Just how blind is love?

You must have heard the cliché at least once: “Love is blind.” What does it really mean and just how blind should love be? I decided to investigate. I suspected that responses will be varied and I was not disappointed. My finding is that the phrase is amoebic; it means different things to different people, though with some common denominators.

Eme says “love is blind… means loving someone regardless of physical, material, spiritual and behavioural shortcomings, (but) love should not be so blind as to lead one into crime, emotional/physical abuse or away from God.”

For Tochi, “love is never blind, rather it accommodates the weaknesses of one another. For me, wrong is wrong and needs to be pointed out no matter how subtle it is put, for the sake of the love being shared; it may be accommodated or tolerated so that life goes on. That does not mean that love is blind.

“As regards how blind love is, the word ‘NO’ is loving word yet not many would want to hear no as an answer, especially when they ask for a favour. I think that one should be courageous enough to say no when what is asked for may be injurious either to the one asking or to the society at large. Let us not hide under the pretext that ‘Love is blind’ to do wrong and say love is blind, except it is not love, because I know that love seeks the common good of all concern.”

Love is blind means “absolute disregard for the foibles of the loved party”, according to Okon. But how blind should this love be? “Enough to visibly live the ‘golden rule’” in Matthew 7:12- “do for others what you will want them to do for you”. How do we reconcile this golden rule of Moses with Jesus’ new commandment that we should love one another as He has loved us, which means our love for our spouses should not be determined by their love for us?(See John15:12-17).

Chiazor does not “believe in the rubbish” that love is blind. “My love sees”, he says. Dipo says love is blind “means that you should learn as much as possible to overlook the mistakes of your spouse. Even when the errors are obvious, turn blind eyes to them. Love should be very blind to errors and mistakes from spouses with the exception of Infidelity and fetishism”.

“Love is blind simply means one’s ability to overlook, sometimes obvious, flaws and imperfections in one’s spouse because of the emotional bonding you feel with the spouse,” asserts Dubem. “In the presently interesting times we live in, love shouldn’t be ‘too blind’. That term certainly should be applied or practised with caution, given the wide array of unsavoury excess baggage many men and women bring to relationships and even marriages: health defects, past history, masked temperamental volatility, etc”.

To Uruemu, “love is blind means that when you love someone, you overlook the unpleasant side of that person and just continue your relationship with the person. This mostly applies to couples or people in a relationship.

“Let’s even take a Biblical view of Love, in John 3:16, the Bible says that, ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.’ Can love be blinder than this; that someone perfectly good is dying for bad people to be saved?”

What about me? “Love is blind” reminds me that I am not perfect, but I expect my wife to tolerate my imperfections. Consequently, I must also accommodate her imperfections. This does not make what is wrong right. Black is black and white is white. Just how blind should love be? My mind goes to when Peter asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother who has wronged me, seven times?” Jesus said, “Not seven times but seventy seven times seven”, which means always. (Matthew 18:21-35).

My mind also goes to 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind… love does not keep a record of wrongs… love never gives up” and so on. This is a very tall order. While we strive to attain it, let us also be honest and realistic; there is so much that a human being can take. Man is not God and even the man of God at his best is still man. Human beings have latitude of acceptance and tolerance. Do not push your spouse beyond that latitude for any reason. Know and respect your spouses’ core values. Do not toil with them, hoping that blindness of love will paper over the cracked walls. Do not commit infractions your spouse will find very difficult to forgive. The same blind love that makes you expect your spouses’ forgiveness should also restrain you from pushing your spouse beyond his/her limits. These are without prejudice to Jesus’ admonition.

Also, blindness of love should exist mainly in the realm of matrimony. Love should not be blind during courtship, unless you want to postpone the evil day. Shine your eyes; know all his/her shortcomings, then ask yourself whether or not your love for him/her is blind enough to tolerate them for the rest of your life. Marriage already has a trailer load of blind love; do not import an ounce of blind love from courtship into marriage unless you are conscious of what you are importing.

Finally, we must remember that it takes two to tangle. If the blindness of love is to be fruitful, both parties must be blindly in love, not just one person being blind and the other at the receiving end all the time.

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