Warning: this story contains spoilers from season 2 of The Ultimatum: Queer Love.
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Magan Mourad is opening about the emotional and physical toll of taking part in The Ultimatum: Queer Love.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive preview of the What’s the Reality? podcast, Magan and her fiancée Dayna Mathews open up about navigating their time on season 2 of the hit Netflix show. During the experiment, Magan had a trial marriage with Haley Drexler while Dayna partnered up with Mel Vitale before they ultimately reunited and got engaged.
“That’s when the problem started was when we both realized we got separation, we kind of liked it, we’re like s—,” Dayna admits to host Amber Desiree “AD” Smith.
“Yeah, a little bit of freedom,” AD adds.
Melody Timothee/Netflix
For Magan, that freedom came at a cost. She revealed, “I didn’t like it… So nobody knows, I went to the hospital… I thought I was dying.”
Dayna attempts to downplay the situation, teasing, “We have a little bit of a drama queen over here, but it’s okay,” as she rubs Magan’s arm.
When asked why she landed in the hospital, Magan admits that emotional demands of the show became too much.
“I was just trying to hold on even though I know what we signed up for,” she says, to which Dayna adds, “It’s not what you imagined it to be like either.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Magan tearfully reveals that she did “not want to let” go of her now-fiancée during the experiment.
“It’s just hard because you love someone so much, and it’s the first time you want to spend your life with someone,” she explains as she tears up. “I don’t want to let you go and just to kind of watch it happen, and like you’re dating other people, and like you’re laughing and you’re having a good time. It hurts, you know?”
The intense filming schedule didn’t help matters for Magan. “I was trying so hard to keep myself together, like I was doing the things that kind of made me feel like myself, like we would have really long days, and they would tell us at midnight, ‘Hey, you got to get up at 7am get ready, blah, blah, blah.’ And then we would finish at like 10 at night,” she shares. “I would work out at 11 at night, every night, just to kind of find that sense of grounding and just remind myself who I am, because that’s what made me feel normal.”
The experiment — which “stripped” the pair of their phones while staying at a hotel for a week — became overwhelming for Magan.
“You gotta have a buddy to literally walk you, use the bathroom, go to the gym, whatever. It removes you from yourself, and it’s like I’m working out, like I work out hard, and I didn’t realize how much energy I was expending,” she recalls. “I just f—— felt so depleted. I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“I started freaking out… I felt like I was having a little bit of low blood pressure, and they insisted on taking me to the hospital,” she concludes. “And like I ended up sleeping in the hospital, like it was a lot.”
Courtesy of Netflix
During the show’s reunion, which debuted on July 2, Magan reflected on the lessons she learned during the experiment — and how she and Dayna plan to move forward as a couple.
“When Dayna and I come together, we have a certain type of energy together. And when her and Mel came together, they had their own type of energy,” she shared. “I also exhibited a different energy than what Dayna and I have with Haley, and we both leaned into it.”
She added: “Now we’re just understanding how to be better partners and what we need individually.”
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Season 2 of The Ultimatum: Queer Love is available to stream on Netflix.
