The Unhealthy Lessons that Love Island Teaches us: Lesson 1 (Love is Lust)
I can’t believe I’m publicly admitting that I got really curious about the reality TV show this year and decided to try watching it. Worse still is that I kind of got sucked in. After all, who doesn’t love a bit of drama, suspense, some ripped abs. Actually I’m throwing that last one in as a joke because I could hardly give a rat’s bottom about the guys on this show. Perhaps I’m an unusual kind of girl, but I’ve never really given many fudges for a guy’s physical appearance. It’s always been about the heart, the mind and the soul (sounds corny, I know!) for me. I just got extra lucky I suppose since the man I have ended up with happens to be handsome on top of everything else.
Anyway, I’ve watched enough of Love Island now this year to have experienced it in all its soul-destroying glory. I’m not judging anyone else for watching it. I must reinstate that despite all I am about to say, I may still put it on the background from time to time as the sheer madness of it all is a great distraction and I do like Eyal’s curly hair. Drat, he’s gone. At least Alex has those doe eyes. That will have to suffice for now.
Anyway, the first unhealthy lesson (amongst many!) that I believe Love Island teaches us is the false idea that love = lust.
In my humble opinion, a more appropriate title for the show would be Lust Island.
The whole concept of the programme is pretty ridiculous, really. Multiple singles are placed onto an island to live in a luxurious villa for several weeks, and all of them are undoubtedly picked for their almost unnatural physical perfection, which I shall touch on more in a second post. They are in it to win. Their prize; a nifty lump sum of money. Although, as the contestants never cease to reiterate, they are there to find 'love'.
They are expected to form couples almost immediately based on who-fancies-who, a bit like when you were at primary school and you immediately decided you liked someone and the next day your best friends performed an imaginary wedding ceremony and you became a couple, just like that. They literally have no time to get to know each other before they are coupled-off according to levels of physical attraction, after which they actually begin to share the same bed and take part in less-than-innocent challenges together, and most of them walk around holding hands, kissing and cuddling like real-life couples, except they’re not.
Of course feelings are going to begin to surface when you force heterosexual people of the opposite gender to spend all their time together. But can you really call these ‘true’ feelings, after only several days or weeks, when all you are seeing is the shiny, TV-show-worthy front of the person, who has probably worked-out and starved themselves for weeks prior to this, and desperately wants to win the money so will go to any lengths to make themselves look and seem like an amazing catch?
The danger of this message is that the definition of real love becomes mudded. In the real-world, the majority of us aren’t super-models, we’re not used to strutting and acting in front of cameras and putting on a front, and most of our lives are lived out ‘behind the scenes’. Behind closed doors we are a mixed-bag of good, bad, broken, ugly and beautiful, and that is true for us all.
When we fall in love with a person we must realise that in order to truly love we will have to make peace with the whole package. I’m not saying settle for someone who mistreats you or abuses you or who is very wrong for you, but we have to come to a point where we realise this person will have their up-days and down-days, some days we will find them attractive and some days we won’t, some days we’ll feel like the other person is amazing and some days they’ll irritate us no end, and that’s OK. They’ll be arguments over petty things, sometimes bigger things, hurt feelings and learning to adapt as both people grow, evolve and carve-out a life together.
This has very little to do with getting butterflies in the presence of someone’s six-pack and smooth-talk. True love is raw and real, requires sacrifice (sometimes) and giving when you don’t always feel like it, but it is so immensely worth it.
It is walking hand-in-hand through all of life’s trials, tribulations AND its joys and wonder with someone who has chosen you, and who you get to choose every day. It’s knowing someone always has your back. It’s feeling safe and feeling home. Even when that person begins to wrinkle, sag and turn grey.
If love were about the superficial, no relationship would last past the initial attraction stage.
Now I’m going home to catch up on Love Island over dinner, because Max is working and it’s basically the mind-numbing rubbish I need just now to keep me sane during the last couple of weeks of term at school.
Until the next post.
