Pete Davidson is a dater. He dates a lot. He manages to “pull” a lot of beautiful, successful women. There are all kinds of memes about his dating life and how quickly he ends up with a newly single woman. When he was with Kim Kardashian, I actually started to understand his appeal, especially for someone like Kim – Pete is a breath of fresh air, he’s “normal” and does normal-boyfriend things, he treats single moms with respect and love and he’s not super-complicated. Yeah, I know he also has a history of love-bombing women, but I also think people rush to pathologize a guy in his 20s who is just DATING and figuring sh-t out in sometimes messy ways. Add to that, Pete has mental health issues and that affects his behavior in relationships and sometimes how and why he leaves relationships. In any case, Pete did a podcast interview with Jon Berthnal for Real Ones, and Pete had a lot to say:

He’s just dating: “I’m in my 20’s and I’ve dated people. And for some reason, that’s very crazy and interesting to people. I don’t think it’s interesting. I’ve been in show business for, like, half my life almost — for 14 or 15 years and on a national TV show. In 12 years I’ve dated 10 people. I don’t think that’s that crazy, but to some people, that’s very interesting. That became all anyone would talk about.”

His relationships with famous women: “I’m not, like, flexing, you know what I mean? And these people that I’ve dated, I met them at work. I wasn’t in anyone’s DMs, no one was in mine. I worked at one of the five Hollywood epicenters of where you meet people and that’s how it happened.”

How he feels about being famous for who he dates: “Suddenly you’re in this zeitgeist and that has nothing to do with the work. And that’s a really s—ty feeling. I became more known before the work was there, but I was always working…. I’m cool with the joke. I get the late-night jokes.”

He didn’t appreciate it when SNL made fun of him: “When your own show [pokes fun at you]. I’d be sitting in the back watching the cold open and — the cold open [is] topical, political humor, whatever’s in the culture. And then, making fun of you. Then you’ve gotta walk out and do a sketch next and hit your mark and the show just made fun of you. So, why are they gonna laugh at you? Like, they just dogged you in front of everyone. … And you’re like, ‘I’m a f—ing loser, man.’ These are the people I’ve been with for almost a decade. I grew up in front of these people. They’ve watched me through the most difficult time in my life, and they’ve been there for me. And nobody ever showed more leeway and grace to me than Lorne Michaels, and I owe my life to that guy, but it was f—ing confusing cause the nature of entertainment is the nature of this business. At the end of the day, that’s what it is. This was a really difficult thing to do. You feel small. You feel super insecure.”

[From People]

I’m not going to tell Pete how he should feel or what have you – if he says he feels like a loser, then okay, that’s how he feels. But from my perspective, as an outsider who consumes gossip media, Pete has rarely been the butt of the joke, at least not in a super-personal way. He’s seen as a normal guy with some kind of special power, perhaps charisma, which attracts beautiful, accomplished women. The jokes are about how he’s always got a new girlfriend and she’s usually pretty famous. And while he sees it as normal to date ten women in a twelve years (it’s been more than that), it does feel unusual? Like, he has to admit that, right? While there are a lot of men out there who have dated a dozen women in a decade, it usually doesn’t happen with a celebrity man, where they’re a serial monogamist out in public in a series of twelve relationships with celebrity women. It actually IS unique in the celebrity/gossip world.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.