Key Takeaways
- Catie Norboe admitted kissing three people at a New Year’s Eve party and said the encounter with her running-club crush might have gone further if husband Josh Atkins had not intervened.
- Norboe told Atkins, “I can do whatever I want,” then cried, stormed offstage, and said she did not know whether she wanted to remain married.
- After previously linking her drunken kissing to OCD, Norboe rejected criticism from an OCD specialist and castmates who instead questioned her relationship with alcohol.
Catie Norboe spent the 90 Day Fiancé tell-all laughing about cheating on her husband, crying when the room stopped laughing with her, and storming off after being asked whether she wanted to remain married. It was an astonishing display of peak Karen nonsense from a woman who admitted kissing three people at one party—then behaved as though everyone else’s refusal to comfort her was the real offense.
“On New Year’s Eve, I was bad,” Norboe said with a smile, casually revealing that she had made out with four people just months after marrying Josh Atkins. According to The New York Post, her castmates responded with stony silence as Atkins said he was “disappointed” by her continued boundary-crossing.
When castmate Edward suggested Atkins was too nice, Norboe snapped that her husband was “not that nice.”
Then host Shaun Robinson asked whether partying might be the actual problem, and the tears arrived. “Everyone thinks I’m a bad person,” Norboe sobbed. “I don’t like this.”
Her friend Danica soon made the situation look even worse. According to Danica, Norboe invited a crush from her running club to the couple’s rooftop New Year’s Eve party and kissed him twice, including once in full view of Atkins.
After Danica intervened, Norboe allegedly chugged champagne and kissed two more guests—a female friend and Robert, a man in his 50s.
Atkins revealed that he also caught his wife heading toward the bathroom with her running-club crush and had to order the man to leave. When asked whether the encounter could have progressed beyond kissing if Atkins hadn’t stepped in, Norboe admitted it might have.
Instead of reckoning with that admission, Norboe went on the attack. “I can do whatever I want,” she told Atkins. “I don’t have to listen to you!”
She insisted that she wanted to “be young” and “live my life,” then burst into tears and yelled, “I don’t know!” when her castmates asked whether she even wanted to be married.
The confrontation was the payoff to a season of Norboe attempting to explain her drunken kissing through obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD specialist Alegra Kastens previously challenged that portrayal of a legitimate mental disorder.
“People with OCD do not act on their intrusive thoughts,” Kastens said. “They perform excessive and time-consuming compulsions to prevent the thoughts from coming true.”
In true Karen fashion, Norboe accused experts of “discounting [her] OCD” based on a “highly edited” reality show. She acknowledged that watching herself drunk was “bad,” but maintained that the series had reduced years of compulsions and repetitive “mind loops” to her habit of making out with people.
Even Norboe’s friend Ryan had already pointed toward alcohol instead. “I’m kind of worried about your relationship with alcohol,” he told her earlier in the season, noting that “drunk Catie does things that sober Catie regrets a lot.” Norboe agreed—until agreement required sustained accountability.
That pattern continued at the tell-all. Norboe told Atkins, “I don’t enjoy being together, sorry. I think I do better on my own,” before walking offstage and collapsing into a producer’s arms.
All that was missing was the smelling salts and the fainting couch.
Backstage, she dropped any remaining pretense of remorse: “I don’t care if I make out with people; it’s fine. I don’t want to talk to any of them ever again.”
