The Minneapolis-set eighth season of Netflix’s flagship dating show, Love Is Blind, was an odd one to be sure. Most of the action went down in the pods, where two overlapping love triangles ultimately imploded, leaving four of the most interesting cast members unengaged and thus mostly absent in the second half of the season. With few exceptions (like Dave and Lauren splitting over his failure to trust her over gossipy friends and family), the romantic getaways and Midwest homecomings felt relatively frictionless. But when the time came to commit, just one of five engaged couples—Christmas enthusiasts Taylor and Daniel—said “I do.” Only after that anticlimax, in Sunday’s reunion, did the truth behind the “Minnesota nice” finally come out.
It was a surprisingly eventful episode, with revelations ranging from furtive post-breakup DMs to an update confirming that whatever happened between Madison, Mason, Alex, and Meg remained a mess about which multiple people were probably lying. But beyond the harsh reads and hidden receipts (congrats to Madison for concealing anything in that dress), what stuck out were the ideological divides that caused two women to break it off at the altar. Like everything else in American life, Love Is Blind has become increasingly politicized of late. So it makes some sense that a season shot in a purple state during the lead-up to the 2024 election would not just reflect but also illuminate a partisan divide that often manifested as a gender gap.
The topic first came up in a postmortem of Devin and Virginia’s engagement. Although they seemed to be one of the season’s most compatible couples, their conversations about politics—hers liberal, his conservative—had always been strained, with him dodging her attempts to draw out his specific views. The reunion reaffirmed that this was a crucial factor in her decision to not get married. “We were not in alignment on some really important things,” she explained. “Devin told me a lot about his core values—something that he did not want to talk about on camera.” And while she continued to respect his wish to conceal his beliefs, her clarity in explaining her own painted a pretty vivid negative-space picture: “I 100% support the LGBTQ community. I also believe that women should have the decision to choose if they wanna have an abortion or not. I also believe that different religions should be valued.” Devin’s response was characteristically vague. “For me, I can look past certain things,” he said. “I think that you can be together and have a relationship and not completely agree on everything. And I think a big thing for me, as a Christian, is to love everyone, regardless of how I feel about something.”
This explanation for their breakup echoed a conflict that was more prominent throughout the season in Sara and Ben’s relationship. While religion had never been a big part of her life, Sara gave the church that seemed to be the center of Ben’s world a chance. But in researching its positions and teachings, she discovered a sermon on sexuality that espoused “traditional” views—a topic that hit home for her, in part, because her beloved sister is gay. Despite his assurances that he was comfortable with “that community,” Ben’s views on LGBTQ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other social issues appeared apathetic at best. (“I didn’t vote in the last election,” he told her in the pods. “I’ve kind of just been staying out of it.”) Elaborating on her choice after the abortive ceremony, Sara reflected: “Equality, religion, the vaccine? Like, I brought up all these things because I think they’re all important conversations. Whatever you believe, at least have the conversation. There was no curiosity coming from his side.”
At the reunion, Ben acknowledged that his views—or lack thereof—were the product of privilege and specifically that he had simply never given much thought to his church’s positions on sexual identity because he “didn’t ever need to know, because there wasn’t really anyone in my life that it really pertained to.” In response, Sara explained that she wasn’t trying to give him a litmus test. “It’s not necessarily that I was looking for a right or wrong answer,” she said. “I just wanted to have the open discussion. The problem is, out of the pods it just never progressed.” As a result of that impasse, she arrived at the altar unconvinced that she knew who Ben really was.
As residents of a state that, in 2024, favored Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by just 4% of the vote, the Love Is Blind Season 8 cast reflects a real divide within Minnesota. It also mirrors the double-digit nationwide gender gap—one the Trump campaign successfully worked to widen by appealing to men under 40—with most women voting Democratic and most men Republican. All of the above has, of course, been dissected to death in the media over the last four months. But the substance of these disagreements is rarely put into human terms, especially for the millions of us who exist in more homogeneously red or blue spheres, the way it was this season.
Pundits on both sides of the aisle have, unsurprisingly, seized upon Sara’s and Virginia’s choices as cases in point for their respective worldviews. A pre-reunion New York Post article that labeled Sara “woke” quoted Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and Tomi Lahren’s pro-Ben posts (conservative white woman Lahren: “Is there anything more annoying than a liberal white woman?”) summed up the Murdoch empire’s take. As you’d expect, feminist-minded blogs had a different read. “It’s one thing to be undereducated or repulsed by the nuances of our complex (and broken) two-party system,” according to the site Betches. “But to actively avoid information on the biggest social issues (AKA human rights) so that you can pretend everything is chill, like it’s a cleaning reminder from your dentist, is the literal definition of privilege.” “This entire season is proof that women are constantly doing the work,” wrote a Scary Mommy blogger.
I won’t pretend my sympathies don’t lie with the latter crowd, or that the outpouring of right-wing misogyny directed at Sara and Virginia merits any response other than disdain. But I also think there’s something baffling about the couples’ political disconnects that goes beyond partisanship or the substance of either partner’s beliefs. On one side we see two women who can’t abide stances they’re keenly aware would adversely affect people they cared about, from Sara’s sister to the Muslim relatives Virginia mentions. On the other are two men who refuse to see political views as anything more than abstract ideas that should be neither discussed in public nor considered based on how they impact real people—who refuse, in other words, to admit that politics matter at all. The thing is, if you think, for example, that same-sex marriage is wrong and vote (or abstain from voting) accordingly, you can be as polite as you want to queer couples; you’re still doing them harm. As Trump supporters across the U.S. are being forced to confront the adverse effects of policies they voted for, Ben and Devin’s failure to so much as make a connection between politics and reality is a form of denial that feels both insidious and common.
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