New Catholic dating site hopes to ‘rewire the way we think about dating’

 

CNA Staff, Sep 7, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

In a dating culture that consists of swiping through photos of potential dates on a smartphone, one Catholic dating app is working to create a space where individuals can create genuine connections online. Candid Dating, launched in January, is a virtual speed-dating site for single Catholics.

Taylor O’Brien, CEO and co-founder of the site, had the idea to create the platform when things started opening back up after the COVID-19 pandemic. She felt a deep desire to form Catholic friendships and began to host meetups in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for young Catholic women to foster fellowship.

A topic of conversation that kept coming up among the women was dating and the struggle to find available Catholic men. O’Brien, who was newly single at the time after ending an engagement, began to think about this topic. She continued to host these meetups and shared the information for them on her Instagram page. Soon enough, men started to find her events and began reaching out saying they wanted to meet Catholic women, too.

“From a bird’s-eye view I was able to really look and see — the men are there, the women are there, everyone’s just missing each other,” O’Brien explained to CNA in an interview.

O’Brien decided to get all these single Catholics together for an in-person event. She posted a Google doc on her Instagram for people to register to attend. Thinking she would maybe have 50 singles sign up, in less than 48 hours 400 people signed up. With the help of a friend, she hand-matched individuals based on different demographics and interests and held an in-person event. It was then that she realized this could be something even bigger, so she spent the next two years putting together a team and creating what is now the Candid Dating platform.

“Candid is a Catholic speed-dating platform exclusively for Catholics,” O’Brien explained. “We have no profiles, no swiping, and users create an account and during their account creation, they just answer a series of onboarding questions like age, interest, location, just a little bit about them, and then once their account is approved, our algorithm does its thing.”

The algorithm works to send individuals a list of virtual events that pertain to them based on their specific interests and location. Once they sign up for an event, they meet five to seven men or women for five to seven minutes at a time. At the end of the conversation, they are sent one question: “Do you want to continue the conversation? Yes or No.” If the pair both say “yes,” they will receive a notification saying that they matched and can message each other and exchange further contact information.

In addition to the current dating culture’s habit of swiping left or right on people based on their physical appearance, O’Brien pointed out that “we’ve lost the art of conversation.”

“What I love about what Candid does is it forces you to be able to have a conversation with someone, even if you know, maybe like after minute 2, that this may not be the best match,” she said, adding: “How are you able to then spend the next five minutes? Are you able to receive the person who’s sitting across from you? Are you able to give them the gifts that God has given you? How can we really share in communion as brothers and sisters in Christ knowing that maybe you’re not my person … but I don’t have control over that outcome and I should be able to just sit and enjoy my brother or sister in Christ.”

O’Brien shared that her goal with Candid Dating is to “rewire the way we think about dating and undo some of those wires that have been crossed in the swiping culture.”

“Swiping culture has done such a disservice especially as Catholics in the way that we look at dating. We start to objectify,” she emphasized. “The same motion that we use to shop for groceries or a pair of jeans in the swiping is the same thing that we’re doing to human beings.”

She added: “I think whenever we’re out there in the secular world and we see the way dating is going, sometimes we feel like maybe it’s just better if I sit this out for a while. So I think that a lot of people are getting discouraged in that way.”

“So my prayer and my goal with Candid would be that it would just help us rethink and be a little bit more intentional about the way that we’re approaching dating as a whole.”

For those who might be hesitant to take part in something like this dating approach or desire to meet their future spouse in person rather than online, O’Brien encouraged those people to “release a little bit of that control.”

“We always like to pretend like we know exactly the way that we’re going to meet someone until we actually meet them in a way that God surprises us and then all of that went out the window and we don’t even care because we’re just so happy that we met the person we’re supposed to be with,” she said.

Has the platform had any success stories yet?

O’Brien shared a message she received from a user hours before speaking to CNA. It read: “Hi, I participated in one of your events on April 11 and as a result I’ve got the best girlfriend a guy could ask for. I love her dearly and you all have my deepest appreciation. Thank you.”

This is not the first such message O’Brien has received, she said, but each one leaves her “blown away” and amazed at how “the Lord has really provided each next step for us.”