‘Love Is Blind’ By The Numbers: Does Netflix’s Dating Experiment Actually Work?
Love Is Blind (2020) has returned to Netflix with Season 11. For three consecutive years, Love Is Blind has reigned as one of Netflix’s most-watched reality dating shows. Viewers can’t get enough of its audacious premise, which gives individuals the opportunity to become engaged before they even see each other. Each season features about 30 single men and women looking for love. For a week, they spend time getting to know one another in specially designed pods where they can speak but can’t see each other.
At the end of the week, they must decide whether to jump the gun and get engaged to someone they’ve been talking to before seeing them. If they choose to get engaged, they meet face-to-face, go on a honeymoon, and get a real-life trial run before deciding whether to truly tie the knot. While the speed dating sounds pretty extreme, there’s also something dreamy and romantic about the premise, giving viewers hope that relationships don’t have to be dictated by appearances and that just a few weeks are all a couple needs for love to blossom. However, some viewers will likely remain skeptical of the premise and the experiment's long-term results. Use our guide to find out what the numbers really say about Love Is Blind’s success rate.
How Many ‘Love Is Blind’ Couples Are Still Together?
Fans of Love Is Blind know that each season, only a handful of participants choose to get engaged at the end of round 1. Even fewer go on to tie the knot, and fewer still stay together after the cameras cut. Over the first 10 seasons, 57 couples got engaged. Of those 57, 16 went ahead with marriage. However, only half of those marriages have survived as of the writing of this article. The current successful remaining marriages, as per Tudum, are:
Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton (Season 1)
Amber Pike and Matt Barnett (Season 1)
Tiffany Pennywell and Brett Brown (Season 4)
Bliss Poureetezadi and Zack Goytowski (Season 4)
Amy Cortés and Johnny McIntyre (Season 6)
Taylor Krause and Garrett Josemans (Season 7)
Taylor Haag and Daniel Hastings (Season 8)
Christine Hamilton and Vic St. John (Season 10)
While these marriages survived, eight more didn’t. The shortest marriage, between Season 10’s Jordan Faeth and Amber Morrison, lasted just four months, while the others lasted between one and five years before the couples called it quits. Considering the dissolved marriages, Love Is Blind seasons 2, 3, 5, and 9 produced no successful marriages. Overall, of all the couples who got together on Love Is Blind, 14% have resulted in lasting marriages.
How to Interpret ‘Love Is Blind’s Success Rate
What Love Is Blind’s success rate means largely depends on how you interpret it. At first glance, a 14% success rate seems low and may suggest that love isn't blind. However, in the context of reality dating shows, one may be surprised by how high Love Is Blind’s success rate actually is. After all, its reality show premise means it’s not a perfect experiment. One must consider things like producer influence and contestant motivations. Some people may appear on the show for influence and visibility, not because they actually expect to get married. Others may go along with producer influence without really intending to tie the knot.
Love Is Blind does a good job of trying to replicate the real world for couples by having them cohabitate in an apartment complex, but they’re still in a manufactured environment for the duration of the show. When the glamour and whirlwind of reality TV wears off, it’s not surprising many relationships fizzle out. It happens in other reality TV shows, too: The Bachelor (2002) boasts just a 4% success rate for lasting marriages.
Given reality TV's challenges and the fact that some people spend a lifetime searching for a partner, a 14% success rate doesn’t seem that bad. Many viewers, upon hearing Love Is Blind’s blind, speed-dating premise, may have doubted it would produce a single lasting marriage. The fact that it has eight to show is kind of impressive.
At the same time, the 14% success rate requires contestants and viewers to be realistic about the show’s limitations. It is a bit sobering for the couples who do make it out of Love Is Blind married, knowing their relationship has a 50% chance of failing. Ultimately, the fact that it has any success rate to speak of shows that Love Is Blind is doing something right. Still, the low success rate reminds us that love may not be wholly blind and is certainly not simple. As much as TV can romanticize speed dating, perhaps there’s nothing wrong with some good old-fashioned dating, too.
