Married At First Sight’s Couples Retreat turned ugly on Monday after Bec Zacharia made a vulgar comment about another bride’s s*x life.
Bec was supposed to be toasting the relationship breakthrough for Steve Danyluk and Rachel Gilmore in front of the other couples, when she said the pair had experienced their first ‘fingerb**g.’
The couple, who have had intimacy issues since entering the experiment, had only just shared their happy news with the group when Bec made her joke.
Bec had started by acknowledging that Joel and Juliette had made progress, while Filip had declared his love for his bride Stella.
‘Guys… it’s the first night of retreat, and we’ve had I love yous,’ she said.
‘And we’ve had a couple who I thought could not come back from the brink of hell.
‘And we’ve had fingerb***ing.’
At first, Rachel tried to defuse the tension, but things quickly escalated when Bec realised that her attempt at humour had gone down badly with the group.
‘Bec, a quick apology to Rach,’ Sam suggested, which appeared to surprise the controversial bride.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I apologise, it was meant to be a bit of fun,’ Bec told Rachel, but the hurt bride was having none of it.
Rachel replied: ‘I didn’t think it was funny… I shared with you guys that we took intimacy to a new level, which is really important for Steve and me, and you just made a joke of it.’
‘You’re very, very quick to turn…it was not meant with malice at all,’ Bec told an angry and hurt Rachel, who left the group close to tears soon after.
Speaking about her reaction after, Rachel revealed that she was prepared to hear Bec out.
‘In that moment, she could have come to me and said I’m really sorry but instead she wanted to turn and make a fight about it,’ Rachel said.
‘I have every right to sit there and say it’s not okay. When Bec said that, I felt really hurt and disappointed – it felt vulgar, I just felt like a piece of s**t.’
During an interview about the blow-up, Steve confessed that he had not shared any graphic details about his intimacy with Rachel, complaining that Bec had made an ‘assumption’ about their sex lives.
Meanwhile, Bec appeared confused by Rachel’s emotional response.
‘I shouldn’t laugh, but what planet am I on right now?’ Bec said later.
‘I’m gonna get a t-shirt with “fingerb**g” across it and wear it everywhere.’
As the retreat unfolded over the following day, tensions within the group only grew worse, with Bec describing the atmosphere as being like ‘World War Three.’
Things blew up again during Girls’ Night, when Rachel admitted she felt ‘humiliated’.
‘When I told you you hurt my feelings, you turned on me instantly,’ Rachel told an increasingly frustrated Bec, who kept repeating that her comment was a ‘joke’.
Rachel said, ‘You made the intimacy progress between Steve and me into a punchline of a joke.’
‘You humiliated me, Bec,’ a tearful Rachel added, and said that she wanted an apology.
The brides appeared to take sides against Bec, with Gia turning on her former friend.
‘When are you going to be accountable for repeated behaviour, it’s a pattern, how many times are you going to do the wrong thing and say sorry?’ Gia said.
The outburst led Bec to drag her husband, Danny, out of Boys’ Night.
The pair then crashed Girls Night and forced Steve and Rachel into a confrontation to thrash out the issues over Bec’s joke.
But the meet-up was thrown into chaos when Bec revealed that she had a private word with Steve – without Rachel knowing.
‘Why are you talking to my husband off camera?’ an outraged Rachel demanded.
She then turned on her husband, ‘Did I know that you two had a conversation this afternoon? No!’
Steve said he felt that Bec’s comment was disrespectful, but Rachel felt betrayed and left the meeting.