Blaine Anderson, Dating Coach and founder of DatingbyBlaine.com
As recent studies indicate, making a romantic connection and preserving a healthy relationship have become increasingly challenging in recent decades. According to the Pew Research Center, in a 2019 study, 47% of American adults have the perception that dating has become harder in the last ten years. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Family Database reports that, when it comes to marriage, the U.S. has a 40%-50% divorce rate as of 2020, making it the sixth highest in the world. The Institute for Family Studies informs that, even though the divorce rate in the United States reached its lowest in fifty years by 2019, the marriage rate had also reached its lowest over the same time span that year. This alarming reality makes it necessary to raise awareness by openly addressing its possible causes.
This week I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Blaine Anderson, dating coach for men and founder of DatingbyBlaine.com, a highly thorough dating program aimed at guiding motivated men towards achieving their dating and relationship expectations. An alumna from the University of Arizona with specializations in Latin American Studies and Business, as well as years of international work experience in the travel industry, Blaine has acquired invaluable professional and interpersonal skills that allow her to deeply understand the innerworkings of romantic relationships. Thanks to her personalized dating coach service, Blaine has successfully helped over a thousand men find a partner, and provides advice to thousands more through her daily Instagram posts and stories.
The following interview addresses common relationship topics concerning the impact of self-esteem, mental health, demeaning talk, the passage of time and spirituality on the success of romantic relationships:
How does self-esteem affect our ability to date and maintain a healthy romantic relationship?
There are a few pieces to why self-esteem is central to success dating, and healthy relationships generally.
The first piece is rooted in psychology. How you view yourself, consciously and subconsciously, shows through in virtually all your thoughts, words, and actions. To illustrate with examples, I see often as a dating coach, when people lack self-esteem, and don’t believe they’re worthy of others’ attention or affection, they may:
- Fixate on negative and counterproductive thoughts (e.g., “I shouldn’t approach her, she won’t like me…”)
- Focus on their negative attributes conversationally (e.g., “I’m not very good at much…”)
The second piece is rooted in communication. There’s a quote from the Steven Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can that captures it perfectly: “People only know what you tell them.” Especially with dating, prospective partners have very limited information about you — when you meet someone new, they can only feel attracted to (or repulsed by!) the information you put forth. To connect the dots with the psychology piece we touched on a moment ago, your self-esteem tends to govern whether that information is positive or negative.
The third piece is rooted in biology. Simply put, everyone wants to date up. We tend to seek out partners who have good things going for them, and avoid partners who don’t. So, when the information we receive about a prospective partner skews negative, as it tends to with low-self-esteem, prospective partners tend to pull away.
There’s nuance here — I’m definitely not suggesting that all singles start loudly self-promoting their virtues to prospective partners as a dating strategy — but I think the model can still be useful for people trying to grock the connection between self-esteem and relationships.
What are ways to maintain a relationship when one of the partners suffers from anxiety/depression?
I’d suggest a few things:
- Securely support your partner. The causes of depression and anxiety are myriad and outside my expertise, but I’m aware that both conditions can be exacerbated by feelings of emotional distance and abandonment. Providing stable and unwavering support to a partner suffering from anxiety or depression can help form the foundation for them to improve.
- Seek help. If your partner’s depression or anxiety is causing problems in your relationship, outside help may not just be helpful — it might be essential. Clinical treatments like therapy can both relieve short-term pressure, and drive real change and improvement in the long run.
- Be honest with yourself about what role you’re comfortable playing. Sometimes the severity of a partner’s depression and anxiety can exceed the limits of your relationship together. You may want to support your partner, but that may not be healthy or feasible in your romantic relationship. Understanding where to draw the line (i.e., should you stay in a romantic relationship with this person?) is important for your own mental health, and for your ability to support your partner.
Can seemingly harmless critical talk/jokes between partners deplete love and destroy a relationship over time? If so, why would that be?
The key word is “harmless!” What seems like innocent teasing or banter to one partner may not be to another. For example, I’m aware of relationship dynamics where one partner, who is highly analytically oriented, teases the other, who is not, about their intellectual differences. It’s playful and even genuinely funny the first time, but repetition over time can cause a serious rift and resentment from the less analytically inclined partner.
I think the most important thing is to pay attention to, and respect, your partner. People don’t always communicate directly about their feelings when they dislike something you said, so look for hints in their expressions and actions, and then actually listen to their feedback when they share it.
How do our expectations of a partner change over time during the course of a romantic relationship?
As I’ve seen more of the world, I’ve learned that no two romantic relationships are exactly alike, and that people may enter (and stay in) relationships for reasons observers might never expect! Still, a pattern that most romantic relationships follow is that the effortless lust that characterizes new relationships fades over time. It’s either supplanted by respect, trust, companionship, and effort, and the relationship endures; or it isn’t, and the relationship fades with it.
With this as a backdrop, when a relationship is first developing, our expectations for our partners tend to be aspirational. We seek out partners for who we want them to be, and what we imagine they could add to our lives. These expectations can look very different for different people (e.g., your dream partner may look very different from mine) but they tie back to the “dating up” principle we chatted about earlier.
Over time, these aspirational expectations tend to shift toward pragmatic expectations centered around building a life together. For example, most of us expect that our partner will help keep the house clean, and support us emotionally if we’re dealing with a challenge at work. These expectations absolutely vary between couples too, but there is more universality here (e.g., we all want to feel cared for).
How important is spirituality for the success of a romantic relationship? How does faith/religion affect our attitude towards our partner?
Even as a spiritual person, I don’t personally believe spirituality is essential for the success of a romantic relationship. There are millions of failed relationships where the partners shared strong and nearly identical spiritual beliefs, and millions of successful relationships where the partners’ spiritual beliefs couldn’t be more different, for example. I do think that spirituality can help make romantic relationships successful though. At the most basic level, every relationship has challenges, and believing that there’s more to life and the universe than any one hurdle is a good perspective!
I would like to thank Blaine for this interview. These are a few insightful thoughts on dating and romantic relationships which I hope will help singles create healthier connections and guide couples to preserve and enrich their lives together.
What are your thoughts on the issues that make it difficult to date nowadays? What do you think are other ways that can help couples stay together? Please leave your comments down below.