Married At First Sight (MAFS) 2026 has featured plenty of confronting Dinner Parties, participants sharing controversial views and couples going head-to-head, and yet one of the most uncomfortable moments of the season was Steven Danyluk and Rachel Gilmore’s final couch session.
The former couple sat with the experts in Monday night’s episode to unpack their recent split, with Rachel choking back tears as Steven attempted to explain why they ended things.
Eventually, after being urged by his co-stars and repeatedly asked by John Aiken if he wanted to be in a relationship with Rachel, he delivered one of the most brutal lines ever uttered on the reality show: “I’m just going to put a bullet in it and just say no.”
Five months on from filming the Reunion, Steven has now told PEDESTRIAN.TV he completely regrets his choice of words and wishes he had handled things differently with the experts.
“They put a gun to my head, it felt like, ‘cause it’s not that simple,” he said.
The 34-year-old marine technician claimed that he and Rachel had “mutually” agreed that the relationship wasn’t going to work when he visited her in Melbourne just before filming the Reunion, but they “didn’t want to break up”.
“I just felt like I f**ked it all up because of my busy life in Sydney,” he said.
“I mean, I’ve got a business that I closed, I’m trying to find a place to live again, I put it all on hold, and I’ve got finances. I was battling a health problem at the same time as well. I just couldn’t give that attention right now, and she’s 900km away.”
Steven said he felt “so pressured” by his co-stars egging him on and John asking him the same question that he felt like he had to make a decision on the spot — which is why he made such a “dumb” comment.
“In the end, I got in such a corner and said the dumbest thing. I probably just should’ve argued and said, ‘Nah, f**k you, I do want to be in this, I just f**ked up this little bit, I need to work on it again’,” he remarked.
“If I had my time back, I probably would’ve said, ‘Nah, f**k you, I do want this’. But I was so pressured and with everyone there going on, ‘Come on, Steve, be honest, be honest’, and I was just looking like a bit of a d**khead, so yeah, I said one dumb line at the end there.”
Steven certainly isn’t the first person to feel remorse for their actions on MAFS — just look at Bec Zacharia — and he said he has “a lot of what ifs and a lot of regrets” from the experience.
As for his partner Rachel, she told P.TV that she doesn’t have any regrets from the relationship because she consistently supported him and “reminded him what an amazing human he is”.
“I don’t know what more I could have done,” she admitted. “The only way it could have worked, in his mind, is if I just packed my stuff and went to Sydney, and that’s not fair on me when I was willing to put in so much effort.”
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