It’s time for the Kenya’s version of Love is Blind

You can learn a lot about love from watching Love Is Blind. PHOTO|FILE

What you need to know:

If the show was to have a Kenyan cast, I can’t imagine how many people would show up and meanwhile be already married

You can learn a lot about love from watching Love Is Blind.

It’s a very hectic show, to be honest. It’s a crazy, chaotic cinematographic train wreck that you can’t look away from with a premise that sounds beyond belief and a group of characters that for the most part, seem implausibly single. What do you mean, these guys are not in long-lasting loving relationships? But…yet they look like that! You’re telling me that all these above-average-looking people can’t find someone to look past their attractive visages into the minds and souls that reside within?

And that’s the first thing you learn, especially with shows like Love Is Blind Brazil (the only real exception to this rule is Love Is Blind Japan, which has a Japanese guy in it who lives in Kenya…but that’s another story). Just because your face looks great and your body is banging, doesn’t mean relationships will be easy for you. I don’t know if that’s reassuring, or discouraging – all of the books and movies we read when we were younger assured us that if we just got a makeover, took off the glasses, and wore sexy clothes, we would immediately become the most desirable girl ever and have a meet-cute with the modern-day version of Jack Dawson/Fresh Prince. Obviously, that’s not true – contacts are hard to put in every day, and Leonardo DiCaprio turned out to only like girls half his age, and, well, Will Smith is…you know. Will Smith. It’s complicated.

Then there’s the fact that a lot of the show’s couples don’t seem to stay together. In Season 1 for example, as surprising as it was, Amber and Barnett are still together, and in a move that surprises no one, so are Lauren and Cameron. Just goes to show that you can’t predict the madness that makes love hold. Who knew that Amber would take a chill pill and fit in with Barnett’s family – who randomly happened to be rich enough to pay her student loans? Who knew that the couple whom we thought connected way too fast would stand fast? You can’t really tell who’s going to work and who isn’t – just like in the show. You roll the dice and see what happens, and figure out whether you want to be committed, or not.

A third favourite lesson – if someone tells you who they are, by Jove, believe them. Remember when Iyanna was incessantly complaining about the way Jarrette would go out with his friends all the time? A year in, during the ‘After The Altar’ special, the relationship still hadn’t changed. And it didn’t really look like it was going to, especially because – spoiler alert – now we know that the two seem to have broken up, according to the latest pop culture reports. Iyanna is the one who initiated the conversation, mostly because she needed him to apparently grow up faster, and he didn’t feel like she was giving him enough time and grace to do so. Love someone as you find them, please, because after the altar, it probably won’t change, and there are no refunds allowed, just like those Instagram shops.

Love Is Blind also makes me think about the choices we make when we really want to be in a relationship. We tend to ignore a lot at the expense of ourselves, of not wanting to be lonely – but we rarely remember that a cat or a nice flourishing Monstera plant will give you a lot less pain, and be equally as, if not more, fulfilling. Companionship is great, but not sacrificed on the altar – forgive the pun - of personal happiness. That’s too high a price to pay.

That being said, with all the bad and good and everything in between, a Love Is Blind Kenya Edition would be hilarious, if the producers did it properly. Can you imagine how many people would show up and meanwhile they are already married? I’m almost curious to see who would have the balls…