On this weekend’s episode of 90 Day Fiance: The Other Way, a medical crisis tore a family apart.
Baby Avi needed surgery, and Ariela Weinberg told Biniyam Shibre that she needs to take Avi to America for the procedure.
Biniyam is terrified of history repeating itself, so this led to a huge fight … and that’s not the end of it.
The preview showed Ariela accusing Biniyam of cheating and seemingly showing no interest in returning. Where is this leading?
On Season 3, Episode 6, Ariela Weinberg and Biniyam Shibre prepared their baby for a doctor’s visit.
This wasn’t just a standard checkup.
They had noticed a little swelling in precious Avi’s lower abdomen.
The protrusion, it turned out, was his intestines.
It is a hernia, not an uncommon problem — but one requiring urgent attention.
The sooner that they could get surgery on Avi, they were told by the doctor, the better.
Ariela has had major surgery in Ethiopia before — when she had her C-Section.
While she knows that the hospitals are clean, professional places, she also knows that surgery is always a risk — especially for a baby.
She wanted to speak to her parents, who are both medical professionals, and consider flying back to the United States for Avi’s surgery.
Ariela has good insurance back home, which makes all of the difference, so this seemed like the safest option.
Biniyam was on the opposite side of things.
After all, he impregnated and married a different American woman in the past, that son had an intestinal issue, and eventually, they stopped being part of his life.
This complicated personal history is one that Biniyam shared with his barber during the episode.
This was clearly some time later, as Ariela had news for him.
Reality TV often dictates that people have serious conversations in odd places. This time, in a barbershop.
Ariela spoke to Biniyam about how she’s thought more about it and spoken to her mom.
She wants to take Avi to America for surgery for about a month.
In addition to being more comfortable with the surgery taking place there, she’d be near her parents.
Biniyam told her that he was opposed.
A tearful Ariela was already aware that he could not come with her, not even on a tourist visa.
At that point in the COVID-19 pandemic, no new travel visas were being issued.
Ariela became increasingly emotional during this painful conversation, afraid of breaking her fiance’s heart.
She told him that she had already bought the ticket.
Clearly, she loves Biniyam — she’s given up her entire life just to make him happy — but right now, she has to put Avi first.
It was Biniyam’s turn to become increasingly distressed.
He stood up, reminding Ariela that his ex-wife took their son and both have been out of his life for years.
Biniyam is afraid that the same thing will happen again.
This is where things got weird, because Biniyam seemed unwilling to believe that this was about Avi’s health.
Instead, he asked her if this was somehow her ex-husband’s doing, if Leandro had called her and asked her to go back to him.
While Biniyam’s trauma from his last marriage is understandable, his paranoia about Ariela is harder to justify.
Later, they spoke to Ariela’s mother, Janice, who was reassuring to Biniyam.
She promised him that he will always be part of Avi’s life, no matter what.
He tends to be more respectful to Ariela’s parents than he is to her, so he did listen and take her seriously.
It fell on Ariela’s shoulders to meet up with and break the news to Mimi and Wish, Biniyam’s sisters.
At a spa that sounds like Gwyneth Paltrow’s wildest dream, they had an unorthodox “spa day.”
They were smeared with honey and their bodies were steamed.
And so this is how Ariela looked when she told Mimi and Wish about the plan to take Avi to America.
They have relentlessly accused her of planning to repeat Biniyam’s ex’s behavior, so she knew that they would not take it well.
She was right.
Immediately, Mimi asked Wish if Ariela was coming back.
She told them that she absolutely planned to, and that it should be in about a month or so.
However, the previews for the rest of this season tell another story.
In the previews, we see Ariela — who has clearly spent some time in the U.S. — video chatting with Biniyam.
“Before you leave, you promise me you want to come back,” Biniyam accused.
It looks like something has changed.
Now, it sounds like it has been closer to two months, at least according to what we’re hearing.
“You have spent the last two months destroying your family,” Ariela tells him.
“God knows who you f–ked,” she says, “and God knows what you’ve been doing.”
Biniyam then laments to the camera: “I don’t wanna lose my family.”
We then see him begin to cry.
It’s a very pityable moment if you have a lot of empathy, but … what does it all mean?
It’s possible that 90 Day Fiance‘s editors are playing fast and loose with us, and that this preview misrepresents what happens.
We’ve seen producers and editors prompt stars to seem abusive, prompt their friends to ask unkind questions, and more — all for the sake of drama.
So it’s very possible that Ariela’s unkind words are not for Biniyam, or that she’s characterizing what he said to her, or something else altogether.
Of course, it’s also very possible that what we’re seeing is a fair representation of their real conversation.
If so, that could mean that Biniyam has been cheating and otherwise misbehaving — which doesn’t seem to be anything new for him.
His ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend accused him of cheating, and he’s been known to ghost Ariela for days at a time even when they had a baby at home.
But we know enough that, whatever clownery Biniyam may have perpetrated, it clearly wasn’t enough for them to break up.
We’ve seen them do interviews together very recently, many months after all of this was filmed.
They’re also doing interviews together, which means that they’re not separated by an ocean.
Multiple reports have made it clear that Ariela and Biniyam have been spending time recently in the U.S.
While it’s unlikely that Biniyam could get a K-1 visa or a spousal visa, we suppose that we cannot fully rule those out.
The real question is how long they spent apart. Were they separated by the Atlantic Ocean until Biniyam could some see them?
There is a lot in their real lives that 90 Day Fiance glosses over.
For example, they spent weeks and months in Africa but outside of Ethiopia after filming Season 2, amidst civil unrest in Ethiopia.
We don’t expect to see any footage of the time that their little family spent in Kenya … so it’s not clear how much this season will show us, and how much we’ll have to figure out ourselves.