This was published 3 months ago
‘A lot of dads bottle things up’: Michael Brunelli on first-time fatherhood
By Lorna Gray
“People are always telling you that you don’t know what real love is until you have a child… Then you realise they were right.” Credit: Jessie Obialor
A serendipitous chain of events was brewing for Michael Brunelli in 2018 as the then-27-year-old hit a crossroads. Burnt out by his PE teaching job in Melbourne and yearning for change, he had two very different prospects in front of him: a stint on season six of Married at First Sight (MAFS) or a teaching position in Dubai. He was accepted on the hit Channel 9 show – which he’d applied for on a whim when he saw a call-out on social media – before he’d heard back on the job prospect, which he also landed. It’s not over-reaching to say MAFS changed the course of his life.
“I said to myself, whichever one comes through first, that’s what I’m going to take,” explains Brunelli, 33. “I’d lost that spark [at work] and MAFS came through before Dubai. I could never, ever have imagined that nearly six years later I’d be sitting here with a fiancée and a baby. My life is a thousand times better now.”
Brunelli was matched with Martha Kalifatidis, now 36, who was approached to do MAFS while she was working at Mecca, and the pair are one of the show’s most famous success stories alongside fellow season six alumni Jules Robinson and Cam Merchant. They’ve defied the odds by staying together (over the course of 11 seasons, only a handful of relationships have survived) and got engaged in 2021. But it was the arrival of their son Lucius, affectionately known as Looch, in February 2023, that took their love story to new heights.
“When you get to a certain stage of life, people are always telling you that you don’t know what real love is until you have a child,” says Brunelli. “Then you realise they were right. The love I have for Looch is something out of this stratosphere. I’m obsessed with him. And the appreciation I have for Martha is on another level – she’s the strongest person in the world.”
Brunelli jokes that you don’t leave the delivery room the same person. “You want to call your own mum and say, ‘I’ve never said this because I’ve never even thought about you giving birth to me before, but now I have, and thank you – you are amazing.’”
The journey to parenthood wasn’t easy for the pair. Kalifatidis suffered from severe hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a condition that causes debilitating sickness, from five weeks into the pregnancy. By week nine she had lost 10 kilos and regularly needed an IV drip in hospital to stay hydrated.
Michael Brunelli, Martha Kalifatidis and their son Lucius, affectionately known as Looch.Credit: Jessie Obialor
Brunelli recalls feeling helpless. “I can’t even explain how dark a period it was,” he says. “I couldn’t do anything to help her, it felt like an eternity. For seven months she was bedridden and in a lot of pain. Then, after all that, to have a healthy baby and for the HG feelings to stop instantly, it was crazy.”
The couple shared their experience on social media to an outpouring of support, with followers sharing similar stories. “I think it resonated with a lot of people that you don’t have to enjoy your pregnancy to love your child,” says Brunelli.
The couple’s online popularity has skyrocketed in recent years – combined, they have over a million Instagram followers and more than 400,000 TikTok followers. The pair’s enduring popularity can surely be credited to the fact they continued to share their lives with the public long after the MAFS cameras stopped rolling.
Brunelli jokes that they share “the good, the bad and the ugly”, and he’s not wrong – an adorable picture of Looch can be posted beside a video of Brunelli trying to relieve Kalifatidis’ blocked milk duct (later revealed to be an abscess), proving they don’t shy away from showing the painful pitfalls of parenting.
“It’s scary to think that fathers don’t have an avenue to talk about it, or that it can be seen as a weakness – which it’s not, obviously.”
“We pride ourselves on being as open as we can,” he says. “We started our relationship in front of everyone, so it was only natural for us to continue that. These people have been with us from the start. They feel like they know us, and we feel like we know them. We talk to them in direct messages and in the comments. People share things with us that they maybe wouldn’t be comfortable speaking about publicly.”
Brunelli is also refreshingly open about the mental health struggles he faced after becoming a father. “When Looch was born, I stopped exercising, I stopped moving,” he says. “You forget about yourself very quickly. I’m naturally an overthinker and my anxiety was heightened to the point where I didn’t really sleep for six months, which obviously had a very negative impact on my mental wellbeing.
“It’s a really hard thing to talk about. I just accepted that the way I was feeling was normal for dads because you don’t know what other dads are going through. You know people are tired, you know people are stressed – it comes with the territory of having a newborn – but I realised what I was experiencing wasn’t necessarily normal.
