Should Love Is Blind Require Family Participation? Maybe So

Ostensibly, Love Is Blind is supposed to be about two people coming together, but it’s never really that simple. Many of the most memorable moments happen outside of the pods, when doubting dads or unexpected moms weigh in on their child’s decision to get married to someone they just met. Almost always, the parents end up approving of the marriage, but in Season 11, Aneha Singh’s family disapproved to such an extreme that they refused to even meet her future husband, Cam Halloran — let alone be filmed for the show.

While it’s understandable why some certain people may not want to appear on a Netflix series that sparks inescapable discourse around pretty much everyone on camera, the situation around Aneha’s parents is unique, since she seemed to already know her parents disapproved of the show... and of who she might end up with. As Aneha and Cam were getting to know each other in Mexico, she dropped the bomb that her parents wouldn’t approve of her marrying a white man, even if Cam was relatively well-versed in Hinduism.

Aneha then proclaimed that not only would her family not attend her wedding to Cam, they had also refused to meet him. While Aneha expressed her wishes for her parents to come around, she seemed prepared for this response and not really fazed by it. Cam, on the other hand, was completely thrown at the thought of marrying someone without meeting their family. And that’s where the issue really lies.

Aneha was already prepared to go through this unique experience without that pivotal component, but Cam was not. And it feels kind of wrong for the show to still push this fast-approaching wedding when clearly there’s family issues to work out. At least in this case, it would be in everyone’s best interest if Love Is Blind had required familial participation from the very beginning, to avoid the last-minute fallout when loved ones don’t approve.

Aneha’s family may be the most extreme example of Love Is Blind parents pushing the cameras away, but they aren’t the only ones. Another Season 11 star, Blake Carver, had his fiancée Erika Ellis meet his family off camera because they didn’t want to be filmed (although his dad and brother later appeared at his tux fitting).

Throughout the years, family members’ varying degrees of involvement has been a persistent issue within Love Is Blind relationships, dating all the way back to Season 1’s Giannina Gibelli and Damian Powers and Season 3’s Zanab Jaffery and Cole Barnett. But the family disappearing act has never been so prevalent as in Season 11.

And then there’s Rob Feeley and his chosen family, who made it very clear they didn’t see Love Is Blind as an authentic experience and questioned his fiancée Michaella Giorgio’s motives for pursuing their friend in front of Netflix cameras. Like Aneha, it seems like Rob already knew how his opinionated friends would react before he joined Love Is Blind — but despite that, he still let their conspiracies about getting “canceled” cause him to spiral and scare off Michaella.

Everyone deserves to look for love in the ways they feel drawn toward, but Love Is Blind involves a major lifelong commitment right off the bat. In the cases of Aneha and Rob, they may have been totally fine to go against their family and friends to try this experiment out, but their decision was ultimately an unfair one to their future partners, who didn’t sign up to be shunned by a disapproving family or picked apart by suspicious friends.

The series may like to lean into the “us against the world” pathos of an unbreakable love, but Love Is Blind has always been about more than just its central couples. The show works when it’s a family affair, and it might be time to put some guardrails in place to ensure contestants have the support of their loved ones when they enter those pods.