“We’ve tried to start a relationship time and time again, but she’s delusional,” Codie Lea tells WHO.
“We invited her to our very first Christmas get-together and she declined.”
In fact, Laurelle went as far as to disown Nathan. “She wrote me a letter and gave it to a friend to drop off. It said I was no longer her son,” he explains.
It’s no secret Laurelle and Codie Lea have vied for Nathan’s attention for years, which has kept them at odds, but at this stage, it’s also broken the bond between mother and son.
“We were close, but we’ve been on and off since I was about 12. It was over foolish stuff,” Nathan says.
Despite the stress of the family friction, mining industry FIFO worker Nathan reveals his main motivation for joining Bride & Prejudice was to mend his relationship with his mother before he and his fiancée tie the knot.
“Our biggest challenge has to be that she won’t let me go,” he says. “I’m somebody else’s man and I have my own family now – she’s just a control freak.”
In the first episode of the reality series, Laurelle broke down in tears as she reunited with her son after months of silence. The trio has begun a series of exercises with a counsellor in a bid to solve their deep-rooted issues.
“I’ll do what it takes to see my granddaughter, but I’m not going to bow down to a 21-year-old plastic bitch,” Laurelle said.
Codie Lea believes Laurelle is jealous of the relationship Nathan has with her family, which has further triggered their rift.
“She’s delusional,” Codie Lea says. “My family has always supported us on everything we do. They let us make our own choices and, if we fail, they’re there to pick us up. And that’s the way a family should be.”
The Gold Coast-based hairdresser is angered by her future mother-in-law’s complaints about being absent from her granddaughter’s life.
“If you want us to have a relationship, you wouldn’t have made an exit from our lives,” Codie Lea says. “I don’t fall for any of that kind of stuff – I see straight through it. It’s not that hard to pick up the phone and contact us. Don’t use my daughter – that makes me angry. She’s full of s--t.”
Even so, Laurelle has made the effort to repair her bond with her son.
“She didn’t want to go on the show,” Nathan says. “And then I told her that maybe we could fix our relationship.”
Codie Lea agrees that Bride & Prejudice could be the family’s last chance, adding, “I thought, ‘Maybe therapy would help, maybe if other people explain it to her and show her a way she might understand where I’m coming from.’ I genuinely don’t see where she’s coming from half the time because of her crazy accusations about me.”
One accusation that Laurelle made was that Codie Lea had cheated on Nathan.
“I knew that was 100 per cent bulls--t,” Nathan says. “We did think she’d bring this out, whether I was the one that was cheating or Codie. My mother loves drama. She thinks she’s in Home and Away.”
