Some 90 Day Fiance couples are incompatible, or the love is one-sided, or are so toxic that they cannot be happy.
For The Other Way couple Jenny Slatten and Sumit Singh, the obstacles in their path to wedded bliss are external.
Well … mostly.
In a new interview before the Season 3 premiere, Sumit admits that his expensive divorce has made remarriage a scary prospect, even with Jenny.
Jenny Slatten and Sumit Singh spoke to Us Weekly about where things stand.
Obviously, Jenny was careful to not spoil things — except, of course, for the obvious.
She is still in India, still with Sumit, and still loves him. Hard to hide that when they’re interviewed side-by-side.
“If you talk about marriage, I don’t have a very good experience with marriage in the past,” Sumit admitted to the camera.
“The fear is still there in my heart, in my mind, somewhere," he admitted.
"But I know the person I’m living with is nice," Sumit affirmed, getting a laugh from Jenny. "I hope everything will go fine."
Sumit is of course referring to Season 1’s biggest bombshell — the one that took Sharp and TLC by surprise as much as it did Jenny and viewers.
After many weeks together in India, Sumit and Jenny were awoken by a visit from people Jenny did not know.
Sumit, she learned in that moment, was married — despite having been in a relationship with Jenny since 2013.
It turned out that Sumit’s parents, Sahna and Anil, had forced him into an arranged marriage.
He did not love the woman whom he married. The feeling was clearly mutual.
The two have since divorced … but that did not come easily.
Sumit’s parents did not initially want him to divorce.
This wasn’t a misunderstanding — they knew that he was in love with Jenny.
They didn’t arrange the marriage despite this knowledge; they arranged the marriage because of it.
Convincing his parents to allow him to end his loveless marriage was hard enough.
Sumit confessed to them that he was experiencing suicidal depression while trapped in this hopeless arrangement.
And even when they finally allowed it, it was an expensive process — with Sumit’s father forking over $20,000 for the divorce to be finalized.
After all of that, it is more than understandable that Sumit would be anxious at the idea of marriage.
Just as someone who was bitten by a dog knows that other dogs are different, the association of fear and suffering is still there.
Sumit will simply have to remember that he and Jenny love each other, and that their marriage will be nothing like his previous experience.
Well, maybe not so simply — because their age gap means that Sumit’s parents refuse to "allow" him to marry Jenny.
While they did find a marriage option that does not allow family interference, it’s not a viable option for Sumit.
His parents have threatened to cut him off (his mother even threatened suicide) if he marries Jenny without their blessing, which they will not give.
As for the wedding itself, Sumit already had a huge, traditional wedding ceremony at the start of his short-lived and miserable marriage.
With that in mind, he’s not too concerned about the pomp and circumstance when he marries Jenny.
Jenny simply wishes to marry him. After the better part of a decade together, she wants to stop juggling visas.
“I would like [a traditional Indian ceremony], but it doesn’t really matter to me," Jenny explained in the interview.
"Just marrying Sumit is the main thing, and that’s what will make me the most happy,” she affirmed lovingly.
“It doesn’t have to be a big, traditional Indian wedding to make me happy," Jenny said. "I’ll be fine with whatever it is.”
“I’ll feel more confident. I’ll be his wife. I’ll just feel better about the whole thing,” Jenny explained.
“It’s the visa thing. Once we get married, I’ll be able to stay in India,” she added.
“My visa will turn into a different visa, and I won’t have to do the every six months thing, which is really hard," Jenny expressed.
"It’ll take care of that and then, plus, I’ll have rights to things," Jenny added.
In many ways, they are living as husband and wife and have been for quite some time.
But being married on paper is still a big deal — in terms of legal rights and Jenny’s continued legal residency.