Churn

When my therapist asks me what I’m doing for self care these days the honest answers are: eating, napping and wedding planning. I have never been the type of person to insert myself into the wedding fantasies that it seems many people in this world have engaged on and off through their lives. Something about putting on a white dress sets the mood. Something about putting on a white veil helps you believe it. That I have become it. Still externalizing to a reader “you” at this point. For the first time in my life, I’m the bride and I have a wedding to plan. It is a delightful default when the anxiety comes roaring through the door.

While I’m unsure if watching my fourth season of Love is Blind qualifies as self care, it is still the routine I find myself in. What an edge of an abyss to stare down into. The show is abandonment issues on growth hormones. I credit it with being more sincere and heart-warming than any other dating show I’ve seen. Back in the day I jonesed for episodes of Rock of Love, Flavor of Love, Daisy of Love which were all just gateways to the Bachelor universe.

After indulging in Bachelor/ette fandom for a few seasons I found it distasteful to watch people turn romance into a franchise. I do indeed look down my nose at those who sully this arena of art and fulfillment. Can I really say the people on Love is Blind are more sincere? No, only they know their intentions. Can I say that Netflix is WAY better at making me believe they are? Yes. This show and Love on the Spectrum have put me in a chokehold (which is hard to do).

Within four weeks will these two groups of fifteen people disregard the temporal constraints of propriety that society requires to render your relationship reasonable, respectable, supportable – and enter into a legally binding relationship under the United States government? How can you as the viewer successfully predict the outcome of this experiment? What do their journeys mean for your own and your relationships? How can we reconcile the experiences of love we observe with the statistically likely abandonment at the altar?

The thing really that I guess stands out for me is the surrender you have to live out to the other person’s power to make or break you. Exposing your deepest roots to somebody gives them the choice to slither in and corrode them or fortify you from the ground up. We are told when we choose wisely we can be secure that they will never leave you. You can trust and give fully of yourself.

The trick is though, that whether or not you should trust and bend, doing so is the only way you can hope to attain the ideal you seek. That can either become self-preserving or self-destructive. Does that depend on the choice you made? Or does it depend on the choices they make? Really, when you give of yourself and things fall apart anyway you not only cannot take the blame but you stop looking for a place for blame at all.

At least, that’s what one could hope would shine through in these moments of tears, humiliation and the triumphs of love all playing out internationally with the same format. Enlightenment is hard to maintain during what is emotionally a loosely regulated bar fight. Still we strive.