“A lot of dads bottle things up, and it can come out in different ways. It’s scary to think that fathers don’t have an avenue to talk about it, or that it can be seen as a weakness – which it’s not, obviously.”
A huge advocate of striving to be the best version of yourself for your family, Brunelli’s own form of self-care is undoubtedly fitness. While he’s left primary-school teaching behind, his passion for physical education and coaching remains. Brunelli now has hit own fitness company, TRU Training, which he is in the process of relaunching as an app with personalised workout and nutrition programs.
Brunelli reveals another perk of his teaching background – it helped him prepare for fatherhood. “I was teaching 500 kids at my last school, and I loved every one of them,” he says. “[Teaching has given me the] understanding that each individual child is so different in the way they learn and how much they need, physically and emotionally. It’s also given me the patience to let some things go with Looch and understand that he is learning every minute, so he’s going to make mistakes.”
“‘If I can be half as good a dad as my father was to me, then I will be an amazing dad.’ I’m so grateful for him. I can only hope that in 30 years, Looch is saying the same thing.”
Brunelli says Kalifatidis has been instrumental in all his professional and personal successes. “She’s just such an amazing woman, she’s my rock. The attitude she has towards everything motivates me to do better.”
The couple are polar opposite in terms of demeanour, with Brunelli an introvert who says he’s ill at ease being asked so many questions about himself, and Kalifatidis “the life and soul of the party”. But at its core, their relationship is based on shared values. Both come from immigrant families – Italian and Greek, respectively – and value family time above all else. “Everything our parents did was for their kids,” says Brunelli.
Brunelli credits his nonnos, who were both Italian, his dad Sandro, and now Kalifatidis’ father Theo, with shaping him, giving special credit to Sandro. “My dad is the most selfless person I know. He lives for helping other people, especially myself and my brother.”
“It’s corny, but I feel like every day with him is a celebration.” Credit: Jessie Obialor
“I get emotional talking about fatherhood because I spoke about it at length with the producers before going on MAFS. I said, ‘If I can be half as good a dad as my father was to me, then I will be an amazing dad.’ I’m so grateful for him. I can only hope that in 30 years, Looch is saying the same thing.”
Looch certainly gets a lot of grandparent time, as he lives with his parents and grandparents Mary and Theo Kalifatidis, both 59, in the Kalifatidis family home in Melbourne. Mary, who’s as naturally funny and gregarious as her daughter, is now a social media star in her own right with over 100,000 followers, sharing recipes and lots of cute family moments.
While living with your in-laws would be some people’s worst nightmare, Brunelli describes his as “absolutely amazing”.
“There are times when you can step on each other’s toes, but for the most part, it’s a gift, because they get to be around Looch all the time. We’re very blessed to have them.
“They are this big Greek family, so there are countless uncles and aunties who are just one call away. Looch is happy to go to anyone as long as he’s the centre of attention.”
Brunelli says while they have a “village” to count on, including his own parents, Sandro and Daniela, they certainly weren’t immune to the challenges of “surviving the first year” as the adage goes.
“You’re learning who you are as a parent and how your relationship works with this little person,” says Brunelli. “There will be times when you’re frustrated with each other, when you don’t understand why your partner is doing something or saying something that’s different to what you would do. It’s just kind of taking a step back and realising that they’re learning as much as you are.
“Then you add the lack of sleep to that. We had our fair share of arguments in the first year, but we’re stronger for it. You both want what’s best for the baby, but you might go about it in slightly different ways. And that’s OK, because two roads can intersect and become one.”
Now 17 months old, Looch’s personality is blossoming. “What I’m starting to see is a little bit of stubbornness, and I feel that is a direct correlation to his mum,” says Brunelli, laughing. “He’s curious about the world, and I feel that curiosity is in my nature as well, so it’s a very nice balance between both of us.”
This Father’s Day, he hopes he’ll get breakfast in bed and to snuggle up and watch Bluey with his son, adding: “It’s corny, but I feel like every day with him is a celebration.”
Wedding plans are currently on the backburner for the couple, who want to have more kids “when Martha is ready”, Brunelli reveals. “She has the biggest say in this as she has to carry the baby. We’re so blessed to have Looch, so whatever comes next is just a bonus.”
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