Lydia Plath Says Brothers’ Judgment of Zac Wyse Was ‘Beyond’ Brotherly Love (Exclusive)

Lydia Plath is standing by husband Zac Wyse.

The couple announced their engagement to the Plath family at the three month mark of their relationship and got married after six months of knowing each other. When they were met with a negative reaction from Lydia’s brothers, she tells PEOPLE she was disappointed by the lack of support.

“One of the harder things in realizing the reasons why some of my family is having a hard time accepting the timeline, accepting the fact, all the things, was that I don’t know how well some of them truly know me and the reasons why I do things and how I go about relationships,” Lydia, 21, explains. 

“So then Zac comes along and they don’t know the story that’s brought me here,” she continues. “And so then they just have questions. And that was hard for me to realize like, ‘Oh, I don’t think they know how I go about dating in the first place.’”

Both Zac and Lydia say that they weren’t surprised by the pushback, but rather the unwillingness to get to know Zac.

“I think we had this expectation that they were going to be protective because of the short timeline,” he says. “So I think that was a big oversight into just understanding some of the reactions. But it was definitely a shock to see some of their reactions, knowing I’m really trying to get to know them. I’m giving them opportunities to step in and ask the right questions to really know me as a person.”

When Lydia highlights strong “initial judgement” from her brothers, Zac reveals Ethan questioning his sexuality was what threw him off the most.

“Ethan asking if I was gay, at the proposal too, was kind of a shock,” he says. “I’m like, ‘I think there’s plenty of action here that proves that I’m not, so that’s kind of ironic.’”

Zac says that over time, Lydia’s family has “really started to get to know me,” which is “encouraging” for him now that he’s part of the family. Still, he admits that he was “hurt” when he wasn’t accepted earlier on.

“There was a bit of sorrow in terms of like, ‘Well, I wish this time was used to get to know me instead of bully me and kind of pick at me,’” he shares. “I know there’s definitely the brotherly love initiative.”

“They took it beyond,” Lydia chimes in, to which Zac adds: “Yeah, they definitely took it beyond in a lot of ways. But again, we don’t want to really talk ill will about them, because there is some understanding of their protectiveness. And in due time they have come around in ways that we’ve appreciated, too. So, that’s been that.”

Although they are now in a better place, Lydia says she is not going to watch their wedding day on Welcome to Plathville after tension over her marriage and frustration with brother Micah’s girlfriend led to a series of incidents that ended in a physical altercation.

“I’m not going to watch the wedding episode, because I know that there was a lot of drama that was going on between four people,” Lydia explains. “So we have our wedding video, and we have the 120 people that were fully supporting us, and we don’t need to go watch it with the four people who weren’t.”

“That morning we just woke up and we were like, ‘Okay, it’s been a journey, it’s been a ride, but we are choosing joy,’” she adds. “And that’s what we chose. And from my perspective, I saw no drama, no tension, no anything throughout the day. I had a peaceful wedding day.”

Zac notes: “We both did.”

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Welcome to Plathville airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.