Love is Blind, or is it?

The wife of a friend, Autumn, asked the question, “Is love blind?”.

We have all heard this saying, but is it correct?

In order to decide if it is correct, we’ll first need to understand what it means really.

Let’s begin with what seems to be the obvious part first, what does it mean to be blind?

As obvious as it may seem, blind meaning not being able to see, it isn’t as clear as it appears on the surface.

Some may think that when people speak of “love being blind” they are referring exclusively to the physical. Clearly, we aren’t speaking of literal physical blindness. We don’t need to poke our eyes out in order to experience love, thankfully.

In the case of love, we aren’t saying that we really cannot see, it is more along the lines that, we choose not to see. Being blind in this sense really meaning overlooking items, or issues. A case of willful ignorance, or a conscious decision not to focus on a particular item.

There is of course physical blindness, but there is also emotional blindness, and intellectual blindness. As well as the degree of blindness, either complete or partial.

Each type of blindness represents an absence of their own individual and specific view or perspective.

Love has elements of the, physical, emotional, and intellectual, therefore it would require a combination of figurative blindness’s.

There are two reasons that we choose not to focus on items or issues, either the items simply aren’t important to us, or the items make us uncomfortable.

Our ignorance therefore can serve us for the better, or hinder us for the worse. And likewise, love being blind can have either, or both, of positive or negative effects.

Is our blindness the product of avoidance or is it the rationale of prioritizing?

We all have blind spots in all three of these categories. Some of our blind spots are more glaring than others.

Now let us tackle the much more difficult part, love. I believe that more books have been written about love than any other topic, including war. I won’t attempt to define love here; I have many other blogs and resources for that. I will only point out that the subject of love is vast, and therefore love itself contains an immense amount of, physical, emotional, and intellectual, elements.

That said, love isn’t a singular thing, it is an amalgamation of many things.

And, although you may be blind to somethings you cannot be blind to all things. There are those things which are important to you and those things which are not.

Think about it, if love truly were blind then we could fall in love with anyone at all. In other words, what exactly would it be that you love?

You must see something. The things that are important to you.

Love isn’t blind, but it is blurry.

Love is like a mosaic of small tiles which when put together create a larger picture. When we are close, we can only see the individual tiles, however, when we step back, we can then see the big picture. We can never really see both the small and big pictures at the same time.

Love is so large and broad of a picture that we cannot take it all in at once. We aren’t able to focus on every little detail.

Also, love isn’t static, what is important today may be meaningless tomorrow. As time passes and as love ebbs and flows our understanding fluctuates. Some things come into focus as others fall out of view altogether.

Which begs the question, is it love that causes us not to see, or is it not seeing that causes us to love?

That is the difference between choosing what we want to see and not seeing what we don’t want to deal with.

A healthy and positive love cannot be blind, people just don’t take the time and expend the effort to see what it is that they love.

Blind Love Challenge

Instead of being blind to love take the time to write down what it is that you actually do love, about; family, friends, intimate partners, and of course yourself.

Good Together: your guide to healthy, happy relationships

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