Love Is Blind Is Plagued by a Curious Case of Relationship Amnesia (and It’s Contagious?!)
It’s been eight seasons, and the men on Love Is Blind still haven’t figured it out: Lying is never the way to go!
In Episode 9, which dropped on Netflix on Friday, we were forced to suffer through this season’s major dishonest atrocity when Ben was faced with his dating history.
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It all started when Sara discovered a TikTok about Ben made by one of his former lovers. The girl narrating the video breaks down in tears and says she’s sick of the Netflix reality series glorifying subpar men, and accuses Ben of emotionally manipulating her during their relationship four years ago. (We don’t actually get a glimpse of the video, so this is all Sara’s summary — which we, of course, trust wholeheartedly!)
Suddenly, Ben, who moments prior possessed full faculty functioning of his brain, broke down with what we can only diagnose as moderate-to-severe relationship amnesia — a curious condition that disproportionately affects Love Is Blind men.
Ben told Sara the girl is making it all up — she’s overreacting! Sara proceeded to ask Ben a series of questions that he struggled to answer: How’d they meet? “Tinder, I think?” he said. How many dates had they been on? “Maybe one… and then met up at bars for a few weekends,” he said. Why’d they stop speaking? “What I remember is that I just ghosted her. I can’t tell you why I ghosted her. I can’t remember what we talked about or anything like that.” Ben wishes he could give Sara a more dramatic story, but says, “I just honestly don’t remember.”
Ben adds: “All I remember is it was four years ago, and it was a short amount of time that we were talking. I just honestly can’t remember what happened.”
The man is sick! He can’t remember?! He can’t remember the details about another human being he spent time with? We aren’t talking about required reading he did in high school or the specific plot points of 2001: A Space Odyssey; we’re talking about a whole human woman that Ben has just — poof! — forgotten.
But Ben isn’t the only one afflicted by this peculiar condition — apparently the bug is contagious. Dave, too, has a particular complex case requiring careful examination.
Dave’s partner Lauren has been honest from the beginning about her dating history, and has shared that she was casually seeing someone before going on the show. She knew they never had a future — they never even went on dates. (She might not want to say it directly on camera, but for viewers it’s clear: The woman just wanted to have sex and there is nothing wrong with that!)
But Dave can’t accept this. He constantly attacks his fiancé, successfully directing each and every conversation away from his own past — and anything fun or interesting, for that matter. Somehow, after nine episodes, we know every little detail about Lauren’s prior romantic entanglements, but Dave remains an elusive, shapeless blob. Surely this man has flirted, dated and pursued other women before going on the show, but he’s careful to avoid disclosing any of that information. His variation of relationship amnesia doesn’t present by outright forgetting; instead, he’s plagued by a more sinister strain: amnesia by omission.
Plus, Dave’s case is muddied by an additional layer of complexity: misogyny! He calls it “f—kin’ weird that Lauren was with “some other guy” but is now sharing a bed with him, while the two of them have “barely even hooked up.” Though he repeatedly says he’s unable to understand how Lauren could be ready for marriage given her recent dalliance, the man is actually verklempt over the fact that Lauren has had sex with other men in the past but not yet with him. (And don’t think we’ve forgotten how utterly obsessed he was with finding out the status of the other couples’ sex lives in Episode 8.)
These Love Is Blind men need to grow up and get honest — STAT! Why can’t Ben just admit that he could have treated a girl he dated four years ago poorly, but has since evolved? Why can’t Dave express that he might have some confusing and problematic feelings about female sexuality? Or that he simply isn’t interested in pursuing this relationship and wants out? Claiming ignorance or hyper-fixating on a flippant detail from the past gets us nowhere.
And the longer these men drag out their lies, the more damning it will be when our Love Is Blind girlies ultimately go packing. Until then, all we can do is loathe Dave and Ben for being able to cognitively check out — if only us viewers could be so lucky as to conveniently forget all the time we spent watching this show.
What’s your take: Is relationship amnesia ruining Love Is Blind Season 8? Can these couples survive?
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