90 Day Fiance: The Other Way offered heartbreak, tears, and suspicious compromises on Season 3, Episode 7.
After meeting with his former mistress, Corey comes clean to Evelin — who is even more disgusted by the bold-faced lies than the cheating itself.
Ariela prepares to depart for her son’s surgery, which is when we learn how far Biniyam went to try to keep her from leaving.
Sumit and Jenny meet with his parents and a family counselor, but Anil and Sahna end up proposing an unusual test.
Kenneth and Armando and Hannah head to the marriage office again … this time, with different results.
Steven has just come clean to Alina, and now we witness the painful aftermath … and learn Steven’s “body count.”
Yes, their mess is not even close to over.
Take a look:
Corey Rathgeber and Evelin Villegas … and Jenny
Corey goes to visit his ex-girlfriend (who, since he was very much a married man at the time without any moves towards divorce, was technically his mistress), Jenny from Peru. Evelin, who at this point thinks that Jenny was a fling for a few days, does not know about this at all.
Meet Jenny!
Corey is sorry for essentially ghosting her when he got back together with Evelin. He really did have feelings for her, he assures her, and wasn’t just using her as she might have come to assume.
But he also wants to officially end it
Corey met Jenny’s family and they were looking for a place together before things ended, but he wants her to know that he’s not coming back to her and so she shouldn’t expect him to. It actually goes super well … but this is the only scene of Corey’s in this episode where that is true.
Then, he has to come clean to Evelin
Corey tries to start off a little too gently, which alerts Evelin that Corey is telling her something serious. She’s immediately upset.
He tells her everything
The four day relationship with no actual sex that he had told her about? It lasted for weeks and was very serious. Evelin, in the midst of planning their wedding, feels sick.
Corey’s story unravels
He’d told her that he couldn’t get an erection during his one attempted hookup with Jenny, because he was still so in love with Evelin. Obviously, she no longer believes a word of that nonsense.
It’s not just the cheating — it’s the cover-up
Corey looked her in the eyes and swore to her, in the name of his late father, that he’d told her the truth before. But he was lying. So all of the wedding planning that has happened since then happened while Corey was lying to her.
Time to divorce!
Evelin wants a divorce, but she knows that her family will give her hell if she divorces him — they don’t believe in divorce — so she feels trapped.
Corey has her in a corner
He waited until she’d told her family that they were secretly married before he told her this heartbreaking news.
How can he claim to love her?
It’s clearly that a desire to win her back motivated his lies, but why didn’t his respect and love for her overpower that?
The wedding is off
A tearful Evelin — a rare thing, Corey explains, made all the worse because he knows that he is the cause — tells him that they no longer need to plan their wedding.
Ariela Weinberg and Biniyam Shibre
Biniyam is still resistant to Ariela’s plans to take Avi so that he can receive surgery for his hernia.
He’s struggling because of his past relationship
Biniyam previously impregnated a different white American woman from an affluent family and ended up divorced from that woman after she accused him of cheating on her. Though some details remain unclear, he no longer has any contact with that family, including his child. He is afraid that Ariela will do the same.
This fear has driven him to do unacceptable things
Biniyam hid Ariela’s passport the day before. That is … an extremely alarming thing for anyone to do. Ariela has decided to do what she always does — forgive Bini and make excuses for his behavior.
In fact, she has a message for him
Having clearly practiced, she reassures him in Ampharic. She also offers him a gift.
A ring!
Biniyam had a very weird moment earlier this season of suspecting Ariela of leaving her ring at home because it was cheap (obscenely cheap; less than $1 in value) only to find that it was in the bathroom from when she took a shower. Still, he seems to accept the ring graciously.
It’s time
Avi needs the surgery sooner rather than later. Ariela, who has already had a C-section in Ethiopia but whose parents are both medical professionals, has seen the options available and wants the best for her son.
Still, it’s hard for Biniyam
He breaks down in tears while speaking to the confessional camera as so much of this crisis (right down to the intestinal issue) remind him of what happened with his ex.
Jenny Slatten and Sumit Singh
Jenny and Sumit head to meet with a family counselor … and Sumit’s parents. But it’s not a magical fix.
The counselor gets right into it
The question of how exactly Sumit’s parents feel about them is important, because it’s not as simple as being angry.
Well … Sahna is just angry
Sumit’s mother says that she doesn’t have any good things to say about her son’s relationship with the woman he loves.
