When it comes to MAFS brides, we've seen this story before.

Married at First Sight's Rachel said in her vows that her friends described her as "loud, funny and caring".

But according to the MAFS premiere, this contestant's entire personality and character were summed up into one storyline: this season's sob story.

Rachel is a 35-year-old team leader from Victoria who loves to laugh, her sparkly personality is infectious and she's been matched with 34-year-old marine technician, Steven.

They actually appear to be well-matched: they're both ready to find love, they share bad dating experiences and have struggled with insecurities around their appearance.

Watch a teaser for MAFS 2026. Post continues after video.

However, instead of this blossoming match being the focus of the episode, MAFS painted Rachel as a person we should pity.

She's not. She's amazing.

From the outset, Rachel admitted she hadn't had a relationship for 14 years, before opening up about a 'toxic' seven-year-long situationship where she felt like she was a "dirty secret" to her partner.

"He completely shattered my confidence and my heart," she added.

She shared how she hasn't had any success on dating apps. "I don't fit that physical checklist," she said, adding that it only lowered her self-confidence.

But it was a comment she made to expert, Alessandra Rampolla, that became the recurring theme of the episode.

"I've never been told I'm beautiful by my partner. I've never received compliments like that," she said in an interview segment that was played several times throughout the episode.

Image: Nine.

"I want you to hold my hand in public, and be like 'This is my person, I'm with her.' And to be proud to be with me."

Have we seen this all before? Like, just last year?

This entire edit felt remarkably similar to the narrative spun around Katie Johnson in the 2025 season — another 'sob story' edit that seemed to relish in showing Katie at her lowest.

Katie spoke openly about her experience with rejection, stemming from being mistreated in past relationships.

"I would really like to meet somebody who accepts me for me. I want to find my person," she said in her wedding episode.

She sobbed as she got ready for her wedding day. "Nobody loved me enough to do this, now I have to trap a stranger into it. This is meant to be a thing of love and it's not."

It was painful to watch — for Katie, too.

In an interview with Mamamia last year, she told us about her 'unexpected edit' on her wedding episode.

"Brace yourself for the most unexpected edit you can ever imagine," she warned the incoming 2026 contestants.

"Even for me, one of my voice-over things where I said, 'I've been rejected so many times.' I said that in a way that was like, 'I don't give a f**k what people think about me!', whereas they changed my voice to make me sound super whiny."

Image: Nine.

In response to her edit, Katie is seeking to make changes to Australian reality TV regulations to ensure that these edits reflect reality.

"In Australia, when you sign that contract, you sign over the storyline that they want to create," she claimed to Mamamia.

In essence, MAFS is 'sadfishing' its viewers, which is typically the act of someone exaggerating or manipulating their own sad story to gain sympathy or attention. But in the case of MAFS, it's the editors showing these women at their most vulnerable, their weakest, their lowest — and it's exploiting these moments to elicit sympathy in the viewers.

Whether zooming in on certain facial expressions or replaying a woman admitting especially exposing sentiments about themselves — the edits can powerfully shape these women's stories.

For Rachel's first episode, the edit was overly camp at best and straight-up cruel at worst.

As she stood at the altar with Stephen, she told him, "Sorry, my nervous laughter." What followed was an edit that made Rachel seem like some maniacal hyena and felt completely devoid of human dignity.

The sob story theme of 'Rachel wants compliments!' then overshadowed the entire wedding.

"I'm noticing I haven't heard a compliment on the way that I look today," she noted in a confessional, which she later brought up to Steven.

To a soundtrack of chaotic music to emphasis her apparent erraticness, Rachel told Steven that he hadn't told her "you look great" on their wedding day, prompting him to apologise profusely.

Rachel then opened up about her insecurities. Overall, it was a healthy conversation that broke down some walls between them as they moved into the next phase of the experiment, but I couldn't help but think: really? Is this all we are learning about Rachel? That she wants compliments?

We've reached out to Nine to comment on Rachel's edit.

I'll keep watching MAFS with bated breath to be proved wrong, but if there's one thing this show does is squeeze every last tear out of a bride's sob story.

Feature image: Nine.