Former The Ultimatum contestants reveal how show benefited their relationship

A couple who took part in The Ultimatum and are now happily engaged have revealed how being on the Netflix series has helped strengthen their relationship.

Hunter Parr and Alexis Maloney went on the show, hosted by Nick and Vanessa Lachey, in which six different couples all face the same conflict, with one person wanting to get married while the other does not.

Before going through with a marriage, each contestant has the opportunity to date and live with someone new. At the end of the experience, they then decide if they want to marry their original partner or walk away from them forever.

However, throughout Parr and Maloney’s time in the experiment, they did not go down the same route as the other contestants, as they left the show early.

There are spoilers for season one of The Ultimatum below.

During the first episode of the show, Maloney, 25, said that she gave Parr, 28, a marriage ultimatum, as they’d been dating for two and a half years.

“I basically told Hunter: ‘We get engaged or we break up,’” she explained.

Although Parr knew what his girlfriend wanted, he said he didn’t know if he wanted to get married yet. But, he was hopeful that by the end of the experiment, he would have an answer for her “one way or another”.

While spending four days dating other people, Parr formed a connection with another contestant, April, who had chosen him to be her live-in match in the second episode.

However, Maloney spoke up and expressed how the experience “reconfirmed” to her that she wanted to be with Parr. After that, Parr got up and proposed to Maloney, noting how he realised that he wasn’t afraid of marriage anymore and didn’t want to be with “any other girl”.

Even though their time on The Ultimatum was short-lived, the couple said that it helped their engagement come to be. While speaking to Us Weekly, Maloney emphasised how on the show, she was “ready to get engaged,” as her boyfriend wanted to wait.

“Hunter was dragging his feet and wanted to live together before getting engaged,” she said. “I really wanted to stand true to what I believed in and I wanted Hunter to be 100 per cent confident in me before making either of those decisions.”

“So going through this cool experience, not only will we get to watch it back, we’ll get to share it with our kids one day because it was a great experience for us,” she continued.

According to Parr, he had decided that he wanted to pop the question the night before his proposal. He recalled how seeing Maloney at a mixer helped him realise that he wanted to marry her.

“That really helped sort of solidify a lot of the feelings that I was having around, ‘Hey, do I want to propose or do I not? What is it like for me dating all of these people then coming back and being with Alexis?’ I really wanted to answer for myself, how would I feel? And we really kind of dived right back into our relationship. It was great to see her,” he explained.

He also acknowledged how he felt connected to some of the women on The Ultimatum because they had the same “personality traits” as Maloney.

“I really felt a strong connection with her upon being with her [Maloney] again, [which] made me realise, ‘OK, all of these connections that I was having and making with the other women were because of personality traits that Alexis already had.’” he said. “So I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready to propose, let’s do this.”

“And so the night before I knew, and it was very difficult for me to keep it quiet because all I wanted to do was interrupt her when she was expressing how much pain she was in,” he added.

Parr emphasised how he kept the proposal a secret, as his now fiancée likes surprises and he wanted “to deliver on a big moment.”

The couple told the publication that they moved in together right after leaving the show and that they’re getting married this summer.

You can watch the first eight episodes of The Ultimatum on Netflix. The final two episodes, the finale and the reunion, will air on 13 April.