Since premiering on Netflix four years ago, Love Is Blind has produced eight marriages, two soon-to-be babies, a couple of divorces, too many messy breakups to tally, and dozens of hours of entertaining—occasionally appalling—reality television.
On Feb. 14, the show’s sixth season starts streaming, this khbrknews set in Charlotte, N.C. Hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey will once again guide a group of people eager to find love—and/or social-media followers—through a dating scenario designed to determine if love really is blind. After getting to know each other through a wall in small isolation rooms called pods for about 10 days, participants get engaged without ever having seen each other, and then spend a month living together before meeting at the altar to commit or break it off.
If you already know all this because you can’t look away, you’re in good company: Relationship therapists also love Love Is Blind, and not because they’re scouting for future clients. “It’s just fascinating to see how people connect and relate when they don’t know the external context around financial status and looks and all the things that factor into how you judge a person,” says Julia Baum, a therapist based in New York who’s watched every episode. “It’s really neat, especially when you see people who you wouldn’t expect to connect in the pods.”
That said, there are plenty of ways the show could improve. We asked therapists what they would change about Love Is Blind if they were showrunners for a day.
The casting should branch out
Contestants on Love Is Blind don’t know what the people they’re dating look like—but they can reasonably guess that they’ll like what they see. The show has notoriously cast conventionally attractive people with little body diversity.
Ideally, casting would diversify in numerous ways, says Nicole Hind, a couples therapist based in Australia. For one thing, age: Many people on the show are in their 20s or early 30s. What about…
