A former TLC reality star recently opened up about sensing trouble early in her marriage—and even admitted divorce was on the table even in the salad days.
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“I remember year one of being married, saying to my dad, ‘I think I might want to get divorced,’” Welcome to Plathville alum Olivia Plath admitted in a recent episode of the Lovett or Leave It podcast.
Olivia, 27, married Ethan Plath, also 27, when she was 20. She said she felt “so overwhelmed with all the family problems” and Ethan’s “inability to set boundaries with his family.”
Turns out, her fundamentalist Christian dad wasn’t exactly thrilled with the divorce idea, so she stuck it out for another four years.
“My dad told me, ‘If you get divorced, it’s going to break God’s heart and it will break my heart,’” Olivia recalled. Fearing the loss of her parents’ support at that time, she thought, “I guess I have to figure it out.”
“I look back now and I really could’ve just cut out four years’ worth of circular conversations that got us nowhere,” she added. “But I just didn’t want to give up.”
The Former TLC Reality TV Star Claimed She Wanted to Defy the Odds with Her Marriage
The former reality TV star also shared that her 2023 split from Ethan and their divorce process were just as challenging as portrayed on Welcome to Plathville.
However, she insisted on the podcast that she never intended to divorce Ethan. When they married so young, she stressed, she wanted them to be the couple that defied the odds.
“What I always went back to was, ‘It doesn’t have to be a mistake,’” she explained. “The percentage of people who get married to the first person they were ever with and then that lasts the rest of your life — that does happen, but it’s not all that common, but it does happen.”
Olivia cited her religious family’s and in-laws’ disapproval of divorce as a key reason she suppressed her feelings for so long.
“I also thought I would be blamed for getting divorced,” she admitted.
She eventually filed for divorce last year. Despite her long-standing push back about Ethan, his family, and her portrayal on the show, Olivia stated on the podcast that she ultimately believes the show was “good” for her.
“The show really just picked me up and set me down in the middle of mainstream society,” Olivia explained. “And mirrored my own reactions back to me in such a way that I was able to learn.”
“Looking back, I think it was a really good experience for me. I learned a lot.”
She feels she learned a lot over the course of seven seasons of the show.
“There’s a clear chart of growth,” she added.