With the clock ticking both on Season 8 and on Natalie’s 90-day K-1 visa, her future with Mike has been left hanging in the balance. After the Washington native called off the wedding, he seems to want to have his cake and eat it too by postponing any potential wedding, keeping his (sort of) fiancé in the country, risking getting in trouble with immigration, crossing his fingers and hoping for the best.
But where does that actually leave them, and are Mike and Natalie are actually married now? After the most recent episode where a lawyer advised the couple to tie the knot, fans are wondering if the two actually went through with it.
Ready for the spoilers?
According to court records that can be found online, the TLC stars actually did end up tying the knot in April 2020 — but an In Touch exclusive claims they split less than a year after exchanging vows. Beau Lawrence, who viewers know as Uncle Beau, spilled the tea that these two have been done for several months, and a fan who met the reality star said he was happy to share the same in person. On the /r/90DayFiance subreddit, another fan shared a Facebook comment that allegedly shows Mike’s neighbor Tamara confirming the same news.
The fact that the couple actually made it down the aisle — or exchanged vows in some kind of way — is interesting in light of how the season started, however. From the first moment Season 8 hit our screens, it warned us that things wouldn’t go well for Mike and Natalie. Tears were on the horizon as the Ukrainian beauty stuffed all of her belongings in a suitcase and wept about having to go home in the middle of a pandemic.
We finally saw that scene play out during the March 21 episode, and though the couple ended up sharing a conversation this week, it seems like a stretch to think they resolved their issues enough to get hitched. Natalie may be eager to marry Mike, but if he’s claiming he only got cold feet on the morning of their wedding, he’s willfully ignoring the fact that he’s been giving her the cold shoulder all season long.
From day one, Mike’s been dragging his feet
In the very first episode, he told his side of the story to the camera as he summarized his and Natalie’s drama from Season 7 of 90 Day Fiancé. They left things on bad terms after she gave him the ring back while he was visiting her in Ukraine, and they weren’t much better off when their visa finally came through just two months later. Natalie was the first to get the news — and she broke it to her man during a FaceTime on camera. While she was beaming and boasting, she had to practically drag any shreds of excitement out of him.
“I feel happy, excited,” he told her only after she asked, his voice betraying absolutely no emotion. And then one second later, he revealed how he really felt. “At the same time, I don’t know,” he continued. “I just wasn’t prepared to hear this right now.” In a confessional, he continued, “When she said, ‘Hey, I got the visa, I’m coming to the U.S.,’ I had a ton of emotions in that moment, good and bad. We’ve both been looking forward to the visa this entire time, but we have problems, we have issues. We kind of put the visa on the back burner.”
When Natalie revealed that they only had 20 days to decide whether they were going to use the visa, he seemed even more frustrated. As he shook his head, looking like he was in way too deep, she begged him to say something. But when he finally spoke up, the only thing he commented on was how fast that timeline was, and when Natalie shared that she’d already looked at flights, he could only laugh. “We definitely have a lot to talk about,” he said. “We’ve got to get things figured out.”
Even as he tried to smile, his confessional reminded audiences just where they stood. “We have a lot of stuff that we need to work on. Communication, anger, jealousy, everything. I don’t know how we’re going to work on those things. I’m not ready to get married right now, but she has to be here in three weeks, so it’s either we do this or don’t.” Eventually, he seemed to come to terms with the fact that this was happening — though in hindsight it seemed like he thought of it more as the relationship’s last dying gasp than its saving grace. “We want to give it a go, and at least we say we tried,” he said. “This is the hail mary, I mean, basically, you know?”
Throughout the season, he was trying to slow Natalie’s roll
Even once she touched down in the States, Mike did his best to take things day by day… and that meant shutting Natalie down time after time as she tried to make wedding plans. While she was hesitant to bring them up in the beginning, she did crack a couple jokes about missing her ring that he did his best to ignore. When the fifth episode rolled around, she finally started talking about setting a date, but even that didn’t go over well.
Nothing seemed to be going right as the two clashed over their diets, Mike’s drinking habits, Natalie’s critical nature, her unwillingness to unpack, and his unwillingness to offer the emotional security she needed to start putting down roots. Things only started to get back on track once Mike’s mom, Trish, flew in to play peacemaker. While she was out to dinner with the couple, she pushed Natalie to accept responsibility for the state of their relationship — and it was only then that Mike gave in and agreed to help them move forward, too.
