‘I can’t wait to be a DAD’
‘MAFS’ alumnus Jono Pitman has found his happily-ever-after with new girlfriend Bec Pattison – and they’re expecting a child together!
Jono Pitman never believed in love at first sight. Truth be told, he never really believed in marriage either. Which might sound strange, given three years ago the 31-yearold from Melbourne signed on as a contestant in Nine’s now-reformatted Married at First Sight.
At the time, he was a carefree bachelor, looking to potentially meet someone via the reality dating show. He was paired with Claire Verrall, who entered the show despite suffering from PTSD from an assault just months prior to filming. But just weeks later, his relationship spectacularly imploded.
Fast-forward three years and life is very different for the laid-back pool builder. He has found love with 30-year-old hospital administrator Bec Pattison. The cherry on top? They’ll welcome their first child together – a boy – in July this year.
“As corny as it sounds – and I never thought I’d think this or say this, because I’m not really that kind of a bloke – but as soon as I met [Pattison], there was this ridiculous feeling that came over me,” he says.
She had arrived at his door for their first date and Pitman says he knew instantly he’d found the girl for him. “I was like, ‘ Wow!’ ” he says. “I’d heard that, and you hear it in movies – but I was always like, ‘That’s got to be the biggest load of s--t.’ But it was exactly like that. I was like, ‘I have got to make this work.”
The couple have been together a little less than a year, and know it’s all happened quickly. But as Pitman wrote in his Instagram post announcing the impending birth of their son, “When you know, you know.”
“We met on a night out nine years ago and reconnected on social media last year in March,” says Pattison, who works on the maternity ward of a Melbourne hospital.“i couldn’t be happier or more in love right now.”
Pitman admits he felt hesitant about dipping a toe back into the dating scene after his stint on MAFS. “People wanted to know me for all the wrong reasons,” he says. “I know this is going to sound like I’m full of myself, but it is the absolute truth. People want to come up and they want to be seen with you, or to hang out with you, just so they can then get some kind of hype or recognition out of it.”
Pitman says it was easy to get caught up in the craziness surrounding his “two minutes” of fame. “You are only human, so you go along with it for a while,” he says, but he longed for something more. “I was more interested in the people who didn’t want to get to know me because I did the show,” he says. “It was hard.” Enter Pattison. Although she’d watched parts of his series – “She recognised me when I was on and was like, ‘I remember that guy!” says Pitman – it wasn’t until after they’d got together that she watched it properly.
“She was blown away [about] how I got made out,” Pitman says. “[I was totally different] to what she knew after only two to three months.”
So is he a different person? “To a point,” Pitman says. “I think I am still the same person – and I don’t think I am the person I got portrayed to be. “At the same time, I reckon I have learnt a lot about life, and about myself as well, and mental health – the whole thing.”
Pitman says he’s happy to have found his perfect match with Pattison, who is now 15 weeks’ pregnant. And he can’t wait to embark on this next stage of his life. “The way I feel about her, even the first day I saw her, it’s ridiculous,” he says. “I never thought I could feel like that about anyone – I didn’t think it was real.”
So, what about marriage? Is it a case of once bitten, twice shy? “Yeah, for me, it’s definitely something I would want to do with Bec,” he admits.
Pattison’s in it for the long haul, too. “I’m so excited for this next chapter with Jono,” she says. “He’s going to be the best dad.”