How much do religious dating apps really help?
Connecting with someone who shares your deepest values is tough to do. How much do religious dating apps narrow down the dating pool?
By Adora Namigadde
How much do religious dating apps really help?
Connecting with someone who shares your deepest values is tough to do. How much do religious dating apps narrow down the dating pool?
By Adora NamigaddeMarisa Ingalls downloaded the dating app CatholicMatch hoping she would meet her future husband.
She didn’t realize he would message her within the hour.
“My husband was the first person that came up,” Ingalls said. “I believe it was within like a half hour of setting up my account, he had messaged me. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy just looks perfect.’ ”
Ingalls initially registered with a free version of the app, but upgraded her subscription when she saw his message. The investment paid off – the two met online on Thanksgiving in 2017 and chatted through the app for one month before meeting in person. Their first date lasted 13 hours with the duo finding any excuse to extend their time together, including rummaging through a clearance bin at Petco.
She said he bought her engagement ring a month after their first date and proposed one year later. The two remain happily married and now have two children.
Ingalls got exactly what she was hoping for out of the app – someone who would abstain from sex while dating, cared about getting married and wanted to raise a Catholic family with her. But her experience isn’t universal. Although there is a wide swath of dating apps, some religious people find the most popular ones don’t help them connect with others.
Professor Michael Rosenfeld studies the social and personal aspects of mate selection at Stanford University. He said that religious singles can use dating apps in a few ways.
“Religious people use dating apps that are general interest and filter for other religious people, or they use smaller, more specific dating apps that are ostensibly specific to their religious preference,” Rosenfeld said, in an email.
Rosenfeld noted that although religious dating apps are more targeted, users “often find a mix of religious identity and religiosity on these sites.”
While some users strictly adhere to the tenets of their religions, others feel more of a cultural connection to their faith. The spectrum of belief even within a particular faith tradition can make using dating apps complicated.
Tricia Skrodenis hoped for an experience like Ingalls’s when she joined CatholicMatch in 2013, 16 years after her marriage was annulled. For Catholics, this means a church tribunal found that a marriage that was thought to be valid actually did not meet an essential prerequisite, and so the marriage did not happen.
Skrodenis was candid about her annulment with her matches, but she felt like it was a barrier to connecting with people on CatholicMatch.
“I felt like a second-class citizen,” Skrodenis said. “Nobody contacted me. And the people that did were not what I was looking for.”
She chatted with someone for six months before he disclosed a serious medical condition, which hurt her ability to trust him. She said another person she chatted with made an unsavory comment about her being Latina.
“So I identify as Brown. Someone said to me, ‘You’re a lot darker than I thought you were,’ ” Skrodenis said.
She had paid for a year’s subscription but left after six months. She moved to a broader Christian app and eventually resigned herself to secular apps. Skrodenis eventually did get married again but is now in divorce proceedings. She is not interested in hopping back on dating apps.
Developers of dating apps know that some stories are online versions of fairy tales – like Ingalls’s – while others leave people with wounds.
Shahzad Younas is the founder and CEO of Muzz, a Muslim dating app that started in England and hosted two in-person matchmaking events in Chicago last year.
“I thought I could just do a better job of everything that was out there. You know, for Muslims,” Younas said. “Marriage is such a big part of our faith and our lifestyle. And the options we had out there were quite difficult.”
Younas likes to call Muzz a “Muslim marriage app.” It offers privacy settings, modesty options and the ability to have a chaperone screen dates. These tailored features helped give the app legitimacy among some Muslim users.
“You can have a family member, a brother, father, sibling, who’s also included in your app,” Younas said. “Their domain is just to encourage good behavior and make sure that you’re being protected, and you’re being looked out for.
Younas knows multiple people who met and got married through his app.
“A lot of people stop me in the street,” Younas said. “I get stopped at restaurants, people saying, ‘Oh, we met on your app.’ It feels amazing.”
It’s encounters like those that give hope about the dating app industry. Phil Scopes of River North has heard success stories on dating apps, too. That’s why he’s been using the Jewish dating site JDate on and off since the 1990s.
“I find that the religious aspect of looking for people to date is very important to me, because I find that there’s a better connection with somebody in my own faith than outside my faith,” Scopes said.
Scopes said he isn’t that religious, but he’s religious enough where he wants to share this trait with his partner. He recently met someone on the app JDate.
“I am talking to someone else now, and we occasionally get together when she gets in to the city,” Scopes said. “But I’m not sure what will happen as far as a relationship at this point.”
Adora Namigadde is a metro reporter and host of The Rundown podcast’s morning episodes for WBEZ. Follow her at @adorakn.
A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the founder of Muzz’s last name. The story has been updated with the correct spelling.