As someone who has been assisting women in attracting their ideal romantic partner for over a decade I regularly see the downright erroneous information about that topic in pop culture. I feel the need to share my thoughts about the recent hit Netflix series, Love Is Blind. Before I do that let me explain why I ask our students in L2FL (Learn to Find Love) to generally avoid such programs. Programs like the Bachelor/Bachelorette work on a model of competition and scarce mentality that pit contestants against one another. With the experience of graduating hundreds of women from our course, I can reassure you that the right mate for you is just that – right for you and no one else. There’s no fighting another woman to win a man’s heart. In fact, we teach you why that notion is an indication that he isn’t the one. Secondly, these shows only leave women who aren’t perfect model types under the false impression that they have to look and act a certain way to be desirable. Love Is Blind is a little different and why I chose to share my musing about it. If you haven’t watched it, don’t worry I won’t be spoiling it for you.
Here’s the premise of the show in a nutshell – thirty single men and women who were selected by the show are split up according to gender. Over the course of a few weeks they date members of the opposite sex but here’s the catch – they date without visually seeing one another. Dating pods are private rooms with a barrier where they speak to one another and evaluate whether to continue to date or not relying solely on an emotional connection they feel, hence the title of the show, Love is Blind. When physical attraction is taken out of the equation these people don’t get sidetracked by superficiality and as a result, conversations can go deep quickly. If a couple finds a connection, they can continue to “date” each other for 10 days. Five couples ended up falling “in love” and were then invited to take the next step. For the sake of sensationalism and marketing purposes, that means to get engaged. Upon getting engaged they can finally see each other face-to-face.
The five couples are then sent to a romantic resort where the show’s creators hope they will then connect on a physical level. After a week of being in a resort paradise they are sent back to Atlanta where they are to live together, meet each other’s families, and enter into “real life” while preparing for their wedding. The entire process lasted about two months from landing in the pod to walking down the aisle! Reality shows clearly uses cliffhangers, drama and big reveals, which helped hold my attention to the very end. The finale was for a number of those couples having their wedding day when each individual was asked to say I do or I don’t and end the relationship. Imagine not really being 100% certain that your romantic partner will say “I do” until you are on the altar in front of your friends and family!
Here’s what I found refreshing and in complete alignment with our L2FL system:
• It’s of paramount importance that you evaluate the talents, traits and behaviors of your potential lifelong partner before you figure out your physical attraction. Don’t get me wrong, without chemistry you will be assured of a predictable set of miserable outcomes but it’s not what you need to start with
• Emotional connection with a potential partner can be discovered by deep listening when distractions are minimized
• Clues about whether someone is a candidate for lifetime love can absolutely be assessed within a few weeks
• Learning how people behave in the real world outside of the typical dating bubble is critical to the evaluation process
Here’s where I found the show contradicts what we teach in our system:
• Compatibility is not as important as you’d think. If compatibility items like: we both love tennis, were essential then online dating, which is all about compatibility and physical attraction, would have a statistically better happily ever after rate – they don’t
• Dragging a relationship forward once you know for sure that a piece like chemistry is missing is just not the way to be in integrity with yourself or the other person
• You have to know what questions to ask someone when you are at the early dating stage to get hard data which you can objectively evaluate according to a system you’ve built from gaining clarity about what would truly be right for you and no one else
• Just because you get an instant feeling or synchronicity with someone doesn’t mean anything and in fact it could be signs to run the other way!
I’ve heard from graduates of L2FL that taking the course and learning how to implement a successful evaluation system is akin to having a special decoder ring. A magic tool you can use any time to understand why exactly a particular man is going to make you happy for the rest of your life or is going to make you miserable and likely end in divorce. They report being able to pinpoint exactly what was missing in all their previous relationships. They can spot sub-optimal relationships a mile away. They also learn to identify repeating patterns that indicate areas that need to be healed in order to avoid being repeated. That kind of information and insight is very powerful. Once you know this you’ll never be blindsided again. As for me, I knew within the first few episodes who would likely make it to “I do” and by the end of the series I was saying I wished I was a betting sort of woman – I could have won millions! If you are reading this and have gone through our program then you too knew that one couple had no C, one had no C and no T, and one or two couples had so much C that it clouded their judgment.
Since this isn’t real life and I don’t really know these people at all except for what the producers wanted us to see, I can’t know with 100% certainty but one couple does look like the full on TLC model. I cried happy tears seeing them at the altar knowing that they are likely to experience the kind of joy and blessings that I and our mated grads feel each and every day!
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