“Married At First Sight: Second Chances” – David Norton’s Blind Path

Married At First Sight star David Norton was so sweet and innocent on season three of the show. The experts paired him up with Ashley Doherty, a nursing student who seemed sweet enough during the interview process.

Ashley turned out to be cold and unwelcoming throughout the show and her marriage to David. I’ll preface this by saying that, what was aired wasn’t 100 percent of the truth. It never is with reality shows. However, from what viewers saw, our impression of Ashley was that she never gave David a chance. David tried his best to make the marriage work, but Ashley gave him the cold shoulder the entire time.

The entire season made David out to be the most sensitive and loving guy in the world. I’m pretty sure my wife was considering leaving me for him because he was portrayed as the perfect man caught in a loveless blind marriage. Who wouldn’t feel sorry for that guy? Which girl wouldn’t want to end up with him?

FYI thought the same thing, creating a spin off called Married At First Sight: Second Chances. The show is more like The Bachelor and less like two people getting married despite having never met. David is the male star, hoping to find his true love and someone who actually wants to hold his hand in public.

David was never given a real first shot at love by Ashley. Portraying him as a sympathetic figure and giving him a second chance at marriage with a woman he, not the experts, chooses was the right call. We went into the show rooting for David, hoping he would find that connection that he deserved.

Nine episodes into the season and we’ve done a 180 on Mr. Norton.

It turns out that, David is, how can I put this nicely….dumb. Alright, that’s not so nice. It turns out that David is a sad puppy who strives and begs for attention from the prettiest girl in the room. He’s delusional and desperate to be loved. Too desperate. He’s blinded by looks, failing to listen to the words coming out of the attractive ladies mouth. He’s still stuck in high school, a time where you weren’t thinking about who you would end up with for the rest of your life. You just wanted to be with the best looking person in the school even if they wanted nothing to do with you. There, that’s the nice way of putting it.

The show is to the point where David will narrow down his choices from three to two women. His choices are Tara, a longtime friend of his who he seems to have a genuine connection with, Isabella, a 23-year-old who as at a different point in her life, and Melika, an attractive lady who doesn’t seem all that interested in David.

I’ll give you one guess as to who he likes the most.

This is not a situation where Melika is stringing him along and playing with his emotions. She’s told him in subtle and not so subtle ways that she’s not all that interested. Every other girl on the show has told him the same thing. But that doesn’t matter to him. He wants to be the pretty girl who doesn’t like him in that way.

Melika is a lot like Ashley. Looking back on that marriage and comparing it to how he acts on this show; things start to make a lot of sense. It turns out that it wasn’t Ashley’s fault that the marriage failed. Ok, she could have tried harder, but Tara and Isabella are trying and getting nowhere. No wanting David makes him want you more. And him failing to realize that you don’t want him is a huge turn off. We all owe you an apology, Ashley. It wasn’t your fault.

At the end of the last episode, David asked Melika to move in with him for a one week trial marriage. She was uncomfortable with the situation, but he attempted to ease her into things be declaring that he’ll sleep on the couch. It was the most pathetic and least self aware moment I’ve ever seen on the show.

David will ask one more girl, likely Tara, to go through the one week trial process as well. But it won’t matter. He’s stuck on Melika. He’s already said that he would pick her despite her openly saying “we have nothing in common” and her bringing her best friend to meet him instead of her parents.

I hope David does choose Melika. At this point, he deserves her. He was given a second chance at love because he never truly got a first chance. Now we know why.