When it came time to give her oldest son dating advice, Vanessa Lachey took a parenting approach inspired by “Love is Blind” wisdom.
Lachey and her husband, Nick Lachey, have co-hosted the Netflix reality show since 2020, with the eighth season premiering Feb. 14. Throughout the seasons, the couple has given out scores of dating advice to singles looking for love, resulting in 13 marriages and two babies with a third on the way.
It all started when her son Camden, 12 — older brother to Brooklyn, 10, and Phoenix, 8 — began falling for a girl while the family was living in Hawaii. She tells TODAY.com that she suddenly realized it was time to have conversations about dating with her kids ... in addition to adults looking for love on television.
The first thing she asked her son was, “Does she make you smile and feel good?”
Lachey wanted to make sure that her son was focusing on his crush's personality, not just falling for looks — similar to the premise of “Love is Blind.”
“It’s not, ‘Do you think she’s pretty? Do you think she likes you?’ It’s ‘How do you feel when you’re around her?’” Lachey says. “And he’s like, ‘She makes me feel good about myself. She makes me happy. I want to see her. I love that feeling.’ And I’m like, ‘I like that. If this girl makes you feel that way, then she has my vote.’”
Now, Lachey says she repeats this same line of questioning whenever Camden likes a girl.
“That’s a way, a tangible way, for him to understand love and respect,” she continues. “I think at 12, he’s not really having these conversations with dad.”
Nick Lachey, her husband of nearly 15 years, tells TODAY.com the dating advice he shares with the kids dates all the way back to his own youth. In short: Your teenage years are not the time to find your life partner.
“I had a girlfriend all through high school and it’s one of those things I don’t regret it necessarily, but looking back, I took that way too seriously,” he says. “When you’re in the moment, you feel like that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”
Nick Lachey hopes his kids can “learn as much as they can” from relationships at this age but not feel pressured into thinking their teenage love needs to be “the one.”
Vanessa Lachey says that her kids aren’t the only ones learning about love through the show; she even finds inspiration for her own marriage.
“We’re always taken aback by how well they communicate, how well they handle situations,” she says of the participants. “We have been together for 19 years, and I’m in my 40s. He’s 51 and we’re like, ‘Dang, would we have handled that that beautifully in our 20s, just talking through it?’ But that’s because the show gives them that foundation for communication.”
Nick Lachey says that watching contestants on the show is like having “a nice reminder” of the start of their relationship.
“Harkening back to what was it that you found attractive in that person, reminding yourself of the emotional connection that we have, because that’s what we always encourage them to fall back,” the former 98 Degrees member says of what they tell the show's stars. “You know, that’s the beauty of the pods, is you create this incredibly intense emotional connection and foundation, and it’s nice to be reminded of that.”
