Can you be blind and fall in love?

Sight doesn’t play any role in anything a blind person does. Why would it forbid them from falling in love?

My therapist is blind and very in love with his wife. While vision is certainly a part of the process in being attracted to someone, it’s not the only thing.

I think sight plays a major role (but it’s not the only factor) in attraction.
Attraction =/= love.

Where’s dpworkin at when you need him?

Hello Lionel Richie’s in the house.

I don’t know, let’s gouge your eyes out and see if you still love your mom/potential partner/dog – I know it sounds harsh but the notion that a blind person can’t love is a little ridiculous.

No, my 2 partially sighted friends are just now married. Love is a connection of hearts in the truest form. Same lusts, and maybe even disappointments and successes.

LOVE IS BLIND

Of course! Some people actually are attracted to the person,not the looks. :)

No

Being blind affects your ability to love. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can be blind and fall in a hole!?!

removed by me – nonsensical

I will say this, sight can very often blind you to true love.

DP’s answer is going to top everyone’s, but I have a story.
A few years ago, we got a pony that was “damaged”. The previous owners were going to put him down because he got attacked by some of their bigger horses. He lost his right eye and had severe damage to his left. At the time, he was completely blind. He was skiddish and didn’t trust us at all. After months of constantly being around him I slept in the barn with him a few nights, he finally relaxed and let us work with him. That horse ended up loving us like no other horse ever has. If he could tell that you were around, he would come up to you and nuzzle you until you almost fell over. He’d follow you around the fields and stand outside of the porch window until you were finished with dinner. He loved the attention and care. Over a few years, we found out that he could see a tiny bit out of his left eye they think it healed it’s self over time, I can’t explain it. We started training him to be a lesson horse. Eventually, he became one of the best jumpers that we had at the ranch. He couldn’t see, but he trusted us enough to take care of him after a few years of being neglected. He trusted us enough to take him over jumps. He couldn’t see who or what was touching him, or loving on him, or breaking out the babytalk, but he knew that he was loved. He loved us back.
Unrelated to falling in love, but I think you get the point. Sight has nothing to do with the ability to love.

I’ll have to ask Vicky if she loves me. I didn’t realize I had a problem.

A persons personality can shine through just as easily whether sighted or not, so most certainly you can be blind and fall in love.

@rangerr Yes animals can be so very trusting if you treat them right, can’t they?

@rangerr Very nice.

The blind often use touch to “see.” You can see how beautiful someone is using your fingers. You get a sense of their proportions, and you feel their skin and their response to your touch. And since touch is so important to love making, I’d imagine the blind might be pretty good lovers.

So, yeah. You betchum the blind can fall in love.

Is this question really for real?

@windex I understand what you’re asking. You’re asking if the rules of attraction to a sighted person apply in the same way to a blind person. I would not have the ability to answer that accurately, since I have never been blind. But what I do know is that just because one’s ability to perceive may be different from another’s, it certainly does not mean that their feelings are. Of course blind people can fall in love.

Of course. In fact the blind could possibly love better. Instead of being focused on looks, they will feel more in touch and in their hearts. I am sure it will be a beautiful love.

My girlfriend is focused on looks. She always tells me when she thinks some guy is cute. I’m not sure how she knows, but she’s always right.

I agree with @Dibley. We are such shallow people. It would be nice to feel as though my looks did not matter one bit, and I keep waiting to find someone who sees me as beautiful regardless of my looks.

@free_fallin We all have that someone special, it just takes time to find them, and when you do, they will love you inside and out.

What a stupid question! Can you be dumb and fall in love?

Isn’t love blind?

Some of us, blind or not, will see other things in people, beside their looks, and fall in love with them. I also think that a person would have to be incredibly shallow to rely only on looks to fall in love with another person.

