On 90 Day Fiance: Before The 90 Days Season 5, Episode 15, couples were made or broken.
Mike returned from his walkabout to find a Ximena who was ready for him to leave, but Mike refused — even when she offered to pay for the hotel.
Ben responded to Mahogany ghosting him by having her meet up with him, which is where things got even weirder.
Gino braces himself for an awkward prenup conversation with Jasmine, but she has her own bone to pick with him.
It’s time for Kimberly to head home, but Usman’s last-minute denial of PDA has her feeling insecure and rejected.
Memphis and Hamza are married, but that is not the end of their exciting news.
1.
Mike Berk and Ximena Cuellar
Mike ended the last episode by running off into the night. Maybe it helped him think. Maybe he wanted to stop the cameras from filming him cry. One way or the other, he came back to a bewildered Ximena … convinced that she had only used him for money.
2.
She wants him to just go
Though Ximena tells Mike that she is willing to pay for his hotel room, he refuses, saying that he wants to sleep in another room at her home.
3.
They go back, with Ximena awkwardly explaining things to her sister
Mike removes his things from her room. This is one of the most awkward parts of a breakup, and not something that we see as much on this show — all of the things involved, and how long leaving can actually take. Of course, Mike’s taking longer than most people might.
4.
Ximena returns the rings
She returns the wedding bands and the engagement ring (in many places, legally, the engagement ring would be hers anyway), but Mike asks her to consider holding onto the engagement ring until they work things out. He’s … still not getting the memo.
5.
Mike also brings up Ximena’s past cam work
Whatever we may think of Ximena, it was not Mike’s place to bring up that Ximena was a camgirl model before he began paying her to keep her from doing that work during their relationship.
6.
Mike doesn’t like people knowing that this was how they met
Ximena says that she didn’t ask Mike to send her money. He was being both generous and deeply selfish (or perhaps insecure) in sending it, but she had a job. And, as Ximena notes, Mike was super thirsty for her at the time … making it very hypocritical for him to throw this in her face.
7.
It’s all over now
Ximena is basically begging Mike to acknowledge their breakup, with him refusing — even refusing to leave her home.
8.
YIKES dude
Mike begins to insist that he doesn’t have to leave, on the grounds that he has paid the rent. Some legal jurisdictions might side with him if she called the police to have him removed, but there’s no moral justification for what he’s doing. Give someone a gift, whether it’s reasonable or foolish to give it to them, and it’s theirs — whether it’s a piece of furniture or a few months’ rent. Trying to lord it over them makes you the bad guy.
9.
Enough!
Ximena is trying to get Mike to leave her house — for a hotel room that she has offered the cover — to no avail. It’s an ugly situation and, frankly, a bit of a horror story for a lot of women.
10.
Mike gets more toxic
He cusses out Ximena and even some of her family in the process. For a guy who uses a translation app for almost everything, he sure says “hija de puta” like it’s a familiar phrase.
11.
He still isn’t accepting the breakup though
At this point, it’s hard to see if Mike still thinks that staying one more night will let him patch things up somehow or if he’s just refusing to leave because it’s what Ximena wants.
12.
Feeling powerless is scary
While viewers might not feel especially intimidated by Mike, we might all feel differently if he were in our homes and refusing to leave.
13.
Ximena cries
Faced with the choice of either trying to force him to leave her home by physical or legal means or just leave him in the spare room where he is sulking, Ximena cries on the stairs. One of her sons comes to comfort her.
14.
Ben Rathbun and Mahogany Roca
Mahogany is back at her “very real” apartment — the one that looks comically staged — making a show of taking her clothes out of her luggage for the cameras while explaining that, yes, she totally ghosted Ben instead of giving him a ride back home. Considering that Ben was looking forward to what he called “mandatory alone time” with her during the 2-hour car ride back, she clearly made the right call.
15.
Mahogany thinks that it’s Ben’s turn to reach out
It’s very immature to expect someone else to call or text based upon imaginary rules that you’ve made up and not conveyed to them. That said, she is 22. Ben’s immaturity is more difficult to justify. He’s a grown man in his fifties who ghosted her at breakfast after spamming her phone with “10 pages” of texts.
16.
Mahogany reaches out to a friend
Speaking to her (jarringly gorgeous) friend, Ariana, Mahogany talks about how different Ben is in person — in a bad way. She was shocked that he ghosted her for breakfast, and embarrassed that her parents saw that.
17.
Ben does want to meet up
He messaged her to meet him on the pier where they first spent time together. He waits in the dark for a while, but Mahogany does show up.
18.
