Tove and Tyson first met in 2018 and she said she wasn’t the type of person he’s currently looking for today.
The ex-wife of Married At First Sight groom Tyson Gordon has spoken out about the reality TV contestant’s controversial views. Tove Thoreson and the Gold Coast property investor met in Utah back in 2019.
Their marriage has been mentioned a few times by Tyson during discussions on how he’s handled past relationships. But Tove has set the record straight that she doesn’t align herself with what the 30-year-old has said on the Channel 9 program.
“I do not support or agree with the behaviour he has shown on television or what I experienced in real life,” she told the Daily Mail.
She admitted that, from the outside, their marriage could have been classified as “possibly traditional”, but she insisted Mormon women today were “not submissive at all”.
“A lot of people may assume because I am Mormon that Mormon women are like that, but that’s not the case,” she said.
She said the two don’t speak at all six years after their relationship ended and she can’t comment on his views now versus when they were together.
The 26-year-old also hit back at claims that she was only in the marriage for a visa.
She revealed that she met Tyson while his family was holidaying in Utah at a ski resort in 2018.
It was a “chance” meeting and they started a long distance relationship where they would go back and forth between Australia and the US to see each other.
“After we married, I moved to Australia and lived there for about a year. Because of that, claims that we only knew each other or were married for 30 days, or that I was some sort of internet girlfriend trying to obtain Australian citizenship, simply aren’t true,” she told the Daily Mail.
What are Tyson’s views that are so controversial?
Tyson was controversial before he even properly entered the experiment.
Channel 9 aired snippets of his episode ahead of his arrival and it was clear his outlook in life and the person he was looking for was divisive.
He told MAFS expert John Aiken he was looking for someone who was “feminine” and “submissive”.
The property investor added that he wanted someone who:
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Isn’t “woke”
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Isn’t “super overweight”
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Doesn’t have green hair
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Doesn’t have kids
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Doesn’t have a high “body count”, which means hasn’t had sex with many people
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Isn’t a “complete feminist”
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Doesn’t hate Donald Trump
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Doesn’t like to party with her girlfriends every weekend
- Isn’t a “full-blown” atheist
He was paired with 32-year-old real estate agent Stephanie Marshall, who is driven and ambitious, and also holds similar political views to Tyson.
But she’s pushed back against his wish for her to be submissive and give up her career to raise a family, especially considering she earned around $680,000 last year.
Tyson has repeatedly said during the experiment that he wants a “traditional” partner and household, meaning he works and she cooks and cleans.
He also wants a woman who has ideally slept with no one else.
A poll of nearly 1,300 Yahoo Lifestyle readers found 75 per cent were concerned about Tyson’s wish to have a “submissive” wife.
A separate poll of more than 2,300 readers showed 43 per cent would boycott MAFS because of Tyson and Stephanie.
MAFS groom slammed as ‘dangerous’
Channel 9 copped a spray from the government this week about giving a platform to someone like Tyson.
MAFS pulls in millions of viewers every night and social services Minister Tanya Plibersek believes it’s dangerous to give his views any oxygen.
“When men who idolise ‘submissive’ and ‘obedient’ women are normalised on prime-time TV, it means coercive control is given a national platform,” she said on social media.
“That’s not entertaining, it’s incredibly dangerous,” she added.
“This is the exact kind of cultural messaging we’re trying to change.
“Messaging which encourages control and dehumanises women, which is supercharged by algorithms peddling misogyny for profit.”
She urged parents to not “expose your kids to this stuff” and called on Aussies to “call out this behaviour for what it is”, which she said was the “harmful need to exert control over women dressed up as a normal part of a relationship”.
CRE: YAHOO