Lydia Plath Shares Her Opinion That Brothers Made an Unfair ‘Initial Judgment’ About Husband Zac Wyse (Exclusive)

Lydia Plath Defends Her Marriage

“I am not sure to what extent some of them really know me,” Lydia Plath disclosed about her family after criticism for her relationship with Zac Wyse. Nevertheless, she is giving it clear that she is on her husband’s side.
The siblings reacted negatively to the news of the couple’s engagement that they had told the Plath family after only three months of dating and subsequent marriage six months later and to the decision Lydia’s brothers did not show support. Talking to PEOPLE, Lydia said she took the lack of support from them very hard.

Family Struggles Over Acceptance

The first thing Lydia, 21, thought of when talking about the shock her family got after her announcement of her relationship with Zac Wyse was that those family members did not quite know her well enough.
“To figure out why some of my family members were so resistant to the timeline and, in general, all these changes, was that I don’t really know how well they know me and the reasons why I choose to do things and how I do relationships,” she stated.
She further stated that her family was confused about her life experiences that had an impact on their way of dating. “Then along comes Zac, and they don’t know the history that has led me to here. So they only have questions. And it was hard for me to understand, like, ‘Oh, I don’t think they quite get how I do dating from the start.’

Zac on the Family’s Pushback

On the one hand, both Lydia and Zac stated that they were not completely caught out by the family’s disbelief — on the other hand, the family’s disinclination to really know him surprised them.
“I think we had expected that they would be on guard because of the short time period,” Zac said. “So I think that was the biggest mistake we made in just understanding some of the responses. But to really shock them with some of their responses, it was knowing that I really want to get to know them. I am allowing them to come by and enter the scene to ask the right questions of getting to know me as a person.”

Confronting ‘Initial Judgment’

Lydia has characterized the brothers’ responses as an atypical severe ‘initial judgment,’ whereas Zac shared that there was one instant which made him feel surprised.
“Ethan throwing the gay question at me, at the proposal as well, really got me off guard,” Zac remembered. “I was like, ‘Actually, the fact that there’s a lot going on around us that proves that I’m not, so you know, it’s kind of ironic.'”

Finding His Place in the Family

He added that Zac explained that the family of Lydia has actually started to accept him in a deeper way, which he finds “encouraging” now that they have officially entered their lives. Nevertheless, he confessed that the denial had an impact on him.
“I was also a little sad in the sense of, ‘If only they had used this time not to get to know me but to pick on me and bully me a little bit,'” he told. “I am aware that there is definitely the brotherly love initiative.”

Moving Forward From Tension

“They took it beyond,” Lydia admitted referring to her brothers’ early reactions, with Zac agreeing: “Yeah, they definitely took it beyond in a lot of ways. But then, we do not want to speak negatively about them, because we know that their protectiveness is the reason. And, in their own time, they have come around in the ways that we have liked as well. So, that’s been that.”
Through family therapy, the couple says they are now in a better place with her family while Lydia revealed that she won’t be watching their wedding episode of Welcome to Plathville. She explained that the day was overshadowed by tension around her marriage — which got worse because of annoyances with her brother Micah’s girlfriend — all of which culminating in a fight.

Choosing Joy on Their Wedding Day

Despite the tension that could be felt through the camera, Lydia stated that she wouldn’t watch the ‘Welcome to Plathville’ wedding episode. “I won’t be watching the wedding episode because a lot of drama was going on, and those four people were the main characters of the drama,” she stated. “So we have our wedding video, and we have the 120 people who were totally supporting us, and we don’t need to watch it with the four people who were not.”
Rather they went on to celebrate their love. “We just woke up that morning and decided, ‘We’ve been through a lot; it’s been quite a ride, but we are choosing joy,’” Lydia remembered. “And that’s what we went with. And I can only speak from my experience, I didn’t see any drama, tension, or anything at all during the whole day. I had a very lovely wedding day.”
Zac agreed: “We were on the same page.”