(Dec. 1, PDI Entertainment)
By Oliver M. Pulumbarit
“The initial challenge was arranging blind marriages,” said
Dr. Logan Levkoff, one of the behavior experts in the reality series “Married
at First Sight,” in a phone interview. “These people had never met, so [we
took] on this huge intellectual and emotional challenge.”
Each episode shows two strangers, who were screened and
analyzed by four experts—a therapist, anthropologist, clinical psychologist and
spiritual adviser. The participants were then fashioned into a perfect match.
They got married and were followed around to see if they truly are compatible.
Levkoff, a sexuality and relationship expert, said she and
her team had difficulty creating ideal couples.
She noted, “It was certainly an overwhelming process. What I
loved about this experiment was that there were four of us looking at
individuals through different lenses.”
Levkoff, also one of the show’s narrators, met up with the
couples and newlyweds throughout the series: “I was responsible for
interviewing them, and giving them lots of paperwork, scales and
questionnaires. I got to be in other people’s lives, but I also got to speak to
the audience as an expert,” she said.
Levkoff, who has written about sex and sexuality for the
Huffington Post website, revealed problems that she encountered both on and off
the show.
“I get a sense of who people are as sexual beings and what
their values are, and whether I think they’ll be intellectually compatible with
respect to sex, but can I know for certain… when they meet, if they’ll have
instant sexual chemistry? No, I can’t,” she said.
“But [on the show] I got to ask the right questions, to see
if our couples were willing to give a relationship like that a shot. Did they
believe attraction could grow over time? Did anyone just expect there to be a
physical connection and that’s it? In life, what I find most… frustrating is
that we get so much misinformation about sex and sexuality and what it means to
be a man or a woman, that none of us really feel comfortable speaking up for ourselves
and being who we are!”
“Everyone [will] see something of themselves in the stories
that unfold. The commentary from viewers, the way they discuss what’s going on
with a couple, and how they take that information and work it into their own
relationships have been the most wonderful, surprising benefits of this show.
There is a lot of take-home values.”
(“Married at First Sight” airs Wednesday to Friday, 10 p.m. on Lifetime.)
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