What to know
- Dom Gabriel believes dating today is too nonchalant—he wants people to bring back effort and grand romantic gestures.
- He compares dating on reality TV to dating in Toronto, saying both come with their own unique challenges.
- Being on shows like Perfect Match and The Traitors Canada hasn’t made finding real love easier—if anything, it’s made things more complicated back home.
- Gabriel’s reality TV fame makes him easy to Google, which he says can be both a blessing and a curse when meeting new people in Toronto.
Canadian reality TV star Dom Gabriel knows how hard dating can be in a generation filled with nonchalant daters. Still, he’s bringing his romantic alter ego, Rom-Com-Dom, a nickname he’s earned for his rom-com-style romantic gestures, to the forefront. He opens up to Now Toronto about dating on reality TV and compares it to Toronto’s dating scene.
Dom Gabriel has won Perfect Match season one, participated in the second season of the show, won The Traitors Canada season three, and participated in The Mole season one.
From Netflix to Toronto’s dating scene, Dom Gabriel has yet to find the love of his life.
For this edition of This is Dating Now, Canadian reality TV star Dom Gabriel shares his dating experience on and off camera, and his hot takes on dating nowadays.
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What is Dom Gabriel’s hot take on dating in Toronto nowadays?
Gabriel believes there are too many people acting nonchalantly, worried it might seem like too much.
“Effort is cool. I feel like people think that being nonchalant is the way to go. Be chalant,” he told Now Toronto.
He asks daters to bring back the effort, feeling it’s been lost nowadays.
“I feel like everything’s like ‘Oh, if you double-text it’s too much…’ Bring back grand gestures, ironically like rom coms… Big bouquet of flowers on the first date. Just make it grand,” Gabriel said.
Is Rom-Com-Dom still out there?
Dom Gabriel earned the nickname Rom-Com-Dom for his romantic nature.
Despite failed connections on Perfect Match and not finding a partner in Toronto either, Rom-Com-Dom is still alive… somewhere.
“I think he’s still in there somewhere. But after you do one to three dating shows, after you go on a show that’s not even a dating show, and find somebody there, maybe there’s a time and place for [Rom-Com-Dom] to come out,” Gabriel said.
The reality star compared it to a superhero alter ego, like Clark Kent from Superman or Bruce Wayne from Batman. “It’s like Dom Gabriel; Rom-Com-Dom,” he said.
Why did he go on a reality show?
Originally, he didn’t want to — he got peer pressured by friends and family. But once he committed to the bit, Gabriel decided to be “as authentic and genuine as possible,” be himself and not disappoint his mother.
“Make my mom proud… Make sure there’s nothing that I did on camera that my mom wouldn’t have been proud of,” Gabriel explained.
Is Toronto’s dating scene or the Perfect Match activities scarier?
With experience on and off camera, trying to find love, Gabriel still chooses his Perfect Match experience as the scarier dating scenario.
“We did a lot of crazy stuff on there. That was a pretty dramatic time for me. So personally, I would have to say Perfect Match, but I can see how the Toronto dating scene might be a problem for other people,” he said.
After finding Perfect Match to be scarier, what would he change about the dating show?
At the start, Gabriel enjoyed being on the show as he didn’t know how to win or what the prize was until the final week, so it felt very genuine.
But as the first season got so much traction, the following seasons brought in the drama.
“It became more of a competition show of people just trying to stay on the show,” he told Now Toronto.
So, he said he’s “cooking” with this idea: “There’s someone else in the house who on paper is your ‘perfect match,’ and if you find that person at the end of the show, you get money,” Gabriel said.
The challenge is to find your match, while the audience knows who it is. At the end, he’d send couples on a vacation together.
Despite cooking up a killer idea, he would never be the host.
For those who’ve watched his shows, you’d know he’s pretty introverted.
“I hate people too much. That means I would have to talk to people all the time and somewhat care, and I just don’t think I could do that for two months. I feel like I’d get sick of everybody and not care if you find love,” he joked.
Is he still in touch with cast members?
Gabriel says he and Harry are like “brothers,” and that they talk every day.
He also considers Inis like a “little sister” to him, and he says she’s currently overseas, crushing it in Europe.
He still talks to Chloe, but no one from The Mole, joking that they did him wrong. “I’ll never forgive them for leaving me that way… I’ve been petty about that ever since.”
But he doesn’t have serious beef with anyone, not even his exes, Georgia or Francesca.
“Things just don’t work out sometimes… After the show, I met her and her partner, and we all went to Disneyland… We hung out, we were totally fine,” he said.
How’s dating in Toronto after being on reality TV?
Gabriel said his biggest disadvantage in dating in Toronto after being on a reality show is that he can be “researched pretty easily.”
“The things that pop up aren’t the best… If you Google me, I think one of the threads that pops up is like a Reddit thread that says, ‘Why Dom is the worst?’” he said.
“It’s like a three-point thesis essay on why I’m a bad person… So when you have access to that, it does make things a little difficult. On top of that, when you have dated public figures, and you can search them up, and they’re on podcasts saying things about me, it makes a lot of things very difficult,” Gabriel explained.
Despite this challenge, Gabriel stays optimistic, saying, “To have had the success that I have and been able to provide for my family and my mom, I had to give up something.”
