The reunion episode of season seven of Love is Blind was released this week, and there was a lot of pettiness to take in.
But there was also a lot to be learned from the guests’ experiences.
Let’s explore the science behind the contestants’ words. Here are five lessons about love.
1. The first year of marriage is important
By the filming of the reunion, the two couples who decided to get married (Taylor and Garrett, Tyler and Ashley) had already been married for nearly a year.
Do you have any idea how hard that first year of marriage is?
According to a 2009 study by Ted Huston, how a couple treats each other during the second month of their marriage can indicate whether their marriage is likely to succeed as far into the future as thirteen years.
A decline in affection, love, and responsiveness in the first few months of marriage is usually a bad sign for things to come.
Even worse than that decline?
The mistaken assumption that things will only get better from here.
A study by Lavner et. al. asked 250 married couples to predict how their feelings about their spouse and marriage would change in the next four years.
Wives with the cheeriest views of future domestic bliss had the largest decline in marital satisfaction.
2. Your spouse shouldn’t be your only friend
Full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of Taylor and Garrett together.
And when Taylor looked lovingly at Garrett and shyly admitted that he was her best friend — so many feels.
Tentative feels, though.
Should your spouse be your best friend or is that too much, too early on in these relationships?
One thing is abundantly clear: your partner should not be your only friend.
I think it is great that Taylor and Garrett are both attractive, smart, science dorks with semi-matching tattoos (that they both already had when they met!).
But I also think it’s great that Garrett and Tyler, the two male success stories of Love is Blind, went fishing together. Because we need friends to keep us grounded in our life and our love.
Your partner can be your best friend, and possibly should be your best friend — as long as you have others who can also fulfill your wants and needs.
3. Sharing secrets can save a marriage
Towards the end of this season, Tyler revealed that he had donated sperm to a female friend whose wife had ended up leaving her. During filming, Tyler claimed that he was not involved with the three children he fathered.
Since filming, it has come out that Tyler is quite involved with the family he created with one of his closest friends.
The studio audience gasped.
Ashley was nonplussed.
“Who do you think knows more about what is going on in my life, your social media or me?” she pointed out to the studio audience.
What can we learn from watching people fall in love on television?
Source: Rada Aslanova / Pexels
According to Slepian, Halevy, and Galinsky, sharing your secret with a loved one can lead to an increase in happiness, greater authenticity for the friendship, and a closer relationship.
The right idea of how to handle a personal matter is to share the burden with a loved one. The burden of holding a secret on your own can increase physical and emotional stress, anxiety, and feelings of loneliness.
Remember, love is rarely about all or none thinking and almost always about the importance of sharing an emotional connection.
4. Being in it to find love matters
It’s tough to say what the right reasons are to go on a reality show for love, other than that whole “finding love” piece.
Did Nick go on the show to fall in love? Can you will yourself to fall in love with someone?
Relationships Essential Reads
A 2016 study by Langeslag and Strien sought to answer the question of whether or not we can affect our romantic love towards a potential or existing partner by cognitive reappraisal.
Simply put, if you change the way you look at a situation, you can change the way you feel about a situation. For example, when Hannah saw Nick playfully riding a duck (of all things) with another while the two were on their honeymoon, Hannah could have changed her perspective from “How embarrassing, he is behaving like a child and having a good time with another woman” to “Nick is so silly, and look at how well he gets along with people he just met.”
Or when Hannah pointed out areas of weakness for Nick, such as planning for the future rather than living day by day in his family’s house, Nick could have taken this as an opportunity to take a look at what he wanted both now and in the future, and slowly begin to make changes accordingly.
Instead, these issues became something else to drive them apart rather than bring them together.
5. Unconditional love is not a realistic option for a new relationship
Ramses and Marissa parted ways just days before they were set to wed – and if you want to know how ticked off Marissa’s mom is that Ramses wasn’t more honest with his feelings much earlier in their relationship, you can be sure she would love to tell you all about it.
As a viewer I wasn’t super-surprised when Ramses broke off the engagement. Marissa and mom pointed out indications that Ramses wasn’t providing the unconditional love that Marissa deserved as evidenced by his issues with contraception, and their lack of compatibility when it comes to their sexual drives.
But, does unconditional love exist in a newly-formed romantic relationship?
A study by Cassepp-Borges et. al. found that over time, the influence of passion on relationship satisfaction is eroded by the influence of commitment on relationship satisfaction.
Put simply, unconditional love based on nothing more than a mutual desire to stay together is something that comes along with time, as a relationship matures.
In some ways it appears that Marissa (and her mom) had unrealistic expectations of putting the carriage before the horse when it comes to unconditional love.
Is unconditional love even a real option in life? Eventually, perhaps. But unconditional love at first is often foolish, blind love.
