Somewhere around hour six of Love Is Blind, I worried I’d lost all perspective on reality. Netflix’s smash-hit dating show begins as an easily dismissed pseudo experiment: a group of single 20- and 30-somethings, mostly straight, first get to know potential mates while lounging in individual “pods”, with a wall between them (just like in The Fantasticks!). Good looks and whatever other aesthetic concerns are out of the equation; these relationships are based on the true connection of conversation. (It does help, though, that everyone is good-looking.) Things get less theoretical and more actual when, after only a week or so, several of the couples get engaged sight unseen, only meeting face to face after the first proposal, then embarking on a fraught month of cohabitation on the way to a quickie wedding.

This is The Bachelor condensed and reshaped, a throwback to the old gimmick reality days of 20 years ago with a decidedly contemporary veneer of earnest, faux sociology. (90 Day Fiancé without all the despairing geopolitics, maybe.) Because it’s on Netflix, a platform not exactly built for traditional week-in, week-out reality shows, Love Is Blind has a tang of the almost otherworldly. It’s not quite a traditional dating show that you’d watch while soaked in wine on a friend’s couch over the course of a few months. But it’s not a discrete documentary, either. It’s located in a strange place between those poles, largely staged and synthetic, and yet at times startlingly real.

It’s in that chasm where one loses one’s grip on the actual world, especially if you, like our brave and masochistic contestants, are facing a big life change, particularly of the romantic variety. My boyfriend and I are planning on moving in together in a couple of months, and after steeping myself in all ten episodes of Love Is Blind over the course of 24 hours, I couldn’t tell if I was thrilled about this impending development, terrified of it, or frankly if I had any idea what love and romantic commitment actually were to begin with. In its clumsy, powerful way, Love Is Blind lays bare the artifice—or, at least, the uncertainty—at the heart of any long-term coupling. For a short, intense burst, anyway: I slept on Love Is Blind after watching the finale late last night, and now feel a bit less worked up about the show than I did in the bleary wee hours.

Still, something about the show’s mind-altering effect lingers. Waking up this morning, I had the sense that a disorienting, and yet somehow also clarifying, crucible has been passed through, but had no way to assess its value. Post-Love Is Blind, I feel both fuller and less-than; it’s like learning a bad secret.

The finale is equal parts bruising and cathartic. Don’t read any further if you don’t want to be spoiled, though part of me wants to say screw it—you shouldn’t watch this salvia in TV form at all, so why not find out how it ends?

Anyway. The last episode is all about the weddings, the five remaining couples negotiating jangled nerves and nagging doubts as they head to the altar, one pair at a time. What’s surreal about all this is not that these people are getting married after such a short time. It’s how much genuine emotion they and their loved ones manage to wring out of the whole shoddily arranged thing.

There are real tears—from parents, from siblings, from friends—that exist right alongside entirely justifiable skepticism. It’s an interesting study in how we can doubt our perceived reality while also wholeheartedly engaging with it. The love between these couples, relative strangers to one another, seems so unreal—and yet that little, niggling chance that something is actually true can snare even the biggest skeptic for a second. It’s like how only six inches of running water can knock over an upright adult.