The ideological gap between straight men and women seems to be widening. The debate over gender roles seems to be expanding and contracting at the same time, and amid all the stories about the identity crisis amongst American men, many of them are turning to dating coaches like Blaine Anderson.
Anderson, who posts online under the handle Dating By Blaine, says she learned a lot about dating from her days in a University of Arizona sorority. On her Instagram page, where she has over 700,000 followers, she doles out free advice.
A few of her video introductions:
- “Fellas, here is a message that gets a 99% response rate.”
- “Underrated sexy habits that you should adopt as a man.”
- “Three texts to never send a girl.”
- “Here are the things girls say they want versus what they actually mean.”
- “Three alpha traits that make you irresistible to women.”
- “Here is the secret to attracting beautiful women: It’s treating her like a normal person.”
Anderson also works with paid clients — she offers self-led courses; group coaching; one-on-one programs on how to text women and online dating; and a masterclass on dating in-person.
Anderson joined The Show to talk about the most common needs of the men she works with — and why they seek her out in the first place.
Full conversation
BLAINE ANDERSON: Sometimes they don’t know exactly what they aren’t doing right when they come to me. But what I learn that they aren’t doing well is oftentimes not creating chemistry and not positioning themselves as a romantic partner.
SAM DINGMAN: So if I’m hearing you right, they’re going in with an energy that is maybe designed to try to not be threatening, to not make the woman feel like they are expecting some kind of romantic element to the relationship, and that is somehow not sending the signal they want to send.
ANDERSON: Correct. That’s a good description.
DINGMAN: When you say something like that to one of these men who comes to you, how do they respond? What do they tell you are the reasons that they’re not doing those things?
ANDERSON: The number one reason is the fear of being creepy. The fear of making a woman feel uncomfortable or just thinking that, “Oh, if I do that, then she might get the wrong idea. And I don’t want to come off as a creep or appropriate or something.”
DINGMAN: These guys, they come to you and they have whatever assumptions they have about what women do or do not want. How much do you talk to them about where they’re getting those signals from, and what do you make of the sources?
ANDERSON: If you ask them where did they come from, they probably can’t point to any one source. It’s sort of things that they’ve collected maybe from guy friends along the way, what they’ve seen in movies, some of their own personal experiences — which is a very small sample size — and that is dictating, you know, how they act today.
DINGMAN: Would you say that most of the men that you work with are looking to get married?
ANDERSON: Oftentimes, yes, they eventually want to get married. Some clients might want that sooner rather than later, whereas some are just looking to right now have more options dating because one day they want to get married and they want to make sure they have good options when the time comes for them to settle down.
DINGMAN: One of the reasons I’m curious about that is because we’ve had a number of conversations here on our show about this moment that is happening. At least in the conservative political arena, there’s just been a tremendous amount of talk about a return to some kind of masculine values that certain pockets of the conservative world feel like has gone away and needs to be resurrected.
And then simultaneous with that, there has been this big movement online of the so-called tradwife, and women who are interested in a return to a kind of 1950s set of values around femininity and marriage and what that looks like.
And in my own experience reporting on this, I have spoken to a lot of young men who are really, really adrift because of all of that and if a woman, for example, so much as does not allow him to hold the door for her — I’ve spoken to a number of young men, actually, who when it comes to that interaction specifically — if that happens, they feel like they don’t even know how to be a man anymore.
And I don’t say that to make fun of them. Their confusion in that moment seems really genuine to me. Is that a dynamic that you find in the interactions that you’re having with your clients? Any of this conversation about returning to what some people feel like is traditional masculinity or traditional femininity?
ANDERSON: That’s very interesting. I haven’t heard that one in specific. I see a lot of confusion from the men I work with around expectations and what should they be doing? What shouldn’t they be doing? My principles tend to fall someplace in the middle, skewed towards more traditional male-female dynamics, because I think the vast majority of women do actually want a guy who will hold the door for them and who is going to pay for the first date.
Does that mean that they expect that they also want to be a stay-at-home tradwife and cook dinner for their husband every night? I don’t know. Like some yes. And many, many, many no. But they’re getting too in their head about the right and the wrong.
DINGMAN: Well, that is a big thing that I feel like is coming across to me in this conversation that we’re having, Blaine, I have to say that it seems like — and I’m sure this has always been true — but there is this narrative out there in a lot of these men’s heads about how they’re supposed to be. And that it seems like what you’re saying is that those narratives are really unhelpful.
ANDERSON: Yeah. You know, it depends, because on one hand these narratives are oftentimes unhelpful. But on the other hand, there are best practices that you can follow that are going to get you the best results most of the time.
DINGMAN: I was looking at your Instagram, where you give away free tips sometimes on things like how to, how to text a woman after you’ve had a date with her or something like that. And some of the comments that are left by what I presume are men would seem to fly in the face of a lot of what you’ve been telling me about.
There was somebody who wrote a comment on one of your posts saying, “If she’s easy to talk to, then she’s not worth it.” Somebody else wrote something like, “Fellow men, never take advice about women from women. Fishermen do not ask a fish how to catch fish.”
Obviously I’m sure you’re not spending a lot of your time responding to these comments, but, how much do comments like that inform the conversations you end up having with people who are working with you, which I’m assuming these commenters are not?
ANDERSON: Yeah, I would say zero. The type of person who leaves a comment on my Instagram or on one of my videos saying my advice is trash or this will never work because I’m a woman, isn’t the type of person I work with or I want to work with.
DINGMAN: Right. Well, that makes sense. But in the vein of what you were saying about somebody challenging you, I guess, and saying like, “Why should I take advice from you and not another man?” I am curious, what do you make of the advice that men give other men, generally speaking?
ANDERSON: Yeah. So usually if a guy is like “Well, I don’t know, I heard this from my guy friend,” my response is, “Well, has that been working for you?” And the answer is usually “Well, no.” And it’s like OK, well let’s try it my way then.
DINGMAN: Right. Friendly reminder that you have hired me.
ANDERSON: Yeah.
DINGMAN: Well, I guess as a last question then, Blaine, I think the implication of my question earlier about this dynamic around masculinity that we’re seeing in a lot of online conversations when it comes to male influencers on social media or podcasts, that sort of thing, the implication there is that there is some sort of crisis going on amongst men, some sort of identity crisis.
And I guess I’m just curious how much you see that bearing out in the work that you do. Do you think things really have changed?
ANDERSON: Yes and no. I certainly see it playing out online. And I think in the landscape of dating and men generally, the men who come to work with me are generally really well rounded and awesome guys, who I don’t see necessarily falling victim to the loneliness epidemic, for example. They aren’t the ones who are necessarily falling behind in other areas of their life.
It is more that dating has changed so much, so rapidly that they need help catching up.
