love isn't blind in washington dc

at least not for me

Oct 27, 2024

I spent my first few weeks of college sitting at my desk, watching through the giant windows as people walked past. Sofia, Grace, Sophie, and I would perch on the edge of the desk or sit on my twin bed, pointing out outfits, waving to the girls we knew from class, and giggling with each other when we saw a guy we thought was cute. We were 18, it was our first time living away from home, and everything was new and exciting, we were finding our place in the world and to do that we had to see everything.

We sat there and observed and I began to notice patterns—friendships forming, relationships going through different stages. It was voyeuristic in a sense, all of the watching, but we made up stories for the people we saw. They were characters, the world was a crisp, blank page and each day we learned more, wrote new words down. It was during this time that I first noticed Paul.

He was tall, with curly hair, and he took long strides across the quad, as if constantly in a hurry. I would see him all the time: out my window, in line for a bagel, occasionally at parties. Some light Instagram stalking showed that we had mutual friends, and I quickly realized I had a very surface-level crush on him. I barely knew the man, I could tell you the things I learned from his Instagram or the small observations I picked up on, but I knew I liked him. It was funny, having a crush on someone who didn’t know I existed, little butterflies kept swooping around whenever he walked past me.

It was exactly 5 years ago today. Grace and I wore matching cat costumes for a Halloween party we were going to, glitter on our eyes, and cat whiskers drawn on our faces with eyeliner. We got to the house and pushed our way to the bar to grab drinks, that’s when I drank vodka cranberry juice, the red liquid sloshing around in an equally red cup as I laughed with my friends and danced to songs I can no longer listen to without picturing a frat basement. That night, vodka cran in one hand, Grace’s hand in the other, I found myself dancing next to Paul’s friend group. I knew them all by name, the perks of having a mutual friend, and I put myself across from Paul, hoping he might notice me.

Having a crush is the best and worst feeling in the entire world. You feel like you’re on a high whenever they glance in your direction, but reality always hits, they go over to another group of girls with their friend and you’re just the girl who stood nearby wearing a cat costume.

Someone called an Uber, I was disappointed, I spent all night vaguely drunk and wanting to talk to Paul, or dance with him, or kiss him in a corner, or just let him know that I existed, but my friends were leaving so I followed them to the car. In a moment of boldness I’ll never be able to recreate, I saw Paul standing by the front gate, I ran over to him, made him take a photo with me, and the very next day, after talking myself into it and then out of it and then Grace talked me back into it, I slid into his Snapchat DMs with a very casual “hey! i think we took this photo together last night!”

And the rest was history.

He’s next to me while I write this, I showed him the photo, me in cat ears and eyeliner whiskers, him in the white t-shirt, and reminded him that 5 years ago, something special began. When I messaged him all of those years ago, I did not expect anything, let alone an apartment together 5 years later or the most intense feelings of love, but we found ourselves talking non-stop, I told him my secrets, he told me his, and I knew that the crush I developed turned into real feelings. I’m beyond lucky to have someone so caring, thoughtful, intelligent, and generous love me. I love him with every part of me, in a way I never thought myself capable.

Paul and I recently watched the first few episodes of Love is Blind together (he got bored after they left the pods so I watched the rest by myself), and I asked him if we would have dated if we met under those. For those unfamiliar, Netflix’s Love is Blind is a reality dating show/insane sociological experiment where individuals from a specific city try to fall in love without seeing another person. Since the show began airing in 2020, the participants in “the experiment” are divided by gender, and for 10 days, they rotate through the “pods” (literally just rooms that are connected but you can’t see each other) “dating” the different people in there. In the pods, they are meant to talk about anything, fall in love, and get engaged, and for the couples that find themselves leaving the pods with a shiny ring on their finger, they have 21 days to live together and then get married.

Many reality dating shows follow a similar pattern: marriage is the ideal outcome, they date for a short time before they’re expected to get engaged. Engagement is great, but we are at a point in society right now where it tends to be something that comes after years of dating, there’s less general pressure to get engaged quickly in a relationship. When shows like The Bachelor first premiered in 2002, engagement was so important in dating culture, it made sense for a show to depict people dating for a short time before getting engaged. Now, with casual dating and casual sex being more commonly accepted, a reality dating show that ends in engagement or marriage feels forced. I’ve seen criticism on social media from fans of The Bachelor and other reality dating shows saying that the show doesn’t feel the same as it did in the earlier years because a bunch of 25-year-olds should be at the club, not trying to get engaged on reality tv.

This season of Love is Blind that just ended took place in Washington D.C., so as a DC resident/reality TV fiend/someone whose love story started here, I’ve spent more time thinking about it than I’m proud to admit. I watched these women fall in love with men that they had never seen, they formed deep connections from just a few conversations, and even though I find the premise of the show deeply foolish albeit entertaining, I compared their way of falling in love with my relationship with Paul, something that started purely because I was physically attracted to him and acted on it.

Maybe the modern woman does want a love like in the reality TV dating shows, a guy to talk to them through a wall and tell them the exact timeline for when they want to have kids and how every relationship they’ve ever been in has shaped them as a person. They hear this voice telling them the things they’ve been waiting their entire lives for a partner to say, and they suspend reality for a bit, they fall in love with the person and start a relationship. We love watching reality TV dating because it makes so little sense, it’s a controlled environment with circumstances specifically designed for falling in love and creating the juiciest story, but it’s so far from what falling in love in the real world is like.

Love isn’t blind, it’s complicated and messy and so full of life. I love Paul a crazy amount, and I know both of us wouldn’t thrive in a Love is Blind-esque environment. We needed the time to develop, to communicate through different situations, to constantly grow together, and to love each other more and more. I don’t want anything different than what I already have. I have 5 years of shared memories, of constantly growing, adapting to each other, and becoming better people together. Paul walked past my window in a bright orange shirt and became everything to me.

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thank you for everything

with love,

sarah 💌

ps: weekly favorites

she’s always hungry by eliza clark
the chicken pot pie paul and i made
all of the DC foliage
my new pajamas
the mini weekend trip paul and i took to NJ to go apple picking
paul wants me to say that it was world gibbon day the other day so happy world gibbon day everyone