Short answer: Of course they can. o_O

hmmm… I can only really relate and compare this to my experience of meeting people over the internet really…

I often think I’m really very shallow for the way in which I can get to know people and have almost fallen in love with them…even through photographs (as I have done in the past) or sometimes not having seen them at all and then when I’ve met them in person or seen additional photos, seen video footage or seen a different side of them things have changed dramatically. It’s an odd thing really and not simply just a judgemental factor of aesthetics… there’s something more in it. but that’s probably a different quesiton entirely

I imagine that the same thing occurs with blind people, even though they can’t see visually, they still feel touch, sense etc. and I would guess that this is similarly heightened in person as is it for me. Furthermore there is new evidence so show that the visual cortex of people that have been blind from birth ‘lights up’ through imagination and other sensory stimuli as it does in ‘seeing’ people, which might suggest that blind people create visual concepts of those that they love anyway…

but I’m waffling…

In short: Of course you can be blind and in love

My best friend’s Mom is blind. She’s been in love before. Does that answer your question?

The only thing it does to her is make her self-concious for some reason and she thinks no one will want her because she can’t see; it’s not true.

Looks are almost always deceiving. It’s what goes on between the ears is where love will grow.

@Cruiser And other places.

Love does not need eyes. It does not even need a voice. How many people have fallen in love over the internet?

Everyone who falls in love IS blind, at least at first.

Sure.

Interesting answers.

To the people who said Yes and thought this was a dumb question:

Think about it a bit more. Yes, we can all care for someone, and feel good when they’re around, and even “love” (not LOVE) them. (stay with me for a second)

but if you can’t see the person, (and btw this has nothing to do with looks) just seeing someone ads an extra…dimension or… I’m struggling for words, but “dept” maybe? I Can’t find the right words, but if you can’t see the person…..Remember the question was “FALL in love” not continue to love after you loose your sight.

so now, can you still truly FALL IN LOVE if you can’t see?

are you falling in love with just a voice? or what that person does for you?
or an idea of a person.
what if he/she is nice to you, but his/her facial expressions say otherwise…

The reason I’m leaning towards “No” is because I can’t imagine never seeing the person you “LOVE” smile. I just can’t.
Sure you can have your fingers in his/her mouth to know he/she is smiling…but really.

*still on the fence

but @windex (and others…)
Isn’t it kinda unfair to say that because you can’t imagine a world without sight, and all that it means to you, that blind couldn’t experience similar feelings, just in a different way?

People who are deaf and use ASL, their language centers are still active, just instead of words they understand signs… they still speak, just in a way we can’t understand, because we use words, we hear, while their world is silent.

Love is an emotion we feel. Sight or no sight. It may come about different ways without sight, but the emotional capacity is still very much there. Just like language isn’t dependent on sound Our senses take in the world, but we interpret it. Blind still feel beauty, the still feel ugliness, just not in a visual sense. They still feel; they still experience the whole emotional spectrum.

Say some humans with an extra sixth sense come and tell you that you can’t experience love because you can’t sense in that one way… but you still can feel, you still can laugh and cry, you still have friends you care deeply about, and a special someone you care even more for… Your world is still rich and wonderful, and you still percieve it, the way you do.

Blind means you percieve the world differently… not that you don’t experience all it offers.

interesting…I’ll think about that for a while

Beautiful answer, @DancingMind. Lurve.

@windex I have repeated this many times on Fluther so I am reluctant to say it again, but congenital blindness is not the same thing as you putting on a blindfold and trying to negotiate the world. Congenital blindness is a state that you have always experienced, your whole life. It feels comfortable and natural, and while it can be inconvenient, it is just not a major deficit.

My girlfriend is a psychotherapist, and does a lot of work with children. Her bosses were reluctant to hire her because they couldn’t imagine how she could do a Global Assessment on a new intake without being able to see the patient. It took about 3 weeks for them to realize that she could actually spot many, many things that they consistently missed because they were only using their eyes, whereas she had a much broader spectrum of assessment tools available to her.

In the 8 or so years we have been together, I have never seen her evaluate a person’s affect or demeanor incorrectly. In fact, she is much more likely to catch something “off” about a person way before I do.

Your question is due to a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of vision in the congenitally blind: the vision centers in the occipital, frontal and temporal lobes are still there in the brain, and still functioning. It;s just that through neuroplasticity
they are processing nerve input that is other than visual. It’s haptic, aural, tactile, aromatic, etc. Blind people can do well on “mental traveling” tasks that scientists once assumed they could never perform because they had no visual experience. It turns out that doesn’t matter.

Whatever my girlfriend is “missing”, if she is “missing” anything, is entirely inconsequential. Sighted people miss a great deal more than she does; I see that happen every day.