Love is Blind and “Divorce is not an Option”

Ok, first, mandatory “spoiler alert”: I’m all caught up on Love is Blind and I’m about to talk about it. No huge reveals will be shared, but you’ve been warned!

I’m a pretty big lover of reality tv, specifically dating or dating-ish shows. I’ve watched the Bachelor/Bachelorette since it’s very beginning, and as someone who generally finds the idea of “guilty pleasures” to be dumb (why are we feeling so guilty about pleasure?? Oh right, captialism/white supremacy/christian nationalism/etc.), I don’t mind at all sharing that I enjoy things that others might turn their noses up at.

So of course I’m watching the current season of Love is Blind.

Usually my partner and I will wait till all the episodes drop to watch (we love a good tv show binge), but this time we’re watching them as they drop because the world is on fire and we’re craving enjoyment/escapism more than usual.

Why am I sharing all of this? Well, because I ended up getting unexpectedly triggered during an episode, and it has everything to do with my fundamental religion upbringing.

The episode I’m referencing is the one that includes Daniel meeting Taylor’s parents for the first time. For those of you who don’t watch, this is a couple who (like all the couples on LIB) got engaged without seeing each other, and now that their wedding is a few weeks away (because of course we’d over-prioritize and over-romanticize marriage in our culture of toxic monogamy (but that’s a topic for another day)), they’re meeting each other’s families, who generally start out having a pretty skeptical view of the relationship.

Now, as far as the couples go on this season, I actually really love Daniel and Taylor. I think they’re cute together and genuinely like and care for each other. So I’m rooting for them.

They’re also apparently both fairly religious, which as a viewer is typically fine for me to watch—I understand that a lot of people care about that stuff, and I’ve appreciated that Taylor and Daniel don’t seem to make it their whole identity (there’s another person on this season whose religious views have actually been quite activating for me, but perhaps that, again, is a topic for another time).

Anyway, I offer this background because when they met with Taylor’s parents, before her mom warmed up to Daniel, she expressed something that as someone who grew up in this kind of religion has heard a million times: “We don’t believe in divorce…divorce doesn’t happen in our family.”

Hearing that, I felt pretty irritated but was able to roll my eyes and make fun of the fact that even if someone doesn’t “believe in” divorce, joke’s on them, it still exists whether you acknowledge it or not.

But then Daniel replied saying that he and Taylor had already talked about that…and then the line that I felt so triggered by: “Divorce is not an option.”

I started crying. Immediately.

My brain knew I was safe. My body wasn’t so sure.

I grew up with my community constantly espousing that idea that divorce is not an option.

My dad even reminded my sister’s now husband of it when he asked my parents for their blessing to propose to my sister when they were in their early 20s (thankfully—and selfishly on my part—my sister and brother-in-law, much like me, have shifted their views quite a bit since then, and they’ve been some of my biggest supports during my own deconstruction).

And when I was still religious, I bought into that idea. If you really commit, then it’s permanent. No take-backsies. I thought it was romantic. I thought that was real love.

But now, I see the violence in it.

I see how that idea perpetuates abuse, misery, regret.

Why is this what we’d want for people?

I’d imagine that the vast majority of people who make vows on their wedding days believe them.

But who of us haven’t committed to something whole-heartedly, only to later realize that it had run its course, or we’d changed too much for it to make sense anymore, or for the thing we committed to to be the thing that changed too drastically to stay around?

Why is marriage different? Why do we insist that the best case scenario for wedded people is to stay, no matter what?

The reality is that divorce is a fucking option. Always. Whether it’s because it’s abusive, toxic, doesn’t match your identity anymore, doesn’t bring you fulfillment anymore…there is no reason that can’t be a reason to end a marriage.

That doesn’t mean that divorce isn’t deeply painful. And, it is still an option, for either or both parties.

And as I watched someone even younger than me express such a harmful ideology on a show that was meant to be a fun escape from the world being on fire, the tears rolled down my face.

I am pretty far into my deconstruction. It’s been over 20 years since that process first began, and I’ve really been in the thick of it for over 15 years. And, no matter how far down the road we are, it’s ok to still have reactions that surprise us.

One of my first thoughts was, wow this is frustrating for this to still activate me so much.

And then my second thought was, this makes a fuck ton of sense.

I let myself cry. I listened to my body. I told my body, yes, I hear you, this is so hard to hear and to see other people still buying into something that has been so harmful for you.

I told my partner that I was feeling activated. I paused the show. I put my hand on my heart and breathed. I made sure I was breathing from my diaphragm as much as I could. I took the time I needed.

I know why I felt so triggered. It makes sense. And it’s not a sign of weakness or a lack of healing.

There’s not a set destination to get to when it comes to our healing. We just keep going. We build up our toolbox for when things feel distressing. We keep building our self-trust, our connection to supportive people, and we remind ourselves that we are safe.

Sometimes these things pop up unexpectedly, and it can feel like we’re hit by a truck.

That’s grief. That’s trauma. That is often the way of it.

And, it doesn’t mean you’re not healing. It doesn’t mean you’re still stuck in it. It doesn’t mean it still has the same power over you.

Maybe it’s just the body’s reminder to offer ourselves extra compassion along the journey…the compassion that we’re only now learning to give ourselves, now that we’re out of the toxic world of fundamental religion.