Love is Not Blind
“She deserved what she got!”
“He should have seen that coming.”
“She’s the perfect woman!”
“He’s my Prince Charming!”
People like to say that love is blind. People say that love is blind. Hate is the blindest of all feelings. It makes me focus on the illusion of the unfairness of the situation, and blind to everything else. I am so blind by my hate that I oversee the fact that I become exactly what I hate.
Neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar writes, “The brain becomes illogical in the throes of new romance.” When you are in the midst of deep infatuation, when the world is filled with rainbows and butterflies, everything your partner does is right. This is where the term “love is blind” comes from. You are so “blinded” by love that you cannot see any of your lover’s flaws.
Why do we feel this way? Why do we act as though our partner doesn’t have any flaws or shortcomings? Because. in the beginning, we are loving from our hearts, not our heads. We become blind to the fact that we are active participants in the relationship. It’s just something that “happend.”
But nothing just happens. And once we start seeing ourselves and our partners more clearly, we realize that, like it or not, we have agency in this situation.
Think about it. If relationships were truly this easy, then every person on the planet would be in a happy union!
But what if you went entirely with your head instead of your heart? What if you approached your partner as a problem to solve? What if you noticed every problem, every flaw, every instance of inattention?
You can see where this is going.
The trick is to keep the good feelings of the “love is blind” phase while assessing the reality of the situation in thinking with your head. Not only will that give you relationships that work for you, it also will mean you’ll be a better partner to your spouse/lover. Loving someone means loving them without blinders on.
We’re all combinations of heart and head, aren’t we? Sometimes one is stronger than the other. But as long as we come back to that balance, everything in our lives will be… eyes wide open!