing. It’s so nice to be able to actually focus on just our relationship now.
Erica: It’s definitely been overwhelming — we’ve been able to enjoy our time together as a couple. You don’t have the opinions of everyone else any more. It’s been more stress free.
Jordan: Now the show’s over, we don’t have to listen to any outside noise or inaccurate portrayals of us. I loved being on the show — there were a couple of arguments but we were so happy. When the show was airing, that was the stressful part for me. I hated it. Someone else was in control of how we were coming across and I really didn’t like that.
Have you moved in together yet?
Paul: We’re still living separately but looking to move to Manchester together early next year.
Tasha: It’s just about finding the right time and the right place. We don’t want to rush into it or just move somewhere for the sake of it. I’m living in Leeds and Paul is living in London but the long distance has worked for us because we’re both busy. We still speak morning, noon and night, so it works.
Jordan: Me and Erica want to live together in Manchester and we want it to be soon. Erica wants an apartment in the city but I’d like to have a home with a drive and a car.
Erica: We want to get a dog called Tiga — because we had our MAFS honeymoon in Antigua!
What are your plans for Christmas?
Tasha: Paul has family in Bradford so he’s going to spend Christmas with them but also drive up to spend time with me and my family as well. He’s got all my nieces and nephews to buy for now — he’s Uncle Paul!
Erica: I know we’re going to be spending time with each other over Christmas for sure, whether that’s in Edinburgh or Sheffield or both. We’ve barely spent any time apart so there’s no way we’d be spending time away from each other over Christmas.
Jordan: It’ll probably be me coming to Erica in Edinburgh because her family are all in one area and my family are scattered around the place. I want to make sure we see everyone because Christmas is all about family and I see Erica as my family.
How do your families feel about your new partners?
Tasha: Paul still hasn’t met my parents but he’s met my sisters, my brother and their kids. The kids were the main ones for me — if the kids didn’t like him, that would have been an issue. No one’s got a bad word to say about Paul. He’ll meet my mum at Christmas but I don’t think he’ll meet my dad for a while. I was once talking to Paul on the phone at my dad’s house and Paul heard my dad coming into the room and just hung up the phone.
Paul: Tasha’s dad is an intimidating man — he makes me nervous! As for my family, my parents loved Tasha from the start. They prefer her to me now — I can’t win any arguments.
Have you watched the show back?
Jordan: I’ll never watch it back, not one episode. I want to remember how it was living it.
Erica: Things can be so twisted and taken out of context on the show — I think that was the hardest thing. When you’re watching yourself argue with your partner, it brings up the emotions again but you can’t react to that now because it was months ago.
Tasha: I didn’t want to watch the drama unfold with Erica. I didn’t want to relive a time that I’m embarrassed about and feel upset with my behaviour.
Paul: I watched it all!
Erica and Tasha, how are things between you now?
Tasha: We patched it up on the show, it just never got shown. Me and Erica actually speak quite a lot. We’ve been friends for ages but to the public, we haven’t.
Erica: It [making up] happened randomly. The whole group was meant to be going round to Tasha and Paul’s for a drink but it ended up just being the four of us and we honestly had such a nice time. That’s when Tasha and I put our differences aside and really bonded with each other.
Erica, how did you feel seeing the reunion episode and finding out that Jordan had kissed another girl on a night out? Have you forgiven him?
Erica: I couldn’t deal with that episode, it was so uncomfortable to watch. It was hard to see myself so upset — I was devastated. Sometimes I like to throw in some sly digs just to remind him, “Don’t you ever try anything like that again,” but the fact that I can joke about it now shows I’m over it. One of the key things in making a relationship work is forgiveness. Jordan is amazing at reassuring me and making sure I’m OK.
Jordan: I know never to put myself in any situation like that again — I feel like we’ve grown stronger and I’ve grown wiser from it.
Have you seen the rest of the cast lately?
Paul: I live in London and it’s easy for everyone to get together, so the guys meet up a lot here.
Tasha: I spend a lot of time with Ella [Morgan], Jay [Howard] and Rozz [Darlington] because we’re all quite close. I speak to them every single day — and Laura [Vaughan] and Shona [Manderson].
Jordan: I don’t speak to Luke [Worley] — the guy hates me and I have no respect for him. He blocked both me and Erica on Instagram. I don’t meet up with the rest of the group because if I go, Luke might not go and they might be like, “I wish Luke was here instead of you.”
You fell out with Luke on the show and got into a physical fight. Why have you agreed to take part in a boxing match against him?
Jordan: The moment he knocked on my door and made me feel the way I did, by having a fight with me when I couldn’t protect myself or Erica because we were getting filmed for a TV show, I realised I wanted to do it properly. I got an email with a really good offer to fight Luke and I love boxing.
Erica: I’m absolutely dreading it. I don’t know if I will be able to watch it. Nobody wants to see their partner in a boxing ring. I don’t doubt that he’s going to win but obviously it’s still not nice to see. I don’t want his perfect nose to be ruined!
Were there any key moments that didn’t make the final cut on the show?
Tasha: There was one night where Paul cooked spaghetti bolognese for me, Thomas and Rozz. It was an absolute mess and both me and Rozz got ill. It was honestly horrific. I also wished they’d shown my diabetes [Tasha has Type 1 diabetes] because that played a massive part in mine and Paul’s relationship. It would have been really educational.
Will you actually get married in real life?
Tasha: Well, Paul — where are my diamonds? It would be nice to do it properly and plan it how we’d want it to be. And, of course, [I want] a big rock. I’ve sent him videos of the specific rings I want.
Paul: We’ve done it once, why can’t we do it again? I’m working on the diamond ring. She sent me five different rings and I was like, “Oh God!”
Jordan: We want to get married one day but we want to be a normal couple first, with a house and a dog.
How do you all feel about starting a family?
Paul: I want us to move in together and then have loads of kids.
Tasha: I went to a psychic and they said the maximum I’m going to have is five kids, but I don’t like odd numbers so it would have to be four — six is too many. What car would we drive?! I’d like to have kids when I’m 30. Paul wants to start in two years but no womb, no say!
Erica: I don’t think you should be in a relationship with someone unless you can see a long-lasting future with them. We both want the same things and we both want that settled family. I think later down the line we can think about babies. Me and Jordan both come from broken homes so we’ve always said we want to make sure we never have kids who grow up in an unstable household.
Jordan: I’ve always said I want kids in my early thirties — I want to be a bit selfish first. Make some money, go on holidays, travel. When I have a kid, they’ll be number one.
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