“I do believe that testing each other, like, ‘I’m going to give you back your ring to see if you’re going to put it back on my finger…’ That’s probably not real good,” Trish told her son’s fiancé. And she had some words for her own flesh and blood, too, that stopped him from rolling his eyes every time the subject of wedding plans came up.
“So you have set a tentative date and apply for the visa, and if it should turn out that you don’t use it, you at least tried,” she advised them. “Correct? And you work towards it. … If you’re going to get married, you need to talk and work out everything so it’ll work out in the long-run of being married for a long time.”
With her help, Natalie finally started to settle into the house — and Mike finally agreed to pick a day so that Natalie’s mom could make her travel plans, even if they weren’t yet ready to pick out wedding china or flowers or whatever. That said, the truce didn’t seem to last long. As soon as Trish left, so did whatever common ground Mike and Natalie had found.
Every step forward was like pulling teeth
When it became clear that their issues weren’t going to be solved any time soon, the would-be-bride suggested they see a relationship therapist to help them communicate and get on the same page. Mike seemed totally against it. He was already digging his heels in when it came to having a productive conversation with his fiancé, and he certainly didn’t want to pay money to do something he was refusing to participate in for free. Eventually, they did see a counselor, but even that ended in him walking out when the subject of his little sleepover with his friend came up once again.
With Mike refusing to give her the ring back or conceded that they were technically engaged — at least in the eyes of the United States government — Natalie realized her only option if she wanted to move forward was to completely let go of the past. Unfortunately, even that didn’t see them making much progress. Three weeks before her visa expired, she tried to bring up the idea of a wedding again, and while he admitted they were “heading in the right direction,” he still wasn’t prepared to make any plans.
That said, there was no time to waste, so in episode 13 he begrudgingly decided to give her her ring back. “We’re not going to sort out our issues before time runs out,” he admitted in a confessional. “We’ve got a couple weeks. … I really wish there was a pause button, you know, and we could really have some more time, but we just need to come to a decision.”
After stoking a fire for the ever-freezing Natalie, he decided to go ahead and get on with his hyper-romantic proposal. “So there’s a lot of shit going on, coronavirus and all this, and I don’t know what to continue to expect, but shit’s getting crazy right now. THe world is crazy. Life’s crazy. And we try to do what we can, taking steps in the right direction, but the world’s upside down. So, yeah, I don’t really know when the best time to do anything is anymore right now, so…”
As he trailed the ring off, he held the ring out to his fiancé between two fingers, not even bothering to present it in the velvet ring box he’d had it kept away in. His complete lack of enthusiasm over a potential wedding was clear, and it became even more explicit when she tried to prompt him to re-propose for real — or to at least acknowledge that starting over came with a fresh slate.
“You’re just, like, you’re ruining the whole thing,” he told her, throwing his hands up in the air. Eventually, he stood up and walked away, admitting even then that he didn’t forgive her for what went down in Kyiv. He slipped the ring back on her finger, but not without sighing, “Oy vey.”
So it’s no surprise that he called off the wedding
Reality must’ve finally rushed in the day that they were supposed to tie the knot. Mike never wanted Natalie to come to the states — and he never wanted to give her her ring back. He went along with both because it was easier than the alternative, but when push came to shove, he decided that making things legally binding was just too much. It’s one thing to go through a devastating breakup in which one person leaves the country. It’s another thing entirely to have to add a divorce to that to-do list.
And yet, apparently, Mike managed to do just that. All season long, he’s been frosty towards his fiancé, but he’s also chosen the path of least (immediate) resistance. When her visa came through, he let her come to the states. When she asked him to change his diet, he verbally agreed to do so and then just… went about his life. When she pushed him to make wedding plans, he pushed the conversation off, and he kept doing that for weeks until he couldn’t. Even once wedding plans were being made, he only stood in their way to the degree that he wasn’t participating.
He made his final stand on the day of the wedding — but it seems even that fell apart. With immigration issues looming and a global pandemic making travel difficult, it appears that he chose to tie the knot rather than facing any legal challenges or potential health problems. It was the path of least (immediate) resistance… but fans can be sure there’s plenty of drama left to come, whether it’s in the final episode of the season, on the aftershow specials, or on an additional installment of the 90 Day Fiancé franchise.
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Images: TLC