Why we can’t look away from relationship disasters on reality TV 💔
I've just finished watching Love is Blind. Hear me out.
Romance-reality TV, especially shows like Love is Blind and Married at First Sight, has become the guilty pleasure of our time—a kind of junk food for the soul. Just like snacking on curry and chips or binging your favourite sweeties, we indulge in these shows knowing they aren’t “good” for us, but best believe we will devour them with the same gusto as we do that McDonald’s when we’re hungover. They’re the perfect thing to watch when you want to switch off after a tough day, or when you want to watch other people make catastrophically bad life choices (see also: Geordie Shore).
While it does warm the heart to see enthusiastic expressions of love, especially that allegedly found ‘sight unseen’, there’s a more powerful reason behind the popularity of such shows. Hear me out.
The draw of shows like Love is Blind is rarely the happy ending. What captivates us are the spectacular moments when love goes off the rails. But why are we so fascinated with watching these crash-and-burn romances? Are we bad people? Gossip-mongers?
Let’s get into it.
Fast food, fast love
Shows like Love is Blind intentionally compress relationships, distilling months or years of emotional growth into a matter of weeks. Participants meet, supposedly fall in love, and even commit to marriage—all without seeing each other’s faces until they’re engaged.
This approach doesn’t just make for great TV; it exploits our deep-seated desire to witness the extraordinary, which the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard would say reflects our inherent “fear and trembling” toward love and intimacy.
In Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, the phrase "fear and trembling" conveys the intense, paradoxical feelings involved in making a deep, existential commitment — especially in love. Kierkegaard views love as a profound leap of faith that demands vulnerability and trust without the comfort of certainty. Embracing intimacy, in his view, requires one to face the unknown and the risk of potential heartache, surrendering the need for guarantees.
Kierkegaard argued that true commitment requires a leap of faith — a conscious, terrifying act of surrender that’s usually built over time. But Love is Blind bypasses the slow, incremental risk of growing closer and instead injects us directly into the leap.
This “fast-tracked” relationship format taps into a paradox: we want love to be profound, but we’re drawn to the combustive effects of high-stakes vulnerability. We watch, transfixed, buying into these express engagements, knowing that these compressed relationships are bound for disaster, because the stakes—and risks—are tantalisingly high.
Exhibit A: Ramses and Marissa
Tl;dr—one of the cutest couples who seem perfectly matched experiences a brutal end when Ramses decides her ‘energy’ might be ‘too much’ for him…two days before their wedding. Dress all sorted and everything. Yikes.
Memo: You’re not ‘too much’ for anyone. Usually, that person is simply not enough.
Exhibit B: Monica and Stephen
Tl;dr—Stephen gave me bad/creepy vibes with some of his comments on-camera, so it wasn’t a total surprise when he *checks notes* sends kinky fetish-related texts to a lady he met at a sleep experiment which he went to during the Love is Blind experiment? Seems like he couldn’t get on Love Island and pretended to be looking for a bride to boost his…visibility.
Schadenfreude: Is it catharsis or are you being bitchy?
There’s a word in German for finding joy in others' misfortune: schadenfreude. I will admit: I love a bit of shadenfreude. Sorry. But watching the likes of Love is Blind gives viewers a sense of catharsis, *especially* when things go wrong.
It’s not that we actively root for failure, but rather that we’re captivated by the fragility of these connections. Nietzsche wrote about the “will to power”—a drive that pushes individuals to assert control and gain self-worth, often in relation to others. Reality TV indulges this tendency by offering us a platform from which we can, even temporarily, feel “better” than those on the screen.
As Love is Blind contestants stumble through misunderstandings, conflicting expectations, and public meltdowns, they become surrogates for our own uncertainties in love. Nietzsche might suggest that the show provides viewers with a safe place to witness (and judge) relationship dumpster fires, allowing us to affirm our own sense of mastery and insight over the chaotic landscape of modern romance.
The false promise of ‘reality’ in Reality TV
Reality TV dangles the possibility of true connection before us, yet rarely delivers. Aristotle argued that art should reveal truth through imitation, offering a mirror to life’s deeper truths. Yet Love is Blind (like many other reality shows) often presents us with a distorted reflection of romance, promising that love can blossom under conditions far removed from daily life.
The rapid cycles of intimacy (and its deterioration) on these types of shows can evoke a sense of “catharsis,” but instead of purging our emotions, it tends to leave us hungrier for more drama.
In Aristotle's Poetics, catharsis is the emotional purging or cleansing experienced by the audience through the emotions of pity and fear aroused in tragic Greek drama. By witnessing the misfortunes of the tragic hero, the audience experiences a release of intense emotion, leading to a sense of renewal.
The show taps into our desire for what Aristotle called eudaimonia, or human flourishing, by offering moments where love seems pure and attainable. But just as quickly, it shatters this illusion, reinforcing an underlying cynicism about whether true connection is even possible. Yummy, yummy cynicism.
Reality TV, existential junk food
If we see reality TV as junk food for the mind, we can look to my boy Jean-Paul Sartre for insights into why we crave it. Sartre’s existentialism posits that life is, at its core, meaningless—and that individuals must therefore create their own sense of purpose.
But for many, finding meaning is pretty exhausting. Shows like Love is Blind offer a reprieve from the struggle to find purpose, filling the void with artificial (but convenient) narratives of romance and tragedy.
Reality TV relationships offer us a compressed, digestible version of love and commitment. They satisfy an immediate craving but ultimately leave us feeling empty because they are devoid of the genuine complexity of real-life relationships.
By treating these artificial romances as “junk food,” we consume this performance of love as a temporary fix rather than an enduring endeavour, echoing Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’, or the denial of our own freedom to create deeper, more meaningful connections in favour of shallow gratification. But is that wrong?
So…why keep watching?
There’s something undeniably captivating about watching the highs and lows of others’ relationships play out in real time. We tune in because, in a way, these shows give us permission to explore our own fears about love and failure without personal risk.
We’re drawn to the vulnerability of the participants, and in a world that often discourages emotional risk, reality TV relationships provide a safe space for emotional exploration.
In the end, shows like Love is Blind aren’t just escapist entertainment. They offer a distorted mirror through which we can examine our own hopes, insecurities, and doubts about love. But as we continue to consume this existential junk food, we might ask ourselves: are we filling ourselves up, or merely feeding a craving that reality TV can never satisfy?
If there’s any takeaway from the success of Love is Blind, MAFS, and The Ultimatum (honestly, Nick and Vanessa Lachey come off a little sadistic, huh?) and its like, it’s that modern audiences are just as fascinated by the potential for failure as they are by the hope for success.
So, are we really interested in love stories—or are we simply captivated by the spectacle of its unraveling? Well, maybe it’s a bit of both. What do you think?
References
Kierkegaard, S. (1985). Fear and Trembling. Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1843)
Nietzsche, F. (1990). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Vintage Books. (Original work published 1886)
Aristotle. (1996). Poetics (M. Heath, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work written ca. 335 BCE)
Sartre, J.-P. (1993). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Washington Square Press. (Original work published 1943)