Can Love Be Blind?

I remember when Love is Blind premiered in 2020. It was a few weeks before the world shut down and my Instagram For You page was flooded with both memes from the show and information about COVID-19. At first, I didn’t watch it, because I already had numerous TV shows I liked to watch and didn’t want to spend an entire weekend sucked into another show.

Then, in March, once I found myself isolated in my apartment, I decided to see what all of the fuss was about.

Like everyone else, I found it to be a compelling show. The premise was interesting, but moreover, the journey the couple made to the altar was even more exciting. It was clever to have strangers meet and fall in love over 10 days and then to send them on a fast-track to marriage over the next six weeks. The drama, the intensity, and the emotions, naturally, became heightened, which then made for a great TV show.

Two couples from season one said “I Do” and are still married today, seven years after it was filmed. As the seasons and years have passed, however, the show has suffered from what I like to call influenceritis, a condition that causes the program to be lessened in both quality and authenticity, because participants are motivated by exposure more than the premise of the show itself. A similar fate has happened to The Bachelor franchise, as many contestants hope to leave with tens of thousands of Instagram followers, that they can then monetize into a career as an influencer, or to grow an existing brand/account/following they already have. 

Many of the individuals who’ve been casted on LIB in later seasons have had sketchy pasts, been accused of predatory and abusive behavior by past partners, even having secret families that they’ve tried to peddle off as ‘sperm donor babies.’ There’s been no shortage of clout chasers who have made appearances on the show, clearly not interested in love, or only interested in it so long as it buys them more screen time. As a result, the relationships have seemed less and less authentic and more and more calcuated.

All of this has distracted the audience from the original premise of the show: is love blind? Can you fall in love with someone, before ever knowing what they look like? Can talking through a wall lead to an emotional connection that can be strong enough to lead to marriage in six weeks?

This is something I’ve always believed was a solid ‘maybe.’ There’s plenty of science showing that romantic love is an amalgam of physical and emotional compatibility. Love and attraction contain a very real physical component, as our bodies unconsciously assess potential partners for their mate value and procreation potential. This happens through bodily cues, such as flush cheeks, full lips, and height, that suggest reproductive fitness, as well as individual bodily chemistry and genetic compatibility, that is facilitated through pheromones. Of course, love is not purely physical though, as anyone knows who was initially drawn to someone’s appearance and then discovered they had absolutely nothing in common. Values, familial background, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status are documented markers of attraction and influences of long-term partnership. 

A show like Love is Blind approaches dating from the opposite direction than happens in life; a connection is assessed on an emotional basis, rather than a physical one. Even if you have deep conversations with someone on a first date, typically you don’t get to the date before seeing the other person and subconsciously accepting or rejecting their interest based on their appearance.

As we’ve seen over the seasons, this experiment has many potential endings. Sometimes, two people form an emotional connection in the pods and go on to have a physical connection in the real world. Other times, the couple doesn’t find themselves physically attracted to their partner after they are revealed and they break up. Also, there are times when two people don’t commit to each other in the pods but then meet in group scenarios afterwards and then begin a relationship. We could do a statistical analysis of all of the endings, but we can take a shortcut and look at the number of marriages that have happened as a result of the show: 13. 11 of those couples are still together today, which, in my view, is a pretty good success ratio.

Now, we all know there are many couples who met in the pods and did not make it to the altar. That speaks to the other realms and dimensions of compatibility, beyond even the physical and emotional. In many cases, there was cheating, there were lies, and there were differences that couldn’t be overcome. There have been ruptures that couldn’t be repaired and even one couple who split, only for the man to realize he had chosen the wrong person in the pods and went onto marry and have a daughter with her (I’m looking at you, Zach and Bliss).

My point is, there are many outcomes that occur, once the emotional connections are formed in the pods and couples meet and continue their lives in the real world. Is love blind? No. But, is it possible to form a loving relationship, to even fall in love enough to build a marriage off of that love? Yes. Yes, it is. 

That is why the show is so compelling (even when it’s boring, like Season 8 is).