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Alright the “Love is Blind” finale has been out for a while now, and the reunion has aired, so nobody can get mad at me for spoiling anything. I’ll admit that my partner and I got pretty into it. We decided to watch it after a particularly tumultuous dinner with my partner’s in-laws aka my parents, and just needed to watch something easy. “Let’s put on something dumb and mindless,” we said. “Just some background noise,” we insisted. We had no idea how totally invested in the show we would become. It got to the point where if one person tried to speak during the show, the other would give them the be quiet hand and look very irritated. I swear, sometimes when we’re watching Netflix we forget that we can just pause and rewind anytime.
We formed strong opinions about the couples. My boyfriend has a man crush on Barnett and essentially thinks he is perfect. Meanwhile, I could kind of see Barnett being a cheater one day. If he’s loyal to Amber, it’s only for fear she’ll kill him if he cheats! My boyfriend thinks Jessica is evil and immature. I kind of think she’s just someone who wanted to love Mark, because he’s clearly a good dude, and tried to convince herself that she did. Until she just couldn’t anymore. But, yeah, she probably shouldn’t have kept trying to slide up in Barnett’s business after he was already engaged.
Regardless of how invested I got in the microcosm of these individuals’ relationships, the reality is, if we zoom out, get back to the real world, and think about what’s going on, no matter how good any of them seem at the one-year reunion, the odds of those couples staying together is rather slim. Even if we all love Cameron and Lauren. Love sure is blind, as research has shown, but it’s blind in the sense that we are blind to our partner’s flaws when we love them. Including personality flaws, which isn’t great. Here is why it’ll be tough for the “Love Is Blind” couples to stay together.
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Everyone’s great a year in
Okay so Barnett and Amber, and Cameron and Lauren, are still married one year later and seem happy. Please let’s all try to remember that, considering the duration of the show, that means that they’ve still really only known each other for about a year. How many roughly year-long relationships have you had that failed? It’s okay if you’re too embarrassed to answer, but I can tell you I’ve had five. Five. Almost any couple with a base level attraction to each other can make things work for a year. A year isn’t anything.
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The pressure to be right
Nothing can ever change the fact that these couples now live with the pressure to be right. What I mean is that, the tabloids will follow them, waiting for them to fail. So they can’t even work on their relationship under the healthy clarity of just doing it because they want to. There is always that pressure that they want to prove to the media they could do it. So how do they know, when they work through a fight, who that’s really for? Is it for themselves? Or everybody watching them?
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Amber is unstable
Barnett didn’t know it during the taping of the show, but we all saw it. How many times did Amber threaten to scratch someone’s face or beat someone up? She is not well. The woman is scary. What Barnett saw as fiercely loyal and passionate, the rest of us saw as deranged. One day, I believe she may get physically violent with somebody, and Barnett will wonder what he signed up for. She’s promised to do as much, many, many times.
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Barnett will get bored
Amber has seemed exciting and adventurous, but she’s made it pretty clear that she wants to quit working, stay home, and drink wine all day. Translation: Barnett will start coming home to a partner with no life of her own, who has no stories to share of her own, and no passion or drive. It can be hard to feel excited about your partner when they have no life of their own.
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Then there’s the debt
Let’s not all forget that Amber is tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Who do you think gets to take that on? Hard-working Barnett. He may think she’s worth it now when the sex is amazing and everything is exciting. But when she becomes a crazy- possessive, possibly violent alcoholic recluse, that debt may not be very cute anymore.
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They’ve been through nothing
Until a couple has been together for at least three years, I always assume that, at any time, they could break up. People can think it’s strange I ask someone a year into a relationship, “Are you still with so-and-so?” but the thing is, it takes a few years for a few of life’s real problems to come your way, and for a couple to see how their relationship weathers some storms.
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It’s still the honeymoon phase
The couples are still in the honeymoon phase, but few couples survive after that phase. Statistically speaking, most couples don’t work out. Look: every single relationship you have besides the one with your husband will be a failed one. It’s just the truth. When life gets real and problems arise, most couples don’t make it.
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Cameron is sweet but…
I know we all think Cameron is a sweet puppy dog. And he is. But let’s not forget that on his wedding day he said that if Lauren didn’t marry him, he would never recover. Let’s not forget he said early in the show he’s spent every minute of his recent life looking for a wife. The man has some codependency stuff going on! Even the rest of the dudes who were left at the altar said—as any well-adjusted person says—that they’d be okay again one day. But Cameron believed he’d never recover if Lauren left him. Frightening.
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That’s a lot of pressure
While all the adoration may be cute to Lauren right now, what happens when this whirlwind honeymoon phase ends, and she wants some of her own life back? What happens when Cameron has a near heart attack because Lauren wants to go on a girls’ trip and leave him for 48 hours? She’ll start to feel how lost he is without her, and the pressure won’t sit well.
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Lauren is a daddy’s girl
Even though it seems that Cameron is ready to face Lauren’s very hard-to-please father, Lauren herself might grow tired of the fact that her dad doesn’t accept Cameron. It may be too much for her to handle. It was clear throughout the show that, typically, what dad says goes and it’s hard for her to not to have her dad’s approval.
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Giannina and Damian are toxic
Thank goodness these two didn’t get married, but what are they doing still together? Giannini is quite possibly just trying to show casting directors she has range through her over-the-top tantrums and self-indulgent monologues. She loves to fight. She’s just one of those people who loves to fight. It’s how she gets excited, and it’s not healthy. But also, this isn’t all her fault. Damian had an out and he stayed.
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Remember Damian’s family?
You may recall that Damian’s family refused to meet Giannina. They called her some rather nasty names and bailed on them in the episode the pair was meant to meet them. So…how do they recover from that? Furthermore, watching the show and seeing how Giannina behaves won’t be winning over Damian’s family any time soon.
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They are free to leave
Luckily, Damian and Giannina are not married. That’s clearly the type of couple who will be on and off again (because that’s so healthy) for years, until one or both become exhausted by it. I do think Damian actually wants a calm and mature relationship, so he’ll probably be the one to tire of it. Giannina, however, loves this toxic sh*t.
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The jealousy
It’s not really natural to watch your partner flirt with and say loving things about someone else. Even the thought of my partner with his ex makes my stomach turn. These couples can, however, watch their partner falling for other people by watching this show. I think that can spark jealousy and anger that’s hard to kick, even if the “past is the past.”
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They wanted to be on reality TV
Every person in this show is someone who, we must remember, wanted to and agreed to be on reality TV. Not to be judgmental but…oh screw it I’ll be judgmental. Reality TV just tends to attract some personality types that are less-than-stable. Then there’s the fact that dating in the real world had gone so terribly wrong for them that they had to turn to this. Why was it so bad for them? Could it be due to their own behaviors and patterns? Maybe so. We will see.
