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In this op-ed, Teen Vogue’s audience development director Mandy Velez reacts to an especially heartbreaking scene in Love Is Blind season 7.
I’m standing in my kitchen, watching Marissa George experience heartbreak in real time in Love Is Blind season seven. She’s sitting on the bed in the show apartment she shares with fiancé Ramses Prashad, tears in her eyes. Days before their wedding day, when they both have to proclaim in front of family and friends that love is, or isn’t, blind and marry each other (or not) to prove it, Ramses — out of nowhere, according to Marissa — breaks up with her. And not just a “call off the wedding” break up (a loophole where Love Is Blind couples choose not to get married but still continue to date). A break-up break-up.
They stand up together from the bed, Ramses holding Marissa, who slowly goes limp before falling to a heap of utter despair on the floor. She’s practically begging him to change his mind, asking him multiple times if he’s “sure,” despite Ramses barely mustering a tear, trying slightly to soften the blow with, “It’s not that I’m unsure about my love for you. It’s just I’m unsure about us.”
It’s a painful scene among many this season, like when Ashley Adionser confronts Tyler Francis about his “sperm” babies, Tim Godbee tells a sleepy and hungry Alexandra Byrd he never wants to see her again, and Hannah Jiles completely emotionally eviscerates Nick Dorka and whatever was left of his self-respect and dignity. But nothing was as painful to watch as the George-Prashad breakup scene, and also, no other scene felt as real.
As Marissa starts to hyperventilate, tears welled up in my eyes. I thought back to my first breakup, which was arguably my worst. As Marissa says “this is the worst heartbreak I’ve ever experienced,” I vividly remembered when I, too, fell into a heap of sobs, shaking on the floor. I was 16, and my high school boyfriend of two years had broken up with me days before. The pain in my chest felt unreal and like nothing I’ve ever experienced since. Months went by and instead of feeling better I stayed stuck in a cycle of sadness, falling so depressed that my mom had to take me to therapy for the first time since childhood.
At the time, I felt so alone, like I was wrong for taking it so hard. That I couldn’t just “get over it.” Like Marissa, I felt like I wasn’t “enough.” I blamed myself. If only I had watched this scene then. I’d maybe feel for myself what I felt for Marissa: compassion. My feelings weren’t weird, and nor are hers. I wasn’t weird — just heartbroken.
I watch a lot of reality TV. I remember the discomfort of seeing running mascara on Bachelor contestants in the early aughts, and thanks to my husband, got caught up with Vanderpump Rules and the jaw-dropping moment of Tom Sandoval looking Ariana Madix dead in her eyes and saying he’s still going on that boys’ trip. All that despite her pleas for him to spend her birthday with her because she misses her father who had passed away — not to mention the sheer pain in part two of last season’s reunion when she begs him to just leave her alone post-Scandoval.
But watching Ramses break up with Marissa wasn’t salacious drama, or a huge cheating scandal, or even on-camera abuse. It was just pure, unfiltered heartbreak. The hard truth of what can happen when two people’s feelings don’t match, when the romantic love for someone ends, when it just doesn’t work out. It completely normalized the real, raw, and often self-deprecating reaction to getting hurt.
In a world of influencers and content and AI making everything look fake, moments of authenticity on TV seem few and far between. The moments that make us feel seen and understood, like we aren’t alone, or are overly dramatic in how we react to pain, feel vital.
