WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Dale's Dates Ep. 1: They Were Blind, But You Don’t Have to Be

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Join Cupid and Psyche in their pilot episode as they discuss the dysfunction in Love is Blind, Season 1.

Welcome to Dale's Dates, where we're still awkward and bad you. Welcome to Dale's dates, where we're still single. Love is still awkward and bad decisions do in fact make the best stories. Mikey. We finally made it. I know. It's been a several month long journey in planning in like the the baby phase of it just being an idea with some co-workers in a very sweaty living room. Watching love is blind. Watching love is blind. And looking at people make bad decisions with their dating and thinking they definitely want to know our opinion. Yes. Because it's objectively right. Because we do in fact have the best opinions on the topic. As is evident. by the fact that we are both still single.

It's called having standards. Exactly. Yeah. So how, before we get started on, you know, the actual meat of, you know, the show, let's just give our first time listeners, which as of now is everyone. Including the both of us. Including the both of us. Just let's just give everyone a little intro as to like what sort of brought about the creation of this podcast.

Over the summer, Cupid and I, along with a host of co-work, We're watching Love is Blind as some sort of penance that we were trying to accomplish. And we realized that there were several instances of bad decision making in Love is Blind. And our outraged comments made our co-workers say, like, you guys should start a podcast on this. And we did because we're right. And so they definitely want to know our opinions. They will be our most avid listeners for sure because it's not like they told us to shut up at any point. point in time. No. Yeah, we were very respectful as we were watching the show. So, yeah. But we were doing

this partly because our opinions are so good that we think people should listen to them. We have the right advice. We do. Yes. And these people are examples of how not to do things. And we will tell you how to do things. Exactly. And if you did the things like this. Then you would be successful in every future. Like we are. Like we are. Yes. Yeah. So if you want to listen to us, then dope we think that's a good choice and if you don't and you don't want to take us seriously that's totally fine we're not going to take ourselves entirely your mediocre boyfriend exactly you don't want to listen that's fine exactly um we're not going to take ourselves super super seriously like this is all sort of in in fun we want to make this a sort of fun cheesy show but there will be real

advice uh sort of uh cultivated by us reacting to various clips from certain dating shows movies stuff like that but in honor of our beginnings we are reacting to love is blind today we are want to tell people what's going on in love is blind i would love is i would love to you um so this this this sort of uh story um this this plot line if you can even call it a plot uh that we're going to be there's definitely a plot there's a that's just just just straight from hell um so there's a love triangle going on here between two guys uh barnett and mark and jessica And Jessica is, at least allegedly, according to her, interested in Barnett. He's not interested in her, at least in the long run.

He is interested in her and then isn't. It's just all so silly. Love is blind. It's supposed to have people meet without looking at each other so that they fall in love with the inside of a person. It's hard to fall in love with the inside of someone if you can't see past the surface, though. Yeah. And so because of that, they put all the contestants in. in pods where they can't see the other person and they just spend two three days talking with

each other and the end goal is to get engaged and married all within about a month right yeah i mean they could have come to hillside if they wanted to do that seriously no need for pods that's a lot of money these researchers were expecting people to have deep questions like what's the most important thing to you what do you live for what's your purpose but how do you want to raise our potential future children what's important to you in life yeah tell me about your family but really they got a lot of people with questions about nothing yeah really nothing no did we ever hear anything about children and love is blind anything about i i cannot remember instead of the wedding no yeah nothing i don't know yeah so set up this first clip um jessica who is uh throughout this whole arc

her this whole saga she is playing mark she's leading him on she's you know she she maybe she wants to be interested in him uh but she clearly isn't um is lying to him uh sort of to the degree that you know she wants to be with him long term um and this is this clip we're about to show is sort of the start of that whole unfortunate saga she's been having a relationship with the two of them to a certain degree yes she's and at this point she's She's pretty sure she liked... Was with a guy who's 41. At that point in my life, I felt like I was fast-boarding my life a little bit.

Is that what you're worried that I'm feeling about you? Yeah. I feel like you will be in that position with me, probably. Okay, so that's sort of a little bit of the background. Jessica is sort of setting up already an obstacle to sort of... One of her main concerns with Mark is that he's younger than her? By a lot. She's 34.

He's 20... 21-ish. Yeah, so there's a significant age gap. And Jessica is ready to dismiss mark over this, even though he's, I mean, pretty committed to the relationship, isn't he? Mm-hmm. He's, yeah, he's head over heels for Jessica. For whatever reason, he only has, was it, ears? I get, you can't say eyes because they're not, they can't see each other.

So ears for, he only has ears for her. He only has a heart for her. Exactly. Um, poor guy. But this is her main concern. There's other participants with different concerns about the person on the other side, but Jessica's mainly concerned about Mark being too young. Yes.

So we're going to head into clip two. We're just going to keep building a little bit of context. So between clips one and two, Jessica rejects Mark's sort of advances in favor of Barnett, who Jessica believes, cares about her, wants to marry her. Um, so with that being said, here is, uh, the next clip. Hey, truth or dare. Is it true that you still feel the same way you felt last night? I don't know.

