I don’t always watch reality TV dating shows, but when I do, it’s Love is Blind. It’s absurd, high-drama schadenfreude, but there’s also something very real about watching these imperfect people try to figure out the braintwister that is modern romance. The concept is simple: couples meet and get to know each other through a wall and may only see each other in person once they’ve proposed. If they’ve gotten engaged, sight unseen, they have a month (a month!) to get to the wedding day.

I’m sure contestants can leave whenever they want (and there are quite a few people that we meet in the first episode who we never hear from again) but there’s a distinct feeling that the only way to escape this dystopian dating prison is to propose to someone. And it makes a sort of sense, even within the bananas logic of the Love is Blind universe: getting engaged does feel like the key to escaping the terrible merry-go-round of swiping, meeting, dating, and hearts breaking. Love is Blind appeals to an audience of online daters: people with excessive options paralysis, for whom the next better option just might be around the next corner. Perhaps the heart of the show’s experiment is: If we were forced to commit, could we let go of the anxiety of options?