Is Love Really Blind?

Is Love Really Blind?

As I watch, and a lot of people on Netflix are watching Love is Blind. I ask myself, Is love really blind? I am on Season 3. If you have not seen this series, I highly suggest you start with Season 1. This is going to be a blog series as I discuss how we go from the beginning of love to love when real life hits. I am not going to lie, it is so sweet in the beginning watching people fall for each other. Because I am all about this love thing.

I have been in love many times throughout my life, and I love the feeling of being in love. I love it especially because the feeling of being loved is something even I have longed for all my life, and sincere genuine love feels SO good. Right now in the show, I am watching where they are getting to know each other, and really starting to learn each other outside of the controlled setting of the pod.

As we go through the beginning of the series we see that love IS blind. We see love at this stage in our hearts and not in our heads. Our person can do no wrong until our head steps in. You are so “blinded” by love that you cannot see any of your lover’s flaws. We all love this stage. I have learned to enjoy it, but my love gets stronger for a person after our first disagreement, after I see behaviors and habits I don’t like. At this point, I choose to love a person or love a person more. Love is a choice. It’s easy to love when everything is good. How blind is love when things are hard?

When Reality Hits

It is so easy to block out red flags and character flaws. Sometimes when you are in the love is blind stage, you may note certain red flags and flaws to give a person the benefit of the doubt. Tony Robbins talks about loving from the heart. He explains it this way, “What would make my partner happy? What would turn them on? I am going to go to the ends of the earth to find out – and I’m going to have fun doing it. I’m going to have fun learning about them and enjoy exploring all kinds of things together. I’m going to feel alive, I’m going to make this relationship perfect.”

When you are loving from your heart, in the “blind” stage, you don’t think about how much you are giving, and you don’t create ideals of how your partner doesn’t match up to the perfect partner in your mind. Until your head kicks in. Logic and reasoning is here. Rabbi Julius Gordon said, “Love is not blind. It sees more and not less, but because it sees more, it is willing to see less.”

Now, What Does the Head Have to Say?

“I wonder what they’re going to do for me for my birthday. I planned such a great day for their birthday, and they loved it. But they haven’t even mentioned my birthday yet this year. What if they forget completely? Like they forgot to congratulate me when I got that promotion. Or like how they forget even the little things, like the fact that I don’t like ginger. How can I have a partner who doesn’t know I don’t like ginger?!”

At this point, the rules that you’ve made up in your head about how a partner will behave, what your relationship will be like and what you deserve have completely overtaken all of the positive emotions you had before when your love was still blind. Things our partner does are no longer thrilling. Their flaws are no longer “cute.” Instead, their flaws become annoying when love is no longer blind.

Is Love Really Blind? How Hard Does Reality Hit?

When we start to let the little things stack up, we begin feeling resentment or built-up tension toward our partners. We start to punish our partners for their flaws.  That can escalate into a series of rejections that become toxic or abrasive – and ultimately simmers into a general feeling of repression, or learned helplessness, where you lower your expectations so much that you no longer feel any needs being met in the relationship. When this happens, you turn to other outlets for your love and attention, like your work, children, friend group or hobbies or even worse another person.

As you watch the show, you will see the couples express their head starting to talk when everyone meets one another in Episode 4: Meet the Exes. In this episode, you start seeing a little buyer’s remorse. Cole especially sees this when he talks about Zanab being passive-aggressive and how he has to adjust from the person in the pod to the real-life Zanab.

TV and social media have us caught up on a Disney love fairytale, and while great for tv, all of these love stories actually keep us blind. The problem with that is now in a lot of relationships we get blind-sided, or more so knocked upside the head. As we get deeper into the series, we will talk about what to do when we get blindsided.

In the meantime, if you are struggling with figuring out how to tackle some things that may be holding you back in your relationship, let’s talk.