He has a gift for her
Ben bought Mahogany a stuffed bear, which is sort of cute, but PERSONALLY most of us would avoid gifts of toys and stuffed animals if we were dating someone three decades younger than we are. It’s just … the wrong image. And so is a lot of the manipulative-sounding romantic stuff that Ben says.
19.
Mahogany feels conflicted
We cannot explain what exactly about Ben makes her feel drawn to him — like, he has a nice body, but a lot of people have nice bodies without any of the complications or baggage that Ben does, and we’re sure that on a planet with two billion Christians, Mahogany can find a guy one who is also shredded.
20.
What???
As teased last week, they really did kiss on that pier. Honestly, Ben came from a cult that likely considered kissing like this to be something to be done between married spouses in private. After the fact, he admits that he has never kissed someone like that before — literally ever.
21.
Their next meet-up does not go as well
Ben decides to ask Mahogany about her lie about her age, and she is clearly unwilling to discuss it. In fact, even though her facial expression remains pleasant and her voice stays quiet, her tone is discernibly angry, and she starts putting on her blue jacket to leave even as Ben continues to talk.
22.
She’s out
That said, next week’s previews make it clear that Ben is going to cross a bunch of boundaries to try to make her talk to him some more. Yikes.
23.
Gino Palazzolo and Jasmine Pineda
Gino helps Jasmine move into her new place before he returns (in a few days) to Michigan.
24.
Oh, and he’s paying for it
Gino is paying $700 a month for Jasmine’s new rental, since apparently she was living with a roommate and not enjoying it beforehand. On the one hand, a nice $700 one-bedroom in a city sounds like a STEAL by American standards. On the other, Gino has been out of work for months at this point.
25.
How can he afford that, exactly?
Gino credits his financial stability to investments. He says that he manages his own investments and it sounds like he estimates either his net worth or just his investments to be around $650,000. That’s amazing if true. But it’s also his future retirement fund and not something that he wants to deplete.
26.
Jasmine teases that he should get a job
Even if he can’t go back to engineering work when he returns to Michigan just yet, she suggests that he work — even if it’s in a restaurant. Her tone indicates that she’s teasing him. For the record, it’s unlikely that Gino would be able to make any amount of money worth his time (in proportion to his expenses) as an entry-level restaurant worker. Also, he would almost certainly have to remove his hat.
27.
Jasmine has big, expensive plans for his house
Jasmine wants to totally redecorate, as she feels that Jasmine’s ex having decorated his house is a personal affront to her. But Gino is leery of how expensive that will be.
28.
Later, Gino calls up Uncle Marco
He tells Marco an extremely sanitized version of his trip, sharing that he and Jasmine are engaged and that he will bring her over on a K-1 visa. Marco, not knowing the truth of how this trip has been, is delighted for his nephew.
29.
Has he brought up that prenup stuff?
Gino apparently lost money in his divorce 8 years earlier. That’s pretty normal for divorces — while statistically a man’s standard of living goes up after a divorce while a woman’s goes down, there are exceptions, not to mention that it can FEEL like a financial blow because, well, it sure feels different. Gino, and more vocally Uncle Marco, don’t want that to happen again … so a prenup could be in order. But while prenups are pretty common in the United States, Jasmine is a woman who had a screaming fit about paint colors on a wall in a house that she has never seen. How will she react to this?
30.
Jasmine has her own problems to create
At dinner, before Gino can even try to bring up the prenup, she challenges him because his ex-wife still has his last name. Changing last names is expensive and includes a lot of paperwork. Gino also has absolutely no control over his ex-wife’s name. It’s unclear that Jasmine realistically expects him to change, but she wants it fixed because it will soon be “her” last name.
31.
Kimberly Menzies and Usman Umar
It’s the morning of Kimberly’s departure, and she’s … negging Usman about being on his phone. She suggests that maybe it’s generational, but plenty of women older than Kimberly spend a lot of time on their phones. Weird thing to talk about just a few hours before her flight.
32.
Kimberly cries in the car
Usman will be in town for another day before he returns to Nigeria, but this is goodbye for both of them.
33.
It’s also horny
Kimberly praises Usman’s sexual prowess from the night before, and he appears to grope her a little before they reach their destination.
34.
How about a goodbye kiss?
Usman declines, leaving Kimberly feeling rejected and a little hurt, especially after he was so affectionate in the car.
35.
She does kiss him goodbye on the cheek
She also tells him “I love you” twice … both times, without hearing it back.
36.
Memphis Sandoval and Moknii Hamza
It’s the morning of the wedding day, and Hayet comes in to “spoil” her future daughter-in-law with lamb liver. Memphis’ reaction is more polite than some people’s would be under the circumstances.