Wait, really? Yeah. Oh. I feel like I should go. I don't like people like you. Like, I'm not playing this game with you. There's people that don't know what they want and that's you. You don't know what you want.

But I think this shows a very important question that we will have to talk over and over about in Dale states, is this a way of communicating at all? They seemingly do not have any interpersonal relational skills. Here's my thing. You can have real hangups in a relationship, right? I mean, would you date someone that's 13 years older than you? That's a legitimate question to ask. It's a question to ask. Is it the right way of asking it by saying, like,

I also dated someone that's 13 years older than me. You're kind of ruining your life here. So I'm going to go talk to this other guy who gives me a non-answer. After he said the night before that he basically wants to marry you. So the guy in that last clip was Barnett, who the night before had said that the way he said it was actually really, really funny. He says, if you were, if you and I were the only people here, I would marry you tomorrow. Which, it's equivalent to saying and allow me here to be the human in the room to say,

the only way I would marry you is if we were the last people on earth, which is less than flattering, really. And we, that line wouldn't work on you. No. What? I'm shocked. No. I think anyone that wants to bring me. proposed to me has to get a page out of Mr. Knightley's book, but, you know, not really. Yeah, that's

fair. Okay, so this next clip. Wait, no, before we go. How do you express interest? How do I express interest? Or ask a person you're in a relationship with if they're interested. This is what Jessica's trying to do. Like, if you ask a girl, hey, do you still feel like that about me? And she says, I don't know. Is that an acceptable answer? I mean, there, There could be extenuating circumstances. If she proposed to you. If she basically said the night before that she wanted to marry me. Well, or that if the two of you were the only people on the planet, that she would marry you.

Yeah. So these people just clearly do not know how to talk with each other. There's no sort of understanding of the other person as, I guess, a person outside of their use to you. Yeah. They're all just kind of in it. And it's really awful to use people like that. And that leads to an awful phenomenon in the daily world, which is leading people on. Oh, my gosh.

And that's why we have a next clip to show that. Yes. Okay. So this clip is Jessica coming back to Mark, begging him to restart, rekindle whatever facsimile of a relationship they had. um i that's all i can say really here it is so i really hope that i didn't mess it up with mark like he is just everything babe i was so confused you know i'm sorry like it's cut off it's totally cut off i'm not seeing him anymore i want to ask you will you marry me hello yes you, I don't want this to ever end.

Where shall we begin with this? Oh my. So 24 hours before this woman says that she wants to spend the rest of her life with Mark, she had just basically begged another man to say that he wanted to marry her. We have no words. It's really terrible. And the listeners might be confused as to that little bit of silence after, will you marry me? That silence was Jessica, like, seemingly unable to, like, unable to answer Mark.

And it's ambiguous whether or not that was like a shocked happy or a genuine period of time for her to figure out if she wanted to say yes. So is she in love with Mark? Is she over Barnett in 24 hours? In her defense, I think maybe she wants to be over Barnett and she maybe wants to be into Mark, but at the same time, wanting to be over someone or into someone. This is the worst, the worst example of leading someone on. This is, yeah, so. It is something to be texting them at ungodly hours of the night.

Yes. Random memes. Exactly. To bid for attention. That's one thing. Another thing completely is to accept. the marriage proposal of a man who you had two days prior rejected for another man who then that night or who then the night before rejected you while also begging someone else to come swoopy

off your feet yeah so it really is not just poor communication it's also just bad behavior when it comes to dating etiquette absolutely absolutely yeah this is just a master class of again This is probably the worst it's ever going to be. I would be very surprised if, because, you know, there's a bunch of sort of extenuating circumstances. But these are the extremes. These are the extremes. But it's not like we don't see this in the real world.

I mean, you go around and you hear stories about, you know, this girl led this guy on for six months. Yeah. He thought they were in our relationship. Yeah. He was just her pal to her. Exactly. Yeah.

You know? There's also the whole. like hills dating phenomenon which we will cover eventually yes but this is just the extreme but it's not like we don't see this yeah yeah and this could be you know uh you know talking stage for a few months and then you actually do start dating for a few months and then you know just out of the blue one person decides you know i actually really wasn't you know the whole that whole time they were trying to figure out if they were interested, they maybe didn't do a good job of sort of discerning beforehand. Like, you know, they didn't spend time in reflection and, you know,

prayer and all this stuff to actually, you know, make use of the time that they were. Or in getting to know that person. Or in getting to know that person. I love the prayer when it comes through relationships, but you really need to like spend time with them. Exactly. Yeah. Get to know them. Say like, hey, is this a person I can like withstand spending a lot of time with? Go on a bunch of different types of dates like don't just do the same thing like don't just do like a dinner and a you know dinner and a show or something i mean are they doing their homework do they have good habits yeah i don't know there's some couples that i'm like are you neglecting everything to be on this relationship exactly yeah i mean yeah to a very large extent which the people in the show did

sign up to neglect every responsibility in their life actually that comes up you know uh be part of the experiment and find the love of their life so we can't fault them for that but But there's no conversation we've encountered so far that it's anything more than, like, well, do you want to commit? Do you want to, like, get married? Because we can totally do that. Yeah. Like, it's, yeah, this, it's, there's a host of problems with this whole scenario. We might, we might need to dedicate this more time.

