Image from Netflix’s Love is Blind
*The following is an opinion piece that reflects the author’s point of view, but is not meant to be reflective of the entire company of TCL.
Netflix’s Love is Blind is a reality dating show in which contestants date and become engaged without ever seeing what the other person looks like. The dates occur in “pods” separated by a wall, so that a couple’s compatibility rests only on personality, emotional connection and—more and more—alignment of worldviews, rather than physical attraction.
Jillian Shannon is the pastoral assistant at TCL and a spiritual entrepreneur. She is the owner of Neotopia, a non-profit organization in San Antonio, TX that holds classes and events surrounding subjects of theology, philosophy and culture.
In the most recent season, contestants Sara and Ben fall in love and get engaged after some difficult pod conversations. Sara has a sister in the LGBTQ+ community and she’s a passionate proponent of Black Lives Matter. Ben confesses he hasn’t given much thought to social justice issues—admittedly because he’s been privileged to not have to face them directly. He ensures her, however, that she will know his heart based on his day-to-day actions, rather than his stances on politics.
Ben regularly attends church, and Sara gave up on the church when hers failed to accept her sister as gay. When she inquires whether his church is open and inclusive in this way, Ben states that he does not know, but that he prefers the word “faith” over “religion”—a clarification meant to show that he abides by his own rules rather than his church’s—and he personally sees nothing wrong with being gay. This answer is good enough for Sara, as they go on to deepen their bond, get engaged and try life in the real world.
After the pod experience, the couples attempt life together in the real world. Sara and Ben appear to be the strongest of the five couples on the show, leading to an all-the-more shocking finale when—SPOILER ALERT—Sara says “no” at the altar. Despite the various real-life problems thrown at them between the pods and the wedding, the ultimate deal-breaker for Sara was his politics. While Ben was unaware of his church’s political stances, Sara sniffed out their underlying conservative views from her first visit, deciding that Ben’s indifference to politics was more like unrealized Republicanism that would surely lead to conflict with her own progressivism.
Are political differences the relationship deal breaker of our time?
A survey conducted by the Institute for Family Studies shows that it is increasingly rare for a marriage to cross party lines. In 2020, 79% of couples shared the same party affiliation, with only 4% of the mixed couples being Democrat and Republican—a rapid drop from 9% in 2016. Further, “in 2017, 1 in 10 Americans ended a romantic relationship because of different political views, and 1 in 5 Americans know a couple whose marriage or relationship was negatively affected due to [the 2016 election].” Meanwhile, other cultural hurdles like interfaith marriage are on a steady rise. While interfaith marriages present the most outward-facing compatibility challenges (differences in tradition, beliefs and experiences), inter-political marriages may be more untenable in today’s day and age.
Sara and Ben are a relevant, publicized example of the current social climate. The ultimate issue for Sara was not the fact that Ben regularly attended church while Sara had long since left the Christian religion. The issue for Sara was the ways in which Ben’s faith influenced his politics.
Religion was once viewed as the primary indicator and shaper of values. This seems to have been replaced by one’s political stance. The question for ultimate compatibility is less, What is your religion? And more, How do your religious beliefs shape your politics? Now, a liberal Christian may be a more compatible match with a liberal person of a different or no religion, than with a conservative Christian.
Companies like The Church Lab work tirelessly to build bridges across differences and reconcile relationships through dialogue. The principle rules of dialogue include seeking to understand before being understood, and committing to converse rather than convert. With the failure and avoidance of so many inter-political marriages, one must wonder: What would happen if we applied the rules of dialogue to romantic relationships beginning with Love is Blind?
At the finale of each season of Love is Blind, the couples have a wedding ceremony. They put on the tuxedo and white dress, invite their family and friends, walk down the aisle and even says their vows, leading to the culminating moment in the which the officiant restates the theme of the show: “Now is the time to find out if love is truly blind. Do you Sara take thee Ben…” If the bride and groom go through with their “I do’s” then they are implying that love is, in fact, blind.
Psychiatrist and author, David Richo (How to be an Adult in Relationships) argues: “Love is not blind; it sees and faces all. It is romance that can be blind, when it sees only what it needs to see.” The wall between the pods is more like a mirror that reflects oneself. Do I like how I am reflected in this relationship? If a contestant falls in love with how the other person makes them feel, then they will usually say yes to taking the next steps. The real world beyond the pods turns the mirror into a window, in which they’re able to see one another fully. Not only are their physical attributes exposed, but all the nuances of this person’s daily choices are exposed to reveal how they live and what they value.
The term “woke” is a controversial word at the moment because while it powerfully exposes injustice so that we may reorder our world toward a more peaceful future, it risks scapegoating wrong-doers in the process by ostracizing or canceling them altogether. For my purposes in this article, when I say “woke” I mean this risky kind—the tendency to reduce others to their failures in meeting the just standards necessary for a flourishing world. Perhaps Sara was blind in romance, and what we saw after the pods was closer to this brand of wokeness.
In the rules of dialogue, wokeness (in the reductionist sense) is not allowed. The reason for this is that, while the term implies eyes wide open, it actually leads us to reduce a person to their parts: Democrat, Republican, gun-owner, radical leftist, racist, (insert your own label). For example, when Sara did her own investigation into Ben’s church and drew the conclusion that Ben wasn’t for her, she used a systems-lens to make a conclusion about the person, rather than a person-lens which reveals the systems as full of people, and in turn, open the possibility of transforming the problematic elements of the system.
What the experiment of Love is Blind has going against it is time. Sara probably made the right choice given the limited amount of time and the apparent compatibility issues present. The experience of dialogue, on the other hand, relies on deep relationships built over long stretches of time.
Even so, Love is Blind is a beneficial microcosmic example of where we are as a culture in terms of relationships. If inter-political relations represent the hardest dividing lines of our times, and marriage trends reflect the times, can we expect inter-political differences to be overcome in marriage in the same ways we as a society overcame the hurdles of interracial and interfaith marriages? Perhaps the tools of dialogue are the necessary element to get us beyond blindness, past wokeness, and to fully face one another.