Season Four of Love is Blind comes out today, and with that, the question that the show is predicated upon arises once more.
Can romantic love be blind?
There are a lot of layers to answering this, but I’ll begin with the reasons it very much can be.
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Yes, love is blind!
As psychologist Nancy Sokarno put it: “Emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical are the types of intimacy needed to develop and foster a sense of connection in any type of relationship. So three of those are all based on communication and don’t require physical touching. Building emotional intimacy virtually first gives you the chance to get to know someone on a deeper level before you meet in person.”
Years ago I drove for Lyft, and at times my experiences with passengers, due to the fact that I couldn’t see them while driving, felt similar to the pods on Love is Blind. I parted ways with some knowing quite intimate details about them. It made me wonder if the conversations people have when they can’t see each other lead some to become… more themselves?
CW Headley wrote in a Psychology Today article of a character for whom “not being face-to-face allowed [her] to be more introspective, more vulnerable, and more willing to accept others’ opinions without immediately dismissing them.”
There’s also the truth that time, mere exposure, and fondness on a friendship level can lead to physical attraction even if there wasn’t much at the start. In the movie Don Juan, Don (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets a recently widowed woman. The woman doesn’t instantly attract him; in fact, Don initially seems a bit put off by her forthright interest. Over time though, a genuine and gradual romantic connection forms.
Or maybe you’ve been friends with a person for years and suddenly begin seeing them in a new light, or realize you want to date them. This seems to have happened with Jo Koy and Chelsea Handler, who’d had a friendship for twenty years before they dated. She describes their relationship as one of the deepest and strongest she’s had, and that Jo Koy loved her in a way she’d never realized was possible.
As psychologist Lisa Marie Bobby put it: “There’s a reason why sometimes long-term friends turn into true loves, and that’s because even though the crazy chemistry and spark wasn’t there in the beginning, it formed over time the more they got to know each other.”
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Why a slow burn can be healthy
With online dating, I’ve felt like we’re all to an extent boiled down by each other (perhaps unwittingly) to something that’s not quite our true essence. What feels closer to the truth is that some have more charismatic and relaxed representatives, self-marketers, or personal brand managers than others. A prospective partner’s first date behavior doesn’t always predict how they would actually function or treat you in the context of a long-term committed relationship.
Lust can also at times blind us to incompatibility. I think about how a woman and I jumped into a relationship very quickly one summer. I was caught up in the rush of the moment — but when you took away those endorphins, we didn’t have a whole lot in common intellectually, or on a values level. De-emphasizing the physical gives a chance to really key in to the soul of the person in front of you.
“So often we cut the dating process short because it doesn’t ‘feel’ right in the beginning,” Dr. Klapow told Elite Daily. “But it’s possible that as you come to know the person, and they come to know you, it may feel right. Time can build connections.”
When it comes to slow burn versus instant attraction, one isn’t necessarily better or “more real” than the other. And in the context of a long-term relationship, it makes little difference if the attraction was there right at the start (present on date one), or took a few dates (or time as friends first) to materialize.
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Good points, but I still don’t fully buy the premise…
That’s fair. I mean, physical attraction is important. It’s not shallow or superficial to need this in your relationship. And at a certain baseline level (to some extent), for many people it’s either there or it’s not.
The romantic in me has wondered, if two people could fall in love in through letters in You’ve Got Mail without ever laying eyes upon each other, why can’t it happen in this day and age? But maybe the general consensus these days is that You’ve Got Mail was unrealistic. Maybe a 2023 rewrite would be for the two to meet and Meg Ryan to say, “Oh… you know I actually don’t feel a spark, but we could be friends.”
Getting to know a person without face to face time also runs the risk of inadvertently entangling in a fantasy connection— when you’re in a relationship with an idea of a person more than with an actual person. You see only the other person’s positive light and curated side, never their shadow — which allows you to idealize them. This can set you up for disappointment and disillusionment when the more complex, fleshed-out person finally does confront you.
Inside the pods, most of what daters choose to show prospective partners are only glimpses of imperfections. And they’re the manageable, innocuous, easy-to-accept, and perhaps even endearing types —or as Leslie Jamison described it, the “intimacy of two curated selves culled from the mess of two actual selves.”
Short, boundaried interactions keep people from the parts that might invite rejection. From inside the pods, the daters can’t hurt each other — because people can only hurt you once you’ve risked exposure. Once you’ve granted full entry. Actual in-the-flesh moments shared reveal the cracks. They lay bare the undesirable aspects of personalities that previously, each was able to occlude.
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The verdict?
Romantic love subsists off some balance of both emotional connection and lust. But what I like about the idea behind Love is Blind is that it helps re-envision connection as a co-creation, or cultivation process — rather than a package that arrives instantly.
We get to remember that our own attitude, openness, and individual efforts contribute to engendering the desired experience. And that with this mindset, attraction and love could very well sneak up on us.
Maybe love isn’t blind then. Maybe it’s just stealthy.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Photo by author(Eleni Stephanides)
