Ethan Plath finally agreed to sign his and Olivia Plath’s divorce papers on the latest Welcome to Plathville episode — but only after writing her a letter.
“I don’t understand how you can move on so easily after seven years,” Ethan, 26, told Olivia, also 26, in the Tuesday, August 13, episode after she landed in Minnesota to clean out her things from their shared apartment.
Olivia, who currently resides in California, replied, “Who said it was easy? Because it wasn’t.”
Ethan admitted he didn’t “understand” how Olivia could close the chapter on their marriage so quickly as he still struggled nine months into their separation. “I feel stuck and for the life of me I can’t seem to do anything about it,” he said. “But you don’t have that problem.”
Olivia and Ethan announced their divorce in October 2023 after five years of marriage. Throughout the first few episodes of Welcome to Plathville season 6, Olivia has been trying to get Ethan to sign their divorce documents, but he has been dragging his feet.
“It feels frustrating for me because I don’t I don’t feel like Ethan understands,” Olivia told the cameras. “It’s been, like, a few years worth of watching the relationship die and, like, fighting to save it and not being able to and then just finally accepting it and moving on.”
She noted, “It’s been nine months since we said we were done,” and Ethan hadn’t come to terms with the finality of everything.
“Olivia, did I ever tell you that that morning that I unloaded on you [and] told you everything that I couldn’t stand anymore? I didn’t think that that would be the end of us,” Ethan confessed. “I really thought that we would fight about it for like a week and then we would start working on it.”
Olivia wasn’t surprised by Ethan’s logic, telling him, “Yeah, well, you kind of did that a lot. And you might have said that we were done because I wouldn’t get back on your page and thought that that would blow over. But I finally took your words at face value.”
As Olivia continued to pack up her things, Ethan decided to leave their apartment and get fresh air.
“It’s hard to see Ethan in this much pain and struggling this much with everything, but I spent years logged down in stress and being on the other side of things,” Olivia said in a confessional. “I’ve realized that I felt more alone when I was in a relationship than I do being by myself.”
While looking through old photos of the couple, Olivia revealed that she wouldn’t change their past. “I think life is learned by experiences and if I were to tell myself not to experience this out of self-preservation because the end is painful or hard, then I would have missed out on a lot,” she shared.
Ethan, for his part, chose to write Olivia a letter expressing his true feelings about the end of their marriage after she packed up her boxes.
“I basically wrote in my note that I was sorry for all the ways that I fell short in our relationship that brought us to this point and I hope that she finds what I couldn’t or didn’t give her,” he told the cameras.
Ethan explained that he does “wish her the best” and continues to “love her,” despite their split. In his apology note he wrote, “If there’s anything that she ever needs, I’ll help her as best I can.”
He revealed the letter was his “way of letting her go,” or at the very least, “It’s my attempt to try and let her go.”
Ethan signed the divorce papers the following day, telling viewers, “I definitely do feel like me and Olivia grew up together. We stepped out in the world together on our own. We gave it a good run, but not everything works.”
Welcome to Plathville airs on TLC Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
