Learning the reality of marriage

If any couple was ever made to be on Marriage Boot Camp, it's Shaun and Sofia Sulligan.

She meets the essential prerequisite as a battle-scarred veteran of Bridezillas. That's the long-running reality show that captures (some would say catapults) women into thermonuclear meltdowns in the days leading up to their weddings.

And Shaun? Well, he's a brash bodybuilder from Philadelphia. And Marriage Boot Camp (9 p.m. Friday on WE) likes that profile, after getting a big boost last season from the antics of Rob Maaddi, the muscular Associated Press sportswriter from Mantua, and his wife Remy.

The Sulligans could certainly use some of the intensive couples counseling that is part and parcel of the show, as five sets of turbulent spouses, all Bridezillas survivors, move into a communal house with therapists Jim and Elizabeth Carroll.

"I don't think our relationship has ever been smooth," concedes Sofia, 26.

"We've had our ups and downs," adds Shaun, 30. "A lot of downs."

"Both of them came to Boot Camp with very little skill training," says Elizabeth Carroll. "They simply didn't see marriage done well in their own families."

The Carrolls have previous reality-show experience of their own. On the sixth season of Gene Simmons Family Jewels, they were recruited to help Simmons and Shannon Tweed smooth over some of their more glaring problems before their made-for-TV wedding.

The producers were so impressed with the Carrolls' work that they asked if the pair would be interested in collaborating on a Bridezillas spinoff. "I asked, 'What's a Bridezilla?' " recalls Jim. "When it was explained to me, I said, 'I guess we'll have our hands full.' "

The Sulligans certainly qualify as a handful.

Shaun, who grew up in Upper Darby and went to Monsignor Bonner High School, works for the City Avenue bike patrol, a merchant-funded group that helps to deter crime along the boundary between Lower Merion Township and Philadelphia. Sofia, a native Philadelphian who grew up speaking Ukrainian, runs her own marketing business.

They met in 2009. "We would see each other at bars often," he says. "We became intrigued by each other."

"It was like The Breakfast Club," she says. "Shaun used to be the Judd Nelson character, the rebel bad boy. I was Molly Ringwald, very proper."

The idea of submitting themselves as candidates for Bridezillas last year was his, a decision about which she still has mixed feelings.

"It's actually a pretty cool experience," she says. "You do have something most people don't: another video of your wedding. And you get to see all the preparations.

"But it's frustrating too, because they try to figure out what makes you tick. I'm not a nasty person. I'm a crier. I'm very emotional. They try to figure out how to get the worst out of you, to make you look like a terrible human being."

The lingering image of Sofia from Bridezillas is of her in her wedding gown outside the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Northern Liberties, furiously wishing death on one of the show's producers.

So why would they sign up for another dunking in the reality-TV fishbowl only a few months later?

"I had seen the first season of Marriage Boot Camp and saw what it can be," Sofia says. "I told [Shaun] for a long time we should talk to someone" about our problems. "I'm a firm believer in the fact that you don't have to be crazy to go to therapy."

So how was camp, kids?

"The hardest part?" Sofia asks rhetorically. "The hardest part was everything. Every single day. You go to sleep thinking, 'Ah, now I can relax,' then you realize, 'I have to wake up in five hours and do it again' without knowing what the challenges the next day will be."

"You have to tap into emotions you don't want to tap into," Shaun says. "I'm talking about crying. It's physically draining."

In fact, the footage of them confronting issues such as trust, intimacy, and anger is so raw that both are more concerned about how the public will react this time around.

"Yeah, Bridezillas has nothing on this," Shaun says. "On Marriage Boot Camp, you're exposing all your deepest secrets and emotions."

But was it worth it? Did their time in the house bring them closer?

Laughing, Sofia will allow only that they are ready now for their third reality series: Sofia and Shaun: Still Together?

Marriage Boot Camp

9 p.m. Friday on WEEndText

215-854-4552 @daveondemand_tv