Love Life
For most of her life, she was married to high school sweetheart George Devereaux. From the back-story, he died a few years before the start of the series in 1985. In a 1990 episode, Blanche had a dream that George came back from the dead nine years later (he said that he faked his death to escape criminal prosecution for fraud). Rue McClanahan has said that George was the love of Blanche's life, and that her promiscuity was in fact a desperate search for the next love of her life. However, in one episode, Blanche admitted that she was having a pedicure on the day of George's death, despite the fact that George was in a coma. (Yet in another episode, George died suddenly in an accident and she was at home when a police officer phoned her the news.)
During her senior year in high school, on December 25th, 1949, she almost eloped with the father of her rival at cheerleading with the sole purpose of having her taken off the squad.
On the show, Blanche has been shown to have dated various men, some of them unsavory. She almost married a bigamist in the pilot episode before he got caught by the police. Another man stole her necklace at her full moon-leap year's party, and he too was caught by the police. One boyfriend named Rex was emotionally and verbally abusive, until her roommate Dorothy helped her see his true colors. Another boyfriend Gary (Jerry Hardin) cheated on her under her very roof by sleeping with Rose's sister Holly (Inga Swenson) who was visiting. Blanche overcame her apprehension of dating Ted (Hugh Farrington), who is in a wheelchair, only to find out he is married, so she terminated the relationship based on the fact that she has never been the "other woman" in extramarital affairs. The only other time that occurred was when, through a bizarre turn-of-events, her beau's wife was revived by paramedics after she was declared dead. But Blanche has also ruined good relationships with worthy men: Jake (Donnelly Rhodes) wanted to marry her but she turned him down and regretted it later, and when Steven (Robert Mandan) was hospitalized, she refused to visit him until much later, by which time he reconciled with his ex-girlfriend.
On the show, Blanche is portrayed as a promiscuous woman, with her initials spelling out the word "BED." She spends a great deal of her time with members of the opposite sex, and this is a source of both condemnation from and amusement to her roommates. Blanche's seemingly liberated human sexual behavior was a contrast to the sexual climate of the 1980s, when AIDS was beginning to seep into a nation's consciousness. However, in the episode "72 Hours," it is mentioned that Blanche is cognizant of the dangers of HIV; she always uses protection and knows every lover's full sexual history.
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