About Time You Met: Nia Williams, Founder of Miss Date DoctorBy Alicia Grimshaw

Nia Williams founded Miss Date Doctor in 2016 while working as a letting agent, before officially launching in 2019. When Nia began M.D.D, she was motivated to solve the challenges she was seeing around her and to take a different approach to relationship coaching and offer more than a ‘swipe right’ app to help people find love in the 21st century.

What inspired you to start Miss Date Doctor?

I always felt there was a need for a more contemporary support system, something more steadfast and targeted towards wellbeing and handling daily stressors. When people have relationship and life problems, no matter the personality type or resilience of the individual, I have observed that they bring significant stress. What’s more, people don’t always feel able to tell family and friends the full story when it comes to these issues due to pride. Unfortunately, a family friend passed away from suicide whilst struggling with a relationship and life issue, and this pushed me to put my thoughts into action and create a relationship and life support platform. According to a research figure, people with relationship problems are three times more likely to experience depression – we want to be 24/7 support option for everyone

What makes you different from other relationship coaching services, and why have you taken such a different approach?

I believe the present format of seeing a coach once a week can leave customers essentially stranded for the rest of the week, having to deal with all of their emotions and problems alone. Because of that, I have designed Miss Date Doctor packages to be more flexible and targeted to the specific impacts each individual’s problems are causing. Once we have identified those, we then match a package that will help to solve it.

Miss Date Doctor offers a wide range of contemporary and unique services. For example, the M.D.D breakup package is a gift box sent to your home with a breakup guide and confectionary, as well as a coach who calls you every day for 2 weeks to see how you are coping with the breakup. We also have the M.D.D Socialise package in which a qualified coach comes out with you and poses as a friend so that you have someone to go out with if all your friends are unavailable, helping those dealing with loneliness. We also have a contact my ex package if you want us to contact your ex and mediate a disagreement. All in all, we have 16 service areas to help you with life and relationship problems; you simply choose the package relevant to you. 

How do you think lockdown has impacted relationships?

Lockdown put a tremendous amount of pressure on relationships causing disruption and conflict within already fragile relationships, redundancies, financial issues, personality clashes and a need for space causing the most arguments. But, on the other side, it has also brought some couples closer due to being able to spend quality time together and relax without the pressures of work and having more time to concentrate on each other.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learnt so far in the world of relationships?

Respect and self-regulation are two of the most important components of a successful relationship. Mutual respect is imperative for the sustainability of your relationship and being aware of your emotional intelligence also helps. This consists of self-regulation, self-awareness, empathy, good social skills, and a good internal motivation. This will affect your relationships and your effectiveness within a relationship. It is also imperative to work on any trauma issues or confidence issues you may have before embarking on a relationship.

Do you have a real stand-out career highlight so far?

Earlier this year we were awarded Best Luxury Relationship Guidance & Support Platform – UK by the AQUISITION INTERNATIONAL Business excellence Awards. It was an honour to be awarded and we aim to do more to improve in the future by listening to customer feedback and doing more research.

Which question are you asked the most by clients?

‘Do you see situations like mine often?’ Clients always want to know if their situation is unique and are much too hard on themselves. A lot of the time they get a great sense of comfort when I let them know life has its ups and downs for everyone and many people have had the same issue.

If you could give just one piece of relationship advice, what would it be?

Never lose yourself in a relationship no matter how deeply in love you are, and no matter how great it seems to be going, independence and confidence are incredibly attractive. Loving yourself and self-care attracts people to you and will make them stay with you. Being too needy and co-dependent decreases attraction and can destroy a relationship.

For more information on Miss Date Doctor, see here.