The Bullet Was a Thinking Woman

Go ahead and judge me for this, I deserve it.

Y’all, I love reality TV.

Sure, it may be lowbrow at times… but hey, so are people. These shows really just reflect human behavior. Our motivations, our insecurities, our desperate need to be perceived a certain way.

And man, pass me a Diet Coke, I just love watching it all unfold.

I lay back under a pile of covers, feeling like a little anthropologist. Just, you know, instead of observing chimps using tools in the wild, I’m watching grown adults trip over bar stools, cry their mascara off in hot tubs, and yell:

“I’m not here to make friends!”

—all while slamming their sixth White Claw.

And if there is one reality show that reeeeally delivers on the whole social experiment aspect, it’s my guiltiest pleasure: Love Is Blind.

I was hooked from the beginning (L+C forever), but Season 8? Phew. This season served up a social case study for the ages. We got politics, we got religion, we got big, big problems.

Yes, I’m talking about Ben and Sarah.

SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON OUT

From the moment these two connected in the pods, their relationship was one of the most intriguing. But as it fell apart, I couldn’t help but notice the internet latched onto a very odd narrative:

“This crazy liberal woman abandoned a good church boy at the altar!”

And y’all, I just can’t sit with that.

Because the truth is quite the opposite.

Sarah is a free-thinking woman who knew exactly what she believed and valued.

And Ben?

Well, Ben goes to church.

Not kidding—that seemed to be the only defining thing about his belief system. His butt in a pew on occasion.

And for that alone, the Evangelical internet handed this kid a gold star. I mean, elevated his profile to icon status. But while his brand of cultural Christianity was good enough for the pew-sitting comments sections… turns out, it wasn’t good enough for Sarah.

Because Sarah is a woman who asks questions.

And lo and behold—Ben had no answers.

Not about his own values.

Not about social issues.

Not even about what his own church believed.

At one point, Sarah asked Ben directly where his church stood on LGBTQ+ issues.

Instead of offering any insight, he blinked and said:

“I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into it.”

Sir.

You are evangelizing your beliefs on a whole entire Netflix show. Perhaps you should be able to unpack them?

To be clear, this man asked Sarah to marry him knowing her sister is gay.

He knew this was deeply personal for her.

He knew it would impact her family, her future, and their marriage.

And yet, the implied expectation was that Sarah would accept Ben’s non-answers—all while considering lifelong devotion to his Christian religion.

A belief system that, by all appearances, he hasn’t even bothered to examine himself.

(That must have been super reassuring.)

Then came the Black Lives Matter conversation.

She brought it up, asked what he thought.

Ben blinked again and then responded:

“I guess I haven’t really thought too much about it.”

Benjamin, be so serious. You live in Minneapolis—the city where George Floyd was murdered. The epicenter of the largest civil rights movement of this generation.

And you haven’t thought about it?

At this point, Girlfriend could have gotten more information about Ben’s values by Googling him than she could from his own mind and mouth.

That being said, I was not surprised when Sarah, like a rational adult who values informed decision-making, said no at the altar.

Seemed like a pretty reasonable choice to me.

But that’s not how the internet felt.

They could not let this one go.

And I mean, they were foaming at the mouth.

You know how I said I love studying human behavior? Well, the internet’s not too different from reality TV. And I’ve been online a long time.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that when a beehive has been kicked and people are losing their minds over something, there’s always a deeper reason.

And it’s worth peeking under the covers to figure out what that reason is.

Because I promise you, when Ben Shapiro is suddenly writing hot takes about a Love Is Blind breakup, you can bet this is not about reality TV.

A woman rejecting an Evangelical man on national television?

That was a threat.

And Shapiro even said the quiet part out loud by spelling out that he received it as such.

“Ben dodged a bullet!” he proclaimed in a way-too-many-minutes-long YouTube video.

And that became an actual trending phrase on the internet this week.

Ben dodged a bullet.

I have to ask a question here.

What exactly was the bullet?

Was it supposed to be an unhappy marriage?

A fundamentally misaligned relationship that would have been riddled with conflict and frustration?

Because if that’s what they were implying, wouldn’t Sarah and Ben both have dodged a bullet?

No. That’s clearly not what Shapiro & Co. mean.

Because the bullet wasn’t an unhealthy marriage.

The bullet was a thinking woman.

And that, apparently, is terrifying for some.

The internet exploded with outrage.

“She threw away a godly man!”

“A woman who rejects a good Christian man over politics deserves to be alone!”

“They were unequally yoked!”

“She’ll regret this when she realizes what she lost!”

“The Lord protected that boy!”

They weren’t just mad that they broke up.

They were mad that Sarah thought it through.

That she didn’t just close her eyes, swallow her doubts, and say yes to the Good Christian Man™️.

Because that’s the expectation, isn’t it?

Blind faith. Blind devotion.

A woman willing to submit, follow, trust—to believe that marriage itself will provide the answers her partner cannot.

But Sarah didn’t do that. She refused to play along.

And that’s why they can’t let it go.

Because a woman thinking for herself, choosing herself, and saying, “this isn’t enough for me”—that doesn’t just challenge their beliefs on marriage.

It threatens to unravel them entirely.

The outrage isn’t about morality or values.

It’s about unhappy people waking up to a truth they never wanted to face—

Men losing control in a system built to keep them in charge.

Women realizing that obedience was never the price of love.

And for those stuck in a cage of their own making, that realization is unbearable.

Happy, balanced people don’t get this worked up over a stranger who doesn’t get married. And yet, it is worth noting that the outrage wasn’t directed at him.

It never is.

Because in this brand of Evangelicalism, a man’s faith is measured by how often he sits in a pew.

A woman’s faith? By how much of herself she’s willing to sacrifice.

And Sarah said no to the sacrifice.

But honestly, if one woman walking away from an altar is enough to send all these folks into a panic…

What are they really worshipping?

Because unquestioning devotion should never be asked of a person.

Not in marriage.

Not in religion.

Not ever.

Anything real can stand up to questions.

And some bullets shouldn’t be dodged.

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With love and gratitude,

Mary Katherine