This Dating Show Is Actually a Blueprint for the Future of Romance

What if Love is Blind isn't just reality TV - but the best way to date in the Digital Age?

Fun fact, I met my wife on a dating app. When I get asked about our story, I talk about the quick connection and how easy it felt to talk with her. I’ll tell stories about how we navigated meeting just a few months before the onset of Covid and joke about how she left me on read for the first 12 hours after we matched. Don’t worry, she’s got plenty of material to throw right back at me.

What I leave out is all of that came after nearly a decade of navigating dating apps: swiping, ghosting, mismatches, and conversations that fizzled after three texts. There was a level of emotional fatigue that consistently bordered on giving up and adopting several feral cats. And while I’m grateful for how it turned out, I can say with confidence: I don’t want that for my son when he’s ready to date.

Modern dating has become a weird and exhausting game. Most people are reduced to curated photos, a recycled bio, and a maybe-clever opener. We’ve created a system that encourages snap judgments and discourages depth. The result? People feel disposable. Connection feels elusive. That emotional fatigue? A feature, not a bug. And the longer you spend in the system, the more it trains you to keep looking instead of committing.

Apps were supposed to solve dating. But for many, they just made it lonelier.

The Reality TV Romance Experiment That Might Actually Work

Then along came Love is Blind – the now perennial Netflix romance show where contestants date in closed off ‘pods,’ talk through a wall, fall in love without ever seeing each other, and lay eyes on one another for the first time only when they get engaged.

Sound gimmicky? You’re right, but that gimmick has hooked millions of viewers and turned into eight seasons in America and eight spin-off shows around the world. But the actual twist is that, despite its reality TV origins, Love is Blind’s method actually seems to work.

You could be forgiven for thinking relationships built on television would fall apart as soon as filming wraps, but Love is Blind’s track record suggests otherwise. Despite the drama, editing, and cameras, the show has produced multiple lasting marriages, some of which have gone on to have children.

Out of all the pairs formed on the show over the course of six seasons since 2020, 29% got married, and 24% were still married in 2024, with only two marriages ending in divorce. That’s a pretty solid success rate. For comparison, roughly 12% of online dating app users report entering into a serious relationship with a match from the app, let alone getting married. What started as a reality show experiment revealed something meaningful: when you take physical appearance off the table and focus on emotional connection, people often build stronger, faster bonds.

Building Pods for the Real World

So what if we took the best parts of Love is Blind and built something real out of it? Remove the cameras and requirement to get engaged sight unseen, and you’ve got the makings of something solid.

Imagine a modern dating system built around the same concept. People fill out a detailed profile: values, life goals, desire for children, religious views, lifestyle preferences. They’re then grouped into pods of about 20-30 people with compatible preferences. Over the course of a few weekends - or maybe a structured sabbatical week - they rotate through audio-only conversations. No photos. No distractions. No visual-first filtering. Just voice, conversation, and chemistry.

Participants could engage remotely from home, or pay a premium for in-person pod sessions at a local venue. The logistics would probably cost a pretty penny, so it wouldn’t be cheap - but that’s actually part of the pitch. You’re paying to be here. So is everyone else. That investment helps weed out the unserious and filters for people who are genuinely looking to connect.

To make it sustainable and accessible across income levels, you could offer guarantees: re-entry into new pod rounds if no match is made, or a partial refund minus a non-refundable deposit. And yes, it would require people to make time - maybe even take time off work. But so do weddings. So do honeymoons. If we want people to build meaningful relationships, maybe it’s time we treated the dating process with the same level of intentionality.

There could even be versions tailored for different stages of life: one for those looking to settle down and start a family soon, another for people who are recently divorced or re-entering the dating scene after a long break. The point isn’t to guarantee love - it’s to create a better environment for love to grow.

Why the Pod Model Solves What Apps Can’t

It’s not like this has never been attempted before. Blindfolded speed dating exists. Audio-only dating apps popped up for a minute. But the reason those efforts haven’t stuck is that they’ve all kept too closely to the app model: low barriers to entry, minimal commitment, and easy access for people who aren’t actually looking for a serious relationship. When just about anyone can sign up and jump in, the entire process becomes vulnerable to people who treat it like a novelty rather than a genuine pursuit. And for those who are serious, that dynamic can be draining and disheartening.

This model would set itself apart precisely because it asks for something more: more intentionality, more emotional readiness, more buy-in, and yes, more effort. It would be unapologetically geared toward people who want real partners, not casual hookups or attention games. And by raising the bar to get in, it raises the likelihood that participants are showing up for the right reasons.

It also creates space for intentional conversation. Imagine people who are actually listening, actually asking questions, and actually hoping to build something real. The process could incorporate built-in reflection time, journaling prompts, or even mentorship check-ins with happily married couples. It wouldn't just be about pairing off; it would be about preparing for partnership.

It’s a dating path that’s more human - and more hopeful.

Giving Our Kids a Better Shot at Love

You’ve probably been wondering what a married dad in his mid-thirties is doing laying out a plan to reinvent modern dating. “I thought this was a Substack on fatherhood.” It’s a fair question, to which I say, fatherhood is the exact reason I am thinking about this.

Simply put, dating apps suck. They have been found to contribute to loneliness and exacerbate symptoms of depression. Users regularly report burnout, fake accounts, scams, abusive behavior, and low success rates. Yet, despite the general frustration with dating apps and all of the drawbacks, tens of millions of Americans use them every day. 30% of American adults self-report using dating apps; that goes up to 59% for young adults, and that’s just the people willing to admit that they use them. While there are still some old-school dating purists, online dating has largely taken over, and there don’t seem to be many viable alternatives.

Here's where the fatherly instincts kick in: I don’t want my son’s love life to begin with a swipe and end with getting ghosted only to have to start all over time and time again. I want him to have conversations that go somewhere. I want him, when he’s ready, to enter a dating world where emotional maturity is the starting point, not the end goal. Where awkward silences aren’t edited out, they’re embraced as part of getting to know someone. Where people show up as themselves, not as the brand they’ve curated online.

Love is Blind was never meant to fix dating. But maybe, in a world that feels more transactional by the day, it stumbled into something that could. If we strip away the spectacle and keep the soul of the idea, we might just give our kids something better to hope for.

And that’s worth building.