Welcome to Plathville's Ethan explains Olivia's 'problem' with her family

Ethan Plath She is still trying to figure out what went wrong in her marriage with Olivia Plathbut believes part of their friction was due to their own family problems.

“I've been thinking a lot about what the real problem was with my family, me and Olivia,” Ethan, 26, revealed during the Tuesday, September 3, episode of Welcome to Plathville“I mean, Olivia was consumed by all these problems that she saw in the way we were raised.”

Ethan claimed that Olivia's opposition to his fundamentalist Christian upbringing negatively affected her relationship with Ethan's family. (Olivia grew up in Virginia as one of 10 siblings and was told from a young age that she was supposed to be subservient to a man.)

“I think it all comes down to Olivia hating the way she grew up with her family and the problems her family had,” she said. “And at the end of the day, [she] She was rewriting everything for herself and what she believed in. And she had to reject everything else.”

Olivia, 26, and Ethan had been together for almost a year before getting engaged in 2017. According to Olivia, that was when she found out that Ethan's mother, Kim PlathShe wanted to have a say in her everyday life, which reminded her of the controlling environment her parents imposed on her when she was a child.

“When we were dating, I knew I was being controlled in what we were allowed to do, what we were allowed to say,” Olivia exclusively told We weekly in August 2021. “I remember the night everything clicked for me was the night we got engaged. We walked through the door, [Kim] “He waited for us and grabbed my hand and looked at the ring. The first thing he said was, ‘I want to exchange rings with you. ’ And I was like, ‘Well, that’s really weird. ’”

Olivia claimed her ex-mother-in-law told her “what we were going to do” regarding her wedding planning. “And that was the moment where I was like, 'I don't want to be controlled like this,'” she recalled. “I never told my mom I was engaged before she got married.” [Kim] “I posted it on the Internet. That’s how my mom found out.”

Ethan and Olivia grew up in fundamentalist households that promoted traditional gender roles and patriarchal hierarchies. They eventually married in October 2018, but Olivia continued to have conflicts with Ethan's family.

“It was like a pattern of her trying to make a lot of decisions for me,” Olivia said. Us in August 2021. “I had just moved out of my parents’ house and was figuring out who I was, and I didn’t want them to make decisions for me. The wedding was where a lot of that culminated, but it was all over the place… That created a lot of tension.”

Even after the couple moved from Ethan's hometown in Georgia to Minnesota, they couldn't make the relationship work. Olivia and Ethan separated in October 2023 and finalized their divorce earlier this year.

Looking back, Ethan said Olivia's dynamic with her family was “very, very, very negative.” While he understands Olivia's issues with her childhood, he noted on Tuesday's episode that he had a different experience.

“I feel like my childhood was mostly good and I would definitely go back to Cairo at some point,” she told the cameras.

Ethan later confessed that his decision to criticize Olivia for not cooking for him on the show before their split only intensified Olivia's past issues with her religious parents' limitations.

“I was not saying in any way that every woman in the world should be in the kitchen making three meals a day. That is not at all what I meant,” he said, noting that during the early days of his marriage he felt “taken care of” when Olivia cooked for him.

Ethan alleged that Olivia “hadn’t cooked a meal in two years” when she told him during season five that her place was in the kitchen. “When she stopped doing that, I felt like she didn’t really care,” he continued. “The comment I made wasn’t about cooking three meals a day. I didn’t feel wanted and I was very angry.”

Meanwhile, Olivia revealed in the episode that cooking for her husband wasn't the only thing she was taught to do when she was young.

“The other thing I was told is that once you’re married and you can have sex and not go to hell, your job is to make him happy. Your job is to please him. It’s all about him,” she said in the episode, noting that Ethan “was told the same thing” at home.

Olivia said that “purity culture really screwed me up” and added that she no longer wants to follow the rules her parents imposed on her.

Welcome to Plathville It airs on TLC on Tuesdays at 10 pm ET.