Olivia Plath isn’t sure how to be single after her divorce from Ethan Plath — especially since he was her first boyfriend.
“Dating after marrying the first guy that you ever even held hands with is wild,” Olivia, 26, confesses in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Tuesday, July 23, episode of Welcome to Plathville.
Olivia was married to Ethan, 26, for five years before they announced their split in October 2023. During the season 6 premiere of Welcome to Plathville, which aired earlier this month, Ethan revealed that he was still struggling to say goodbye. Olivia, however, was confident that divorce was the only path for the pair, but single life is still an adjustment.
“Casual connections are really hard for me,” Olivia says in the clip after talking with her sister Lydia Grace about picking up men at bars. “I don’t know if that’s a residue from how I was raised, but I’m trying to, like, work through that. The learning curve is quite steep.”
Olivia and Lydia Grace, 24, were both raised in a Christian fundamentalism family, which has left both of them trying to figure out how to date organically. (Olivia told Teen Vogue in April that her religious upbringing is something she would “call a cult,” partially due to the organization’s patriarchal gender norms and strict guidelines for women.)
Although Olivia is hesitant to jump back into the dating pool, her sister has seemingly embraced casual romances.
“You don’t have to get married to have sex. I don’t think [that] anymore,” Lydia Grace tells Olivia in the clip after her big sister points out the “extra-large” box of condoms in her room. “We’re experimenting. We’re figuring it out.”
Olivia, meanwhile, isn’t sure she can be so nonchalant after being married. “I don’t know how you go out to bars and, like, you just let guys get that close to you and touch you and buy you drinks,” Olivia says, to which Lydia Grace assures she’ll just have to “set some boundaries.”
Olivia and Lydia Grace are two of 10 children, many of whom are still being raised by their conservative parents in Virginia. The sisters have moved on with their own lives — Olivia is in California, while Lydia Grace is in Arizona — and they are slowly finding their way together.
“I can’t wait for you to come visit for a week. And we’ll do some fun stuff,” Lydia Grace tells her sister. Olivia asks, “Is fun stuff going out to the bars?” before agreeing to be her sibling’s “wing woman.”
Lydia Grace teases that she’ll “take you dancing with the cowboys,” but Olivia just calls her “crazy.”
“Olivia and I just have very different approaches to dating. And I’ve told her a lot of stories so far and sometimes she’s shocked, sometimes she laughs, sometimes she’s horrified,” Lydia Grace reveals in her confessional, noting that while she doesn’t want a relationship, Olivia is still on the hunt for “a soulmate” and “someone that will treat her like the queen that she is.”
Welcome to Plathville airs on TLC Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
