Marriage Is What Brings Us Together Today

I have always loved dating tv shows.

Do you remember the ones on MTV where the eligible dates waited on a bus until the lead called “Next!” in the face of the failing date in front of them?

Or when they decided if they wanted to date someone based on the potential dates’ bedroom?

I remember watching these shows on my tiny bedroom tv, mixed in with such gems as Flava Flav, Beauty and the Geek, and the good seasons of the Bachelor and Bachelorette, ya know, the seasons before Instagram existed.

But the stakes of dating shows like that are pretty small. It’s easy enough to be charming for a few weeks of television.

Instead, I turn now to marriage reality shows, which, while still occasionally ridiculous, often have contestants who at least appear more seriously committed to making it to the end with a lasting relationship. The discovery of Married at First Sight and Love is Blind (which is kinda just a Netflix rip off of Married at First Sight tbh) altered my life in a such a profound way that it is almost, but not quite, embarrassing to admit.

For those who have not had the pleasure of welcoming these series in their lives yet, a brief summary:

Married at First Sight travels to a different city each season and conducts interviews (and background checks) on single applicants who are hoping to be married to a stranger. Applicants meet with three ~experts~ who take time to learn their personalities, their hopes and goals, what they want in a partner, what kind of sex they like, etc.

If you’re thinking “Kiki, that sounds like matchmaking, like many cultures have done around the world for years!” you would absolutely be correct, only instead of matchmaking being done by families or community members, here it’s done by sociologist Dr. Pepper Schwartz, pastor and marriage counselor Calvin Roberson, and sex therapist Dr. Viviana Coles.

They match 4-5 couples, then counsel and support them throughout the eight weeks of the show. Once matched, the couples marry, seeing their spouse only when the bride walks down the aisle and learning each other’s names right before reciting their vows. Once married, the couples honeymoon together, move into a shared apartment, and spend the next eight weeks figuring out how to combine their lives. At the end of the eight weeks they must decide to stay married or get a divorce.

Love Is Blind is flipped. Also based in one city each season, singles spend time in “pods”, unable to see the person they are speaking to. After a number of days learning about one another and deciding who they think they are compatible with, the man of the couple proposes and the couples are finally allowed to see one another.

From there they vacation, move into a shared apartment, and start planning a wedding to take place in a matter of weeks at which they will decide if they really want to go through with the whole thing after all.

These shows are some of the most heteronormative shit I’ve ever watched.

There are only straight couples, and listening to some of the contestants talk about how they want to be a “wife” or “husband” as if either of those titles can be defined in such abstraction has more than once driven me into a splitting headache.

Some reasons folks join these shows are typical: folks don’t want to be dating anymore (fair, dating is hard as hell!) or feel ready to start families. Other times the opening episodes of these shows are filled with demands for a love and relationship that transcends what anyone is truly able to guarantee.

There was Jasmine from season 8 of MAFS who confessed on the honeymoon that she wanted a husband to be the provider and protector, paying almost all of the bills from his own salary, despite the fact that the man she just married made significantly less than her.

Sometimes there are lists of what people want in a spouse that seem to go on endlessly:

• strong-willed
• ambitious
• attractive
• caring
• supportive
• great smile
• has a lot of goals
• has a lot of career ambitions
• charismatic
• doesn’t leave things thrown about…

And still…I love these shows?

Marriage has stakes. It is, at its heart, one of the most serious legal agreements any of us will enter into.

Mix that up with some strangers and an entire camera crew? *chef’s kiss*

Those awkward moments in MAFS after the bride and groom exit the ceremony and have to ask each other: “What did you say your name was again?” Magnificent.

http://https://youtu.be/ePkY5oQY_m8?t=185

In Love is Blind, when someone has to hang out with their fiancee and someone they chose their fiancee over? Chaotic.

http://https://youtu.be/cyslyHkAs1g?t=90

And then there is the deep poignancy of two people who you can tell from the first few moments may really have something special. Or could have something special, if they are truly willing to try.

The try of these shows is what keeps me coming back. Learning to be in a relationship with another person will always bring up the still-bruised parts of ourselves. Compressing that learning into eight weeks will bring those pains and insecurities up with a vengeance.

Watching two people figure out how to be with another person is oftentimes excruciating, especially when you are sitting on the couch, wishing you could feed them the right words, the ones their partner so clearly (to me, someone not at all involved in the situation) needs from them.

I have more than once turned to my own partner (who I dragged into this marriage reality show abyss with me) and told him that watching this show has convinced me that my second career should be a relationship counselor.

Marriage is a big-ass deal. I like to refer to it as “betting someone half your stuff that you’ll love them forever.” I wrote a paper in college about the scam that is the U.S. wedding industry! But you bet your bottom dollar that I was the weakest/weepiest link at my friend’s wedding last month. I’ve told basically everyone I’ve spoken to since that it was the most beautiful thing I have ever been asked to be a part of.

I text my partner every time I hear that a couple who made it through MAFS is having a baby.

I cried more than once when I watched the proposals of Love is Blind: Japan–some of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard expressed to another person.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md1AK72ihM4&ab_channel=Netflix

(Netflix is incredibly tight fisted when it comes to footage, but episode 1 and 2 of Love is Blind: Japan have some really beautiful proposals.)

And I still sit with the words that someone spoke on the Charlotte season of MAFS:

“What are the things you don’t like about them, and, what if those things never change? What if they stayed like that forever? There’s a chance that those things don’t change, and if they don’t, are you okay with that?”

I turn it over in my mind constantly, grateful for the random friend-of-a-contestant on the show who gave me language I didn’t know I needed.

My partner likes to tell me that if we met on one of these shows we would definitely make it, to which I reply, “I would never be on one of these shows.” This is a bit judgy of me (I met my partner on Tinder, for heaven’s sake), but I also just know that I don’t have what it takes to try and build a relationship like this. It is too much risk, too much unknown, too much leap of faith with possibly huge consequences (like people dragging out divorces for a year).

How could I marry someone not knowing how they talk to waitstaff?

Or if they prefer unsalted butter?

Sure, you can ask someone how acceptable they think it is to talk during a movie, but you can’t truly know until you experience it.

Marry someone I’ve never been in a car with when traffic sucks and someone just cut them off?

I think not.

Better them than me, I suppose. I would never be on one of these shows, but I will probably always sit with bated breath in the moments before they declare their “I do” or “I want a divorce.”

It is all still television, I know this. Shoots are scheduled, producers offer conversations they want folks to talk about, people are cast based on a whole host of reasons, including who producers and casting directors think will make interesting tv.

And yet…there are couples still married for many happy years. There are children born from some of these unions! Even in the artifice of television, there are enough couples truly trying to build a life, trying to communicate what they need, learning how and where to bend, where to give more grace, recognizing what they deserve, to convince me that just enough of it might be real.

Have you watched either of these shows? What keeps you watching?