Single dad Gavin Rossdale is looking for love.
On a recent episode of the Not So Hollywood podcast with Adrianna Costa, he reflected on his love life and experiences with dating apps.
“I did have a great time with a great person who left me in a spectacular way and that was unfortunate," he said. "But then it really fed into my music and so I have a very twisted approach to life where I can just monetize my pain."
He’s spoken about his failed relationships before, expressing a bit of pessimism.
"I keep getting screwed up and screwed over in all these relationships," he told PEOPLE in 2020. "I'm not very good at them, I guess. I had a divorce, I had a long-term girlfriend — that went to s— and I don't have a girlfriend now, even though everyone seems to think I do. You get burned by that stuff."
And during his podcast appearance he even touched on his co-parenting with ex-wife Gwen Stefani, saying the fact that they raise their kids so differently gives them “incredible perspective”.
"We're really different people ... I don't think there's much similarity in the way we bring them up but I think that gives them an incredible perspective to then choose which pieces of those two lives they'd like to inherit and move on with and which part of themselves come out of the whole process," he continued.
He’s providing some rare insight into what it’s like being a famous, single dad dating in his fifties. It’s not a narrative we get very often – so it’s interesting to hear what he has to say. Like the fact that he chalked up some of the difficulty he’s had with dating to the fact that he was concentrating on fatherhood at the time.
"I don't know, it may be too difficult to combine being a devastating single dad with the attention required for a beautiful girl," he joked. "So I don't know. I’m trying to find my feet on that one. It's unresolved."
While he admitted to being on Raya, he says his preference is meeting women in person. And it makes sense. There must be a lot of pre-conceived notions on that app in general due to the amount of high-profile people that use it – but also a lot of pre-conceived notions about Gavin himself. But it does beg the question of how meeting someone in person may change any of that.
Perhaps it’s less about them and more about him and his preferences. As someone who is currently on dating apps, I agree that it can be very difficult to get a feel for everything from intentions to sense of humour to natural attraction – and I’m not dealing with the fame complication.
His notes on coparenting with Gwen are particularly interesting. Because he’s not pretending everything is okay or even that him and Gwen are on the same page. He’s saying that despite the fact that he and his ex-wife do everything so differently, their children still benefit from that in some way – and he’s right.
"I think you can go one of two ways — you can either do everything together and really co-parent, and see how that goes — or you can just parent. And I think we just parent," he said.
A lot of times, celebrity coparents both feel and feed into the pressure to have everything be incredibly amicable and picture perfect, like it is in the case of Zooey Deschanel and her ex-husband, Jacob Pechenik. And as someone whose coparenting woes are going semi-viral on TikTok, it’s a relief to hear Gavin express these sentiments.
But by far, the most interesting thing Gavin touched on during his podcast appearance is the idea of monetizing his pain. I really appreciate his honesty about that, and in particular, his acknowledgement of the fact that the sheer ability to do that is a bit twisted. But we’ve seen so many celebrities monetize their pain.
Take Taylor Swift. She has experienced several public breakups, and is an example of an artist who really transforms her pain into art – and happens to make a killing every time she does it.
Or perhaps consider an underrated musician like Jojo. She recently teamed up with singer Mahalia to make this banger after calling off her engagement to her fiancé after discovering he was a cheater.
Or perhaps the most prominent and timely monetization of pain – Ariana Madix’s rise to even more fame and opportunity after being cheated on by Tom Sandoval.
The thing about all of those examples is that they’re all women. I think that’s because for some reason, there is so much more distance between art, pain and men versus art, pain and women. But Gavin is laying it all out on the table, reminding people that not only do men experience pain, too, but use it as inspiration for art.
I often tout the power of podcasts here on LG. And Gavin’s conversation is another example of why they are so crucial for celebrities. Because while I’ve always felt indifferent toward Gavin, I left this conversation with a bit more of an affinity for him, the same way podcasts changed my mind on Emily Ratajkowski and Julia Fox. Podcasts bridge the gaps between people – and they really bridge the gap between celebrities and everyday people. Because in most cases, podcasts prove that a lot of celebrities are everyday people.
