Elizabeth Day: Love is blind - and slightly bonkers - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life Elizabeth Day Love is blind – and slightly bonkers By You Magazine - March 15, 2020 There are few things more frustrating than being told you ‘must watch’ something on television. In the olden days, when there were but four terrestrial channels and we used to have to write to the BBC for our Blue Peter badges, television was a far more manageable prospect. Photograph: Jenny Brough. Hair: Fabio Noguiera. Make-up: Ruby Hammer. Trousers: Amanda Wakeley. Jewellery: Alighieri A ‘must-watch’ in the 1980s was generally a one-off event or a four-part period drama that reached its unshowy climax on a Sunday night. There were never more than one or two water-cooler moments in any given year. I mean, a lesbian kiss on Brookside or someone performing without shoes on Top of the Pops could keep us talking for months. Now the advent of streaming services has meant that there are too many programmes to keep up with, and box-sets are a serious commitment. Once you’ve invested in the first season and been left with a cliffhanger ending, you find yourself gravitating towards the second season as if under the spell of a stage-show hypnotist, and then on to the third, fourth, fifth… until the sun has burned out and we have reached the very end of time. So I don’t want to add to the pressure by telling you that you must watch Love is Blind on Netflix, but, at the same time, you really must watch Love is Blind on Netflix. The premise of this US reality show is both simple and devious: an equal number of male and female contestants, who are looking for love, go on a series of dates in self-contained ‘pods’ which have a wall dividing them. Participants are able to converse at length but they are unable to see each other until they get engaged. Yes, that’s right: they propose to each other through a wall, never having seen the physical reality of who they’re about to marry. Following the engagement and the big reveal, the couples are whisked away for a romantic break in Mexico, and then forced to live together before choosing whether or not to walk down the aisle less than a month later. It’s a four-year romantic attachment played out over four weeks, with all the same domestic tension, family drama and endless bickering over whether your other half is actually listening to you or simply scrolling through Instagram. My friend and I watched the first episode slack-jawed on the sofa at the guileless absurdity of every contestant. Within half an hour, one couple had exchanged ‘I love yous’ after talking about how much they adored their dead grandmothers. By the end of the first episode (four days in real time) they had become engaged. ‘It’s madness,’ we screamed at the screen. ‘What on earth do they think they’re doing? This is so ridiculous, so silly, so risky, so… American.’ Naturally we couldn’t stop watching. As we gobbled up more episodes, I noticed something curious happening. I began to well up at the wedding-dress-shopping scenes. I sighed happily when one woman introduced her fiancé to her dog. My cockles warmed as one couple talked about having children. My cynicism was evaporating, just as it does in the early days of falling in love. I began to believe that this might actually be… well, real? It was then that it struck me that the contestants and I were not so dissimilar. We were all in love with the idea of love. And if there is one certainty about love, it is that it makes us slightly mad. Gambling on it requires a leap of faith of such magnitude that you have to be slightly unbalanced to do it. There is no right way, no formula to make it work. Finding your spouse, sight unseen, on a TV show might seem crazy, but it’s no more crazy than the random serendipity that enables us to believe in this gloriously bonkers predicament called love. This week I’ m… Reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I’m super-late to this 2019 Booker Prize winner, but it’s so good it was definitely worth the wait. Wearing Lonely lingerie: the most comfortable and pretty undies I’ve ever found. Plus their photo-shoots use women of all shapes, sizes and ages. Refreshing My parched winter complexion with Liz Earle Instant Boost Skin Tonic. Unlike most toners, this one isn’t drying – and it smells delicious. RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR Everything we know about The Crown season 5 Aldi s exercise equipment is on sale with up to 50% off The best Halloween events for 2022 across the UK Popular in Life The You magazine team reveal their New Year s resolutions December 31, 2021 Susannah Taylor The TLC tools your body will love January 23, 2022 How to stop living in fear February 6, 2022 Susannah Taylor My pick of the fittest leggings February 27, 2022 Women’ s Prize for Fiction 2022 winner announced June 17, 2022 These BBC dramas are returning for a second series June 30, 2022 Susannah Taylor gives the lowdown on nature s little helper – CBD April 17, 2022 The baby names that are banned across the world April 27, 2022 The Queen has released her own emojis May 26, 2022 Sally Brompton horoscopes 27th June-3rd July 2022 June 26, 2022 Popular CategoriesFood2704Life2496Fashion2240Beauty1738Celebrity1261Interiors684 Sign up for YOUMail Thanks for subscribing Please check your email to confirm (If you don't see the email, check the spam box) Fashion Beauty Celebrity Life Food Privacy & Cookies T&C Copyright 2022 - YOU Magazine. All Rights Reserved