Going Blind for Love

Leave the men who ruin your lives (it's not hot)

Most women I know will not openly say that they hate themselves and deserve to suffer.

They will just date and marry like it.

I occasionally get asked why on a TikTok account about the impact of race and gender beliefs I cover very seriously the Netflix show Love Is Blind.

With this show, Netflix cracked a particular blend of adventure, mess, and drama around American relationships.

Producers promise to remove the social factors that prevent “true love” from and then throw the lovers back into the real world to test that love the contestants would have otherwise missed.

Is it edited? Yes. Is it edited from hours and hours of actual conversations? Also yes. And what do we learn in those conversations?

What people want!

Over and over again in this show, we see people betraying what they really want for the passing hit of affirmation or the chance to be perceived as valuable and wanted by others.

It’s why we can’t stop watching!

It is too easy to look at what these contestants do and scoff at with the advantage of a 360 camera angle. It is much harder to realize we do the same with our audience of friends and family.

This is why we have to talk about these TV choices that while perhaps seem “fake” are grounded in a shared reality of social caste and prejudice.

If the goal is to simply be married by a certain age so society doesn’t see you as a sad, dried-up single woman, you can lose out on a mutually fulfilling partnership.

If the goal is to be perceived as one who is chosen, you might not qualify WHO is choosing you all that hard.

If the goal is to keep up with the timeline of people you see on social media, you might settle for the appearance of a good relationship you can edit and curate online.

This is a massive betrayal of the self AND the women who slaved away to create an American society where women have political, social, emotional, and economic liberation as full human beings.

I suggest that we should starve out the relationships in which emotionally immature, lazy, and selfish men thrive. This is a political act. It is an assertion and affirmation of what civil rights leaders and the foremothers staked their lives on: That we are valuable people with dignity made in the image of God.

You can find a way to love anyone and anything. But love should not be blind to the way power and time and resources move in society.

Women used to have no choice but to hand over their labor, their time, their bodies, and their mental energy to men. Now we are not compelled by the law, but by romantic philosophies and the allure of being “chosen”. Men do not have to force us, they just have to “choose” us as their loves.

I declare this devious! I suggest we collectively scram!

A caveat, because I do not have time to address a bunch of disgruntled emails this week: If my love were to fall from a deer hunting perch and need to be wheeled around forever and never work again best believe you would all see me on television grinding out a host job or working at a gas station while going back to school so I could feed and shelter us.

Tragedy withstanding, I am for a partnership where we all give our all. Sometimes in a season, it’s 30-70 and sometimes it’s 50-50. Life is not equal or even, and in relationships with humans we bind ourselves up as one.

Alas, this is the sentiment that entitled people socialized to believe that women exist to carry them through life and give until they are shells of themselves manipulated so well.

This particularly irritates me because we just got (kind of) free. We do not need to be handing back our ability to make the money we want, have the lives and hobbies we like, and have the mental freedom to rest and be loved well.

The Love is Blind contestants do this on a comical level, but when we stop snickering we might realize it is something we see in our own lives.

It’s knowing you want someone capable of caring for children and providing and choosing someone who thinks you should figure it out all on your own.

It’s knowing you are a whole person who enjoys certain things, and choosing someone who belittles those things because they don’t respect you outside of your role as wife or mother.

It’s knowing you don’t want to be a free coach and consultant to a full-grown man, and choosing someone who will take every bit of time, energy, and stress you have so you can manage his life for him.

For the longest time in America, the bodies, minds, time, and emotions of women were seen as infinite resources to be mined for male advancement. That doesn’t just go away in 70 years. That’s something we see everywhere and all the time. You have to value the things society won’t. You have to see those resources as precious gifts to share with a partner who respects them.

You don’t have to march in the streets to open a line of credit, get a house, get a degree, or have a child. But you certainly have to watch for people who still think they are entitled to the whole of your life and your labor.

There is this part in season seven where Hannah is warned by all the other ladies not to go with the smooth-talking Nick who seems obsessed with accessing a sexual relationship, doesn’t have a career plan, and keeping up with his married friends.

Hannah sighs and says she knows she should probably leave him. She talks about how nice it is to hear the things he says, but how he will probably ruin her life.

And then she crumbles when he chooses her. She can’t believe it. It makes her so happy.

And I sat there mouth open in horror because if she had chosen herself, like the foremothers of every political movement to dignify women had, Nick’s choice would seem as cheap as it was.

The women who came before us sacrificed much in choosing our future dignity and respect. Their lives, their time, their freedom, and social status. It costs men like Nick nothing to talk of wanting her and choosing her.

I do not know yet how this season ends. My hope is that we see how deeply serious and political it is to choose a partner to navigate a life that is inextricably linked to a formerly patriarchal society. All relationships are about power, whether that is power surrendered, lent, denied, or weaponized. Another woman who cannot be traced said the men we choose are reflections of what we think we deserve.

I find it deeply brave and inspiring when a woman raised and trained to be content with crumbs gets up and leaves.

It’s also something when a woman walks away from a situation that isn’t hell. When it’s “fine” but doesn’t reflect the depth or worth of her personhood.

There is more to say on this and more episodes to come. You don’t have to fully believe in your worth or dignity just yet (It’s hard when it has been beat out of you) but you can say not this and not today fools.

I’ll see you next week.

Hannah and Marissa, season seven, commiserating ( I think) at some forsaken cocktail party the producers force everyone to attend.