Married At First Sight‘s Melissa Rawson will finally stand up to her gaslighting husband Bryce Ruthven during finale week.
A trailer for next week’s episode hints that the workplace trainer, 31, will realise how Bryce has been manipulating her and quit the show.
The promo shows Melissa packing her bags and storming through the underground car park of the Skye Suites Sydney apartment complex where MAFS was filmed.
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Act of defiance: Married At First Sight’s Melissa Rawson (left) will finally stand up to her gaslighting husband Bryce Ruthven (right) during finale week
She has a determined look on her face as she climbs into a taxi and is driven away.
In a rare act of defiance against her controlling spouse, she says: ‘I’m actually over it!’
Later in the trailer, Melissa tells the relationship experts at the last commitment ceremony: ‘We are a sinking ship at this point.’
Meanwhile, radio announcer Bryce, 31, looks stressed out as he throws his hands up in despair during his counselling session.
Their falling out could stem from the events of Wednesday’s episode, when co-star Alana Lister claimed Bryce had told her husband Jason Engler he would be ‘single’ by the end of the experiment.
While the trailer hints it’s the end of the road for the couple, Melissa and Bryce have confirmed they are in fact still together.
Evidently, they were able to move past whatever crisis they went through during the final weeks of the experiment, which was filmed last last year.
The couple did several interviews in Sydney on Wednesday, and finished off their day by attending an event hosted by Nova FM’s Fitzy and Wippa.
On Monday, a Change.org petition began circulating that demanded Channel Nine issue an apology for airing ‘triggering’ scenes involving Bryce and Melissa.
The petition, which received 2,500 signatures in under 24 hours, is also calling for Nine to acknowledge its alleged ‘failure of duty of care’ towards Melissa.
‘This season of Married at First Sight Australia features a couple, Melissa and Bryce, who portray an excessive amount of [troubling] signs which are not being handled by the network appropriately,’ the petition states.
‘There is a clear failure of duty of care to Melissa during filming of the show, allowing her to remain in a toxic and dangerous environment with her partner for the “benefit” of the network.’
Petition: On Monday, a Change.org petition began circulating that demanded Nine issue an apology for airing ‘triggering’ scenes involving Bryce and Melissa
‘She is being subject to gaslighting, emotional manipulation, isolation, and countless other textbook signs of a controlling relationship,’ the petition goes on to claim, adding that the scenes are ‘incredibly triggering and stressful to watch’.
It continues: ‘This petition is for the Nine Network to acknowledge and apologise for letting Melissa go through this and also airing such a horrible relationship on TV without doing anything to showcase that the relationship is clearly not healthy.’
Similar outrage has exploded on Twitter, where many viewers are calling for the show to be cancelled or boycotted over its depiction of toxic relationships.
Bryce and Melissa’s ‘marriage’ has also been a contentious issue for the show’s other couples, who largely disapprove of the relationship.
Controversial: Outrage has exploded on Twitter, where many viewers are calling for the show to be cancelled over its depiction of toxic relationships. Bryce and Melissa’s ‘marriage’ has also been a contentious issue for the other couples, who largely disapprove of the relationship
On Sunday’s episode of Married At First Sight, Bryce humiliated his bride at the commitment ceremony by revealing he’d initially voted to leave the experiment, before ultimately deciding to stay.
Bryce later defended writing leave, saying he didn’t want to break up with Melissa but instead wanted the couple to exit the ‘toxic environment’ of the experiment.
The other couples lashed out at him, citing a string of incidents in which he repeatedly showed disregard for Melissa’s feelings.
Bryce tried to justify his behaviour in a lengthy post on Instagram on Sunday.
‘People won’t agree with what I’ve done at the commitment ceremony saying I didn’t put my partner’s feelings first BUT I was raising the issue that bullying is not OK in any walk of life,’ he wrote.
‘It was a tough decision to continue in the experiment given what we were going through, but in the end, the goal of finding love with someone will always win.’