Like, this, this is a lot. This genuinely might turn into a two-part episode just on these three individuals. and how just ridiculously incapable of interpersonal relationships they are. Yeah. All right. So this next clip we have is of Jessica sort of talking about how she realizes that she's actually not that into Mark. Are they married by now? No, they never end up getting married.

She says no to him at the altar. So, so far, they've spent how much time in the pod? They spent, I think, about like, four days in the pods. Four days in the pot. They get engaged. They get engaged in the pods. And then they see each other for the first time. Yes.

And now all of the couples who have been engaged, who have gotten engaged, are at an all-inclusive resort somewhere in Mexico. So they're living the high life. Because that's exactly where you are when you're about to plan a wedding. Yes. Yeah. So they're living the high life with their. significant others we're keeping it realistic here at the old states exactly yes hopefully you know all of you will have the

opportunity to go to Mexico with your fiancee that you got engaged to after four days of knowing them separate rooms though separate rooms yes we would absolutely nothing nothing premarital going on which is not the case here not even eye contact that's pushing it that's really pushing it um yeah Yeah, so this is, so now they're in Mexico. They've been to Mexico for a couple days. And Jessica is sort of talking to the production crew about how she doesn't think that she's actually into Mark.

Again, she accepted a marriage proposal. She accepted a marriage proposal. They are like engaged couple. They are an engaged couple right now. So let's, let's give this a listen. So the person that I fell in love with was a voice. And now here he is in the flesh. This is him.

And I'm struggling a little bit. it meshing the two people. What an unexpected, what an unforeseen problem that you could have had rushing into an engagement with someone who you turned away 48 hours before you got engaged. You know, the real question here. 24 hours. It's, yeah.

The real question here, Kippet, is can you fall in love with the inside of a person in four days? Well, leave the four days out. Can you fall in love with the inside of a person? I mean, I think it's, possible i mean what blind people fall in love right so uh but then at the same time blind people learn how to build relationships without seeing each other so it's different for them still i think i think there's a decent shot of people falling in love with the inside i mean there's definitely

a lot of stories of like i mean it was in love of first side but after you spend some time exactly yeah but they grow on you in a period of time hopefully longer than four days. If that happens to you where you go from no interest at all to like genuinely in love with someone in four days. Please call us. Tell us about it. Call us. Yeah. We will have you on the show. Stop by the Dale's Day's Instagram account. DM us, your horror stories. But like there legitimately might be something wrong with you. If you, if in the span of four days, you go from not knowing them to like genuinely in love with them without having any of those real sort of necessary interactions we can do a bit of pop psychology too i mean in four days

how much are you actually learning and how much are you projecting onto the person what's something that you have learned or that has completely changed in your life in the last four days psyche oh i learned the moral argument for god's existence that's fun deep change in my life deep change yeah yeah i'm sure yeah it's like completely just like 180 degree head over heels my life has never been the same yeah well i also learned that god has no emotions so you know yeah i knew that before but i i gave it more thought you know yeah sure but like but i mean have you have you had love at first side like i'm a little bit skeptical of the love of my life at first sight I genuinely think that's impossible because I mean actual love requires an emotional connection that is just not I mean you can sort of get hints and intimations at first sight that like okay maybe this might be someone that if we put the effort into relationship I could learn to love but at the same like there's so many I'm a believer of infatuation at first sight yeah you see them across the room and like

You're hit by a wall of bricks, like, oh, my gosh. 100%. No, but love at first sight. I think it's a possible. Love at first phrase for love is playing? Is there a pickup line that would get you? There are definitely pick up lines that would work on me. Whether or not that means that I would immediately fall in love with that person is a completely different question.

We will dedicate an episode to review pick up lines. Pick up lines. Maybe get a professor at a guest. That would be fun. That would be great. Yeah. So Jessica is, understandably, she doesn't really have that much of an attraction to Mark because she was using Mark as. The thing she says is very telling.

I fell in love with a voice. Yeah. And now the voice has a body. Yeah. Which is a dualism that I just don't like dabbling in. She fell in love with like the idea she had in her head of Mark. Yeah. And now poor Mark comes around and he's his whole self.

And before she knew whether or not she was in love with Mark, she was willing to tell him that she wanted to go all in. Like it's not a problem that she's not, you know, interested in Mark or attracted to Mark. But the problem is that she is going just completely all in without knowing if she has any of the emotional sort of, you know, framework to back that up. Not to put Mark in a pedestal, though.

Yeah. I have some criticism of my man Mark here because... Want to hear what Psyche's criticism of Mark is? Well, unfortunately, we're out of time for this week. But you can hear what she has to say on our next episode of Dale's dates.