Steven says he was ‘pushed to breaking point’ by MAFS UK and has been in therapy since the show

Six months after appearing on MAFS UK, Steven Springett has done an interview reflecting on what the experience was like for him. He’s said the show was draining, and tougher than he could ever imagine.

Steven was matched with Nelly Patel on the 2025 series. At first, they looked like a perfect match, and their wedding was beautiful. But as the experiment progressed, the switch was flipped. Steven lost his cool multiple times, and even called Nelly a “f*cking idiot” during one exchange – right before friends and family week.

There was then all the drama with him being linked to Julia-Ruth, and the rumour he was on dating apps the entire time the experiment was taking place. Needless to say, he and Nelly didn’t work out. “I have decided to do what is best for me and leave,” Nelly said before Steven also wrote leave.

via Channel 4

Now, six months on, Steven has spilled all about what his time on the show was really like. He called it “draining” and said the show pushed him to breaking point. In an interview with MailOnline, he said he was actually in talks for another dating show, but just 10 days before filming was due to start, Channel 4 asked him if he’d like to do Married at First Sight. He accepted.

“They called me up and said they had read through my preferences from my dating profile for another show I was being cast for, and they said we were a perfect match,” he said. “So I went purely off that and said ‘Let’s go for it’.”

Speaking of the experience after, Steven said: “The show drained the life out of me mentally. I’ve watched the Australian and UK versions, so I kind of knew the process, but until you’re actually in it, you don’t know it. I wasn’t expecting filming to be as full-on.”

Steven explained because he was cast for MAFS UK late, he filmed his “backstory” parts of the show during the experiment. So, he had to pretend at that point that he hadn’t already met Nelly. So, from day one, the experience was different for him compared to the rest of the cast.

“It was very different from everyone else, because I was doing my backstory filming during the actual filming process. So I had to go meet [my] family in week four or five, and play it out as if I didn’t know what my partner looked like, but so many things had happened between Nelly and me that it felt weird,” he said.

“I had four days off in eight-and-a-half weeks. Everyone else had about 12 to 14. I also had the earliest call times. It was usually 5am, and I had to be fully dressed for filming potential scenes.”

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via Channel 4

Steven said he “stopped his life to be on this show” and severely missed his kids during filming. He also had bad family news during filming, and said being “caught up in so many emotions” was why he got angry a lot during the show.

He said: “I clocked on. I think it was after I had the ‘f*cking idiot’ comment, and that was about week three. I sat there and thought, ‘They’re [producers] going to use that. You’re not going to cut something like that out’.

“After that, [based on] some of the questions they were asking me, I thought they were going to make me out to be a certain way. I probably should have noticed it earlier, and I probably should have noticed from that comment alone. They were going to be like, ‘Well, we’re going to get Steven to a point where he will break’.

“Behind closed doors, Nelly was always putting herself down and comparing herself to the other women, and I told her, ‘No, Nelly, what you’ve got to realise is you’re always going to be someone’s ten,’ and that was never [going to be shown] on the TV.

“Then we were having to go through old arguments and make it seem as if they’re new, and that’s where the frustration comes from. And I thought to myself, ‘If they’re bringing up old arguments and things that I’ve said two weeks ago, I’m not shaking this bad guy image’.”

Steven said he left the show to a barrage of hate messages on social media. He praised the show’s welfare team, who set him up with therapy after the show, which has helped. Steven said the team also checked in with him regularly after the show ended. Therapy has helped him to work through some past relationship traumas.

Needless to say, Steven did not attend the second MAFS UK 2025 reunion, that aired on Channel 4 this weekend. He said he didn’t want to give the show any more of a chance to “shape” him, and his journey has come to an end.

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