MAFS Stars Share Their Biggest Regret: “Will Throw You Under The Bus”

Married At First Sight (MAFS) 2026 is just around the corner, meaning more drama, couple-swapping and red-flag behaviour on our screens. Along with the entertainment, there can be some messy fallout once the show is over. With real feelings on the line, contestants can find themselves dealing with the aftermath for many months after the show wraps up.

To get us prepared for the wine-throwing and cheating scandals to come, we approached three past MAFS contestants to chat about what they wished they had done differently while they were on the reality TV show and advice they have for the MAFS 2026 cast. Here's what past brides Sara Mesa, Jamie Marinos and Carina Mirabile had to say.

In contrast, 2024 bride Sara Mesa does have one big regret, and that's opening up to her fellow castmates and producers. "[I regret] trusting anyone with vulnerable stories or information," she tells Refinery29 Australia. "Anyone on those shows will happily throw you under the bus for a bit of airtime."

For the next batch of MAFS contestants, Mesa warns them to keep their feelings to themselves."Trust no one and just focus on yourself and your partner. Try not to let producers get in between and stand your ground with silly tasks or things they tell you to do," she says.

As one of the youngest cast members on MAFS 2025, fan favourite Jamie Marinos was left devastated when her husband, Dave Hand, appeared to lose feelings for her overnight... or perhaps those feelings had never been there to begin with. She acknowledges she also made mistakes along the way, but was grateful for her experience on the show. "I feel like there's lots of things I can look at and go, 'Jamie, why?', or be disappointed in how I maybe acted in certain scenes... you're not going to be perfect," she says. "I make mistakes. You know, I'm still learning and growing every day. However, I don't regret anything because [those mistakes] led me to where I am today." Marinos says her tumultuous journey on MAFS allowed her to develop a special relationship with fans, and she walked away from the experiment with more knowledge. "My hardest parts [on the show were] where I learned the most, where I grew the most, and I wouldn't take that back," she adds. "Even some of my hardest moments, they allowed me to connect and relate to the audience in truly special ways."

Marinos also tells R29 her breakup with Hand was one of the hardest she's been through, because her world "revolved around him" during the experiment. "At that time, there was a mix of rejection, humiliation, dishonesty [and] betrayal. It just felt like all the emotions accumulated." While the bride isn't one to "look back" and have regrets, she admits it was harder to remove Hand from her life. "I was constantly reminded [of] someone I physically, mentally, spiritually, can't remove from my life because it's like a televised event," she explains. "I'm always going to be tied to him no matter what. So I feel like that was just a hard one to go through, because I not only had to process my emotions, but I had the internet as well and just a permanent visual memory of our relationship."

Her advice for the next MAFS contestants is simple: just be yourself. "If you go on the show to be what you think the audience will like, nine times out of 10 the audience will sniff you out and you'll be exposed. You can only have your mask on [for] so long," she says. "I value authenticity, and I encourage everyone to be authentic.

MAFS 2025 bride Carina Mirabile is glad she went on the reality TV show, but she wishes she had been firmer with her boundaries, a lesson many of us are still learning. "If I could go back in time, I would have done a few things differently — I would make more of a conscious effort to speak my truth in the moment, more so than I did at the time," she says. "When you’re in such an intense environment with cameras rolling, producers asking questions, and emotions running high, it can be easy to hold back or downplay how you’re really feeling to avoid drama or being misunderstood... Looking back, I wish I had trusted my gut more and been completely unapologetic about my boundaries and feelings from day one."

Her core views on marriage haven't changed, but Carina says she looks at it in a different way. "It made me realise that while the idea of marriage is beautiful, the reality is that it takes patience, compromise, and a deep understanding of yourself before you can fully commit to someone else," she says.

The next batch of Married At First Sight (MAFS) contestants will be introduced early next year, so there's likely to be more regrets, learnings and discoveries made by the class of 2026.