Dating a glamorous influencer means loving a beautiful woman, but being an Instagram husband or boyfriend isn’t easy.
Just ask Pete Davidson. The 28-year-old “Saturday Night Live” star has been cavorting with 41-year-old Kim Kardashian since last fall, but fans seized on a recent Instagram post of the couple in which Davidson’s nose and jawline appear to have been digitally altered.
Jeff Damisse can relate. He dated a fitness influencer for six months in 2016. She was beautiful and bore a striking resemblance to R&B songbird Ciara, but being with a digital diva had major drawbacks.
“She’d always take hundreds of sexy selfies at all hours of the day and night,” said Damisse, a 37-year-old podcaster who lives in the Bronx. “One time, just minutes after we had sex, I saw that she’d been snapping half-naked pictures of herself, in my bed, for her followers. I said to her, ‘You just finished orgasming! How could your very next thought be to share that moment, which I thought was something special between us, with the world?’ ”
Damisse ended their relationship shortly thereafter. And his outrage over the internet star’s indecent infraction, although extreme, was not totally unfounded, according to men’s lifestyle expert Aaron Marino.
“At first, dating an influencer and being a part of their fame or their brand can be really exciting and fun,” said Marino, a 45-year-old with more than 6.5 million YouTube subscribers to his Alpha M. channel.
“But the thrill of always being in the public eye, almost never enjoying an authentic moment with one another and having to live on the sidelines of your significant other’s life while they chase fame can get real old, real quick,” he added.
“And, most of the time, dating an influencer forces you to become an influencer by association, which can be difficult because having that kind of attention may be something you never signed up for or wanted.”
Andrew Zrakas had no designs on becoming an internet star. But when his girlfriend of five years, Kristen Bousquet, 28, made the professional pivot from hairdresser to online mentor in late 2019, he was suddenly thrust into the spotlight as her clickable content co-star for her combined 42,000 Instagram, TikTok and YouTube followers.
“As her fiancé, I have to be prepared to be on camera at any given moment in my daily life,” Zrakas, 27, from Charlotte, North Carolina, told The Post. In Bousquet’s snaps, he’s often featured as her dutiful and doting right-hand Romeo. “Whether I’ve got a toothbrush in my mouth, or I’m trying to get some work done, I always have to be ready to be in a picture or take her picture.”
In the fall, he and Bousquet made a cheeky TikTok clip, highlighting the troubles that come with dating a tastemaker.
The post, which garnered over 39,000 views, follows an exasperated Zrakas as he suffers through Bousquet’s incessant posing for selfies, as well as her forcing him to act as her photographer and swatting his hand away from lunch so that she can get a picture of the meal.
Despite the inconveniences and annoyances, Zrakas is admittedly happy to support his social media inamorata.
“I’ve become her unofficial photographer, and because of my role in her world, we’re able to accomplish and experience so many cool things together,” he said, noting the lavish international excursion and luxurious gifts her work has afforded them. They just returned from a influencer getaway to Cartagena, Colombia, and were recently gifted free wedding bands for their upcoming September nuptials by a major diamond retailer.
“A lot of the special moments of our relationship wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for her being an influencer,” said Zrakas.