Anil offers a more specific, useful piece of feedback
Anil tells the counselor that the age issue really gets to him. It’s when the counselor asks what his concerns are, specifically, that he and Sahna explain how they are concerned for Sumit and Jenny’s futures.
Because if they break up …
If they break up in 5 years, 10 years, or more, Jenny will be a truly old woman. And Sumit could be, potentially, a 50-year-old man who is newly single and has no prospects for marriage in India. On the one hand, that is a logical concern. On the other … if Sumit married a woman his own age and then broke up with her in 10 years, wouldn’t that have the same problem?
The counselor has some advice
Sahna and Anil don’t want to hear it, but it might do them good to react without hostility to Sumit and Jenny living their lives for a while.
But Sahna has other worries
Acknowledging the potential for Jenny to become Sumit’s wife (that’s progress), she asks if Jenny has any qualifications to be a culturally appropriate daughter-in-law.
Here’s her plan:
Sahna says that she will move in to Sumit’s house for a while so that she can teach Jenny. It will be something of a test for Jenny to pass … or fail.
Sumit feels that this is progress
He’s wanted to show his mom his life now — one that she won’t associate with because it involves Jenny. So this is exciting for him. Plus, he likes that she is making an effort.
Jenny is suspicious
She suspects that this is a trick, that Sahna’s intention is to drive Jenny away so that she can have her son back under her full control. (Jenny is then startled by monkeys)
Kenneth Niedermeier and Armando Rubio
Kenneth, Armando, and Hannah head to the car to go to the marriage license offices. Previously, they suffered setbacks and heartbreaks as they attempted to lay down wedding plans, due to bigotry encoded in law that created numerous extra hoops for same-sex couples seeking marriage licenses.
There was once a lot of extra paperwork
Now, they no longer have to jump through these vicious hoops, the registrar tells them. The entire region of Mexico now regards same-sex marriage the same way as different-sex marriage, in terms of paperwork and legal qualifications. What a difference a year can make!
Time to celebrate!
Presumably, they knew this going in (but watching them google “hey does our area have marriage equality yet?” would not be as entertaining), but it’s still great to hear from the registrar directly.
Save the date!
They scheduled their marriage date in as May 22.
Awwww!
It’s important to savor little victories in life. They make the setbacks less painful.
Production tries their usual leading questions
The registrar doesn’t take the bait, but acknowledges that couples applying for marriage licenses even in areas where the process was made needlessly difficult and painful — couples like Kenneth and Armando — were what helped to push this positive change.
Steven Johnston and Alina
Fuming after learning that Steven has had sex before her even though he refuses to sleep with HER before they’re married, she points out the obvious: he’s being kind of hypocritical. Steven does explain that his past hookups were lapses but that he’s trying to be more obedient to the tenets of his Mormon faith now.
How many girls?
This is a good question, one that Steven answers with … way too much detail for Alina’s comfort. Or ours.
Steven breaks it down
He has kissed about 100 girls. He has gone somewhat further than that with perhaps “two dozen.” And he has had sex with five or six. While we’re certainly not slut-shaming Steven (or anyone), those are all three surprisingly high numbers for a 25-year-old whose religion forbids him from doing most or all of that.
When did Steven last date other girls?
Alina asks this very good question, not letting herself be distracted by Steven’s stats. He says “last October.” They were already in a relationship, though he stresses that they’d only just started out at the time.
He does feel bad
It’s not clear if Steven really understands why Alina is disappointed, because they are such fundamentally different people, but he knows that her feelings are hurt and that he is to blame.
She doesn’t understand him
Perhaps the problem is that Steven does not really understand himself.
Alina’s mom comes to visit
Alina shares that she told her mom that Steven went on dates early in their relationship, but not the rest.
Her mom knows that something is up
But Alina wants to work out how she feels about Steven’s sexual history before she can figure out what to tell her mom.
They exchange gifts
Steven enjoys some Turkish chocolate and offers the gift of a cat purse — a reference to one of his favorite activities with Alina when cameras aren’t rolling (feeding outdoor cats that wander around cities in Turkey). Alina sagely affirms that a cat purse is not going to win back her trust.
Understatement of the episode, everyone
Anna, Alina’s mom, acknowledges that Steven is odd. But she’s more concerned with how he has clearly upset Alina, even if she doesn’t know the whole story.
But he didn’t MEAN to
Steven stresses that Alina is everything to him and that he didn’t intend to hurt her with his actions, but … how much do his intentions matter here? That’s a question that only Alina can answer.