Patrick Mendes doesn’t want his marriage to Thais Ramone to end up like things did with his ex-wife.
His family has similar concerns, and meeting Thais has not really changed those.
On the latest 90 Day Fiance, viewers got to meet Patrick’s mother for the first time.
Suddenly, a lot of his personal hang-ups that he has displayed this season make a lot more sense.
Paula is Patrick’s mother.
We have met two of Patrick’s brothers and now his sister, but his mother was a fixture in his life.
From the earliest episodes of this season, Patrick explained how this complicated relationship has shaped him.
“My dad and my mom divorced when I was seven,” Patrick shared early during Season 9.
“Once he was gone,” he explained, “my mom had to raise four kids on her own.”
Patrick explained that he felt that he struggled to receive positive attention from his mother.
“I know she tried her best, but, I mean, she was bipolar,” Patrick noted.
“And,” he shared, Paula “struggled with drug addiction.”
Patrick then admitted that “It got really bad to the point where, you know, she was losing her job.”
He and his siblings grew up in poverty, something that impacts his buying habits and state of mind to this day.
Memorably, Patrick clashed with Thais over decorating the colorless void of his home because he was uncomfortable making the change.
But Patrick found a sense of control and success while training as a weightlifter, and soon prepared for the Olympics.
Patrick trained for the Olympics. He met his first girlfriend, who would go on to become his first wife.
His Olympian dreams came to an end when testers found two forbidden substances in his blood.
Patrick’s 8-year suspension from weightlifting forced a career change. According to him, it also ultimately cost him his first marriage.
After his divorce, Patrick invited his brother, John, to come and live with him.
He told the cameras that he wanted emotional support and to share the house with someone.
Many fans suspect that Patrick is putting a positive spin on giving his brother a home and a job. John’s clearly a lot.
Little by little, Patrick has mended fences with previously estranged or at least distant family members.
That includes his mother, Paula.
In fact, that relationship is so important that he wanted to make sure that Paula and Thais meet before the wedding.
“I want to bring Thais to Massachusetts before the wedding because this is where I was born,” Patrick explained.
“And my mom and older sister, Tiffany, still live here,” he detailed.
Patrick then added: “I’ve been really open, um, to Thais about my relationship with my mom.”
“And right before the pandemic, we found out that she had some type of lung cancer,” Patrick revealed.
Grimly, he added: According to the doctors, she has less than a year to live.”
Patrick confessed: “It’s been hard accepting [the cancer diagnosis] because there’s been years where I didn’t even talk to my mother.”
“I’m happy that we’ve been able to rebuild our relationship,” Patrick affirmed.
“We’ve talked about a lot of our issues,” he shared. “We’ve forgiven each other.”
Patrick continued: “And I know she can’t travel to Orlando, so I think she’s really going to be happy to meet Thais.”
Having met Thais, however, Paula felt that Patrick and Thais were not quite ready to marry — not on the K-1 visa’s deadline.
“I’ve been married four times myself,” she shared. “And Patrick … unfortunately, he’s taking after his mother.”
Paula certainly shaped Patrick into who he is today. In some ways, he is very much like her. In others, he is deliberately the opposite.
90 Day Fiance Introduces Patrick Mendes’ Mom and Suddenly It All Makes Sense was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip .