How A Sour Dating Experience Can Change Us

Love is blind. The dreamy eyes, steamy body, attractive accent and few gestures of love and care are all we need to fall in love with a person. For those who think looks or first impressions don't matter, how would you explain the concept of love at first sight? The earlier stages of infatuation and the honeymoon period give us butterflies in the stomach. We are obsessed with the person to the extent that they consume our thoughts, dreams and actions. We always want to meet the person, feel them around us and spend as much time as possible together. At times, we end up changing our priorities to fulfil our desires.

But what happens when love opens its eyes? Do the obsession and changing of priorities last? Does the attraction towards a person's first impression still govern our emotions? Or do we learn a lesson by seeing things that we never noticed? 

A quote by Abhijit Naskar reads as, "Love that doesn't turn you stupid, is no love." Does it mean we as humans tend to fall in love with people who are walking red flags. Love messes with our minds so much that we become indeed blind and stupid as to ignore the follies of the beloved. We all certainly have stories in which love made us do stupid things like agreeing to everything the partner says, ignoring red flags, accepting follies as human nature or allowing the partner to make our decisions. Often, we revisit those stories to understand what not to do while choosing a partner. This is how the love that is blind turns into a lesson that never lets us shut our eyes in our next encounters.

Scientific evidence of how love is blind

Love affecting our actions and thoughts has scientific evidence. According to a study, people who are in love, especially in the initial stages, show increased activity in the parts of the brain that are rich with dopamine and control our feelings of wants and desire. Interestingly, these regions of the brain are also activated by drugs like cocaine. Ultimately, scientists concluded that love is a natural addiction. 65 per cent of people in love confessed that they think about their "object of desire" in their waking hours and face trouble in concentrating on other work. Evidence also shows that love indeed is blind as it reduces the activity in the part of the brain responsible for decision-making and evaluating. A scientist said that people who are in love "suspend negative judgments of the person we’re in love with."

Now when science too supports the claim that love is blind to the red flags, let us now discuss how we can use blind love as an eye-opening lesson. 

Love might be blind, not you

As William Shakespeare rightly said, "Love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies themselves commit." It is natural for us to fall in love with a person even though we don't know much about them. But as the dating process begins, blind love needs an intervention so that you can see what you are falling for. Since scientific evidence shows that love controls our actions and thoughts, we cannot really do anything about it.

However, we can avoid conscious follies like ignoring red flags. We need to be aware of our wants and rights and be headstrong about preserving them. Maybe, we will not reminded of this power in the initial stages of dating. But this doesn't mean we renounce it for the happiness of the other. If we are aware of green and red flags, we shouldn't commit conscious mistakes beyond the level of losing ourselves and the chance to retrieve. 

Clinking wine glasses, going on multiple dates, a few nightstands, exchanging gifts or indulging in long phone calls are all fine. Once we begin noticing the person behind the mask, we need to start contemplating, confronting and cracking up. It is human psychology to point out irregular behaviour which does not fit into our box of knowledge.

If the person fits into our definition of love, well and good. But if they don't, we should never try to change our definition. Rather, see the qualities that make them defiant. If those qualities are a green flag, we need to accept them. But if they are red flags, it is time to change our paths. 

So this is how blind love turns into life lessons. If I were to define love, I would say love is a sound sleep which has to break in order to survive. 

Views expressed